It’s not a love song; it’s not about your ability to sing, it’s about the sacrifice of brave partiots who made it possible for us to live free in this experiment called the United States of America, so lose the embellishments.

To drive the point home, and the second part of my pet peeve, the lyric is periLOUS not periLESS! There was plenty of peril on that fateful night.

If you are ever granted the privilege to sing the Star Spangled Banner at a public event, consider the veterans in the audience, and grant them the proper respect for their patriotism.

Here’s the verse we sing from Francis Scott Key’s 1814 composition; learn it, respect it:

Oh, say can you see by the dawn’s early light
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars thru the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

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