If you missed Jennifer Hudson singing the National Anthem, you missed what will probably turn out to be the best play of the night. It was one of the best renditions I’ve ever heard.
Memo to the nitwits at NFL.com: it might be a good idea to set the URL “www.nfl.com/superbowl/” to redirect to the site for this year’s game. Geez.
Are you watching? Do you care?
Please share widely!
i liked the whitney Houston version so much, i actually bought it on cd.
I had either forgotten about that track suit, or never knew. Scary.
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p>I liked Hudson’s rendition better.
… but also the arrangement. I’ve got to check it out on youtube, because there was one set of harmonies that really piqued my ear.
…at 2:36. Weird – something (minor subdominant?) to dominant I think. I’ll have to spend some time at a keyboard and work it through. Interesting.
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it was a beautiful performance, but i still think whitney managed a level of emotionality that jennifer barely approached.
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p>now about that track suit – all i’ll say is it was “of the times”, and i’d rather be performing in a track suit than on cfm heels, like jennifer had to. đŸ˜€
It’s interesting how they both used an arrangement in 4/4 instead of the traditional 3/4 time, although Hudson did switch to 3/4 for the ending. They probably chose 4/4 because it provides more room for interpretation.
… because they could put a more conventional back beat to it. More consistent with R&B. By extending the end of the bar it provides a lot of opportunity to embellish the ends of phrases.
For now. No, I don’t care.
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p>Mark
Neither watching nor caring.
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p>Son and I are, instead, listening to They Might Be Giants while he does his English homework. TV does not figure largely in our lives and sports are right out.
From the Pats-Giants Superbowl. Fun to see Rodney Harrison in a suit, though.
I’m about to walk down to the hardware store to get some knee pads (on sale!). Getting too old to garden without lots of padding, and I have tons of English ivy to eradicate.
I don’t really care about either team. Watching a movie on MLK Jr. instead, with Jeffrey Wright, who could be one of the most underrated actors out there. He’s the type of actor who can play any role. Corporate lawyer. Crack dealer. CIA agent. Angel descended from heaven. Brainwashed, crazy veteran. MLK Jr. Anything.
A goal-line interception, followed by a 100-yard runback for a touchdown by the Steelers, with no time on the clock. Awesome warm-up act for Springsteen.
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p>Um, that’d be a no. I’m pretty sure a 100 yard interception return as time expires in the half is always better than a national anthem rendition, short of God Almighty singing with a backup choir of cherubims and ceraphims, or maybe Adam, Noah, Moses, and Joseph a la The Four Tops.
Yeah, that’s fair enough.
i haven’t heard that term since my best friend’s dad got a cb radio back in the 70s!
In the Sobe commercial?
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p>Favorite spot so far, though, was the Bud Clydesdale fetching the tree branch.
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p>Pittsburgh’s looking good – AZ seems tight. Dropped passes, dropped kick return, blown coverages.
Steelers had six chances to score from inside the 20 (3 downs, then a terrible penalty on the FG attempt resulting in 3 more tries). Couldn’t do it. If AZ is going to do anything, now’s their chance.
My goodness. Apparently that hasn’t happened in the Super Bowl in almost 20 years. It’s so rare that I didn’t know what happens afterward. Apparently, the team who was backed up into the end zone then punts from their 20.
(Or, as Lynpb just remarked, “Wow, do the red people have the ball again already?”)
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p>I thought after the pasting the Pats gave AZ that Pittsburgh would run away with this one.
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p>And if either team was going to get a safety, I would have bet good money that it would be Pittsburgh, not the Cardinals.
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Or are the teams really committing so many penalties?
looked legit to me, as have all the unnecessary roughness calls. Both sides have hurt themselves badly with penalties; AZ has capitalized on them more successfully.
They earned it. That last TD was spectacular, exactly when it was most needed.
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p>A great game!
I was off the computer the entire game.
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p>Good game, but it was almost marred by all of the penalties. Not only is a safety rare in SB history, but I can’t remember ever seeing a safety as the result of a penalty in any game (if the infraction occurs in the end zone, it’s a safety). And yes, David, that punt is technically called a “free kick” from the 20.
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p>Excellent anthem and The Boss rocked. My wife, not a football fan, thought it would make more sense for him to keep playing rather than go back to the football.
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p>The interception and 100-yard run by Harrison had to be my favorite moment of the game. Runner up moments: Holmes’ winning TD catch and Fitzgerald’s catch for Arizona’s 2nd TD.
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p>I really wasn’t very impressed with the commercials this year. A few chuckles, but nothing that really impressed me. And sometimes advertising backfires: I’ll never buy a domain name from Go Daddy.
Hudson’s Anthem, the Interception, Springsteen and the E Street band totally being awesome, the Second Half, the Comeback, the Amazing Catch, and Forgettable Ads…there’s no question this was the best Superbowl ever! Even this Open Thread was the best ever!
It happened in college on November 2002 when NC State upset FSU. NC State beats FSU recap
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p>As for The Boss — and I say this as a Bruce fan — I thought he stunk. He’s getting old and it shows. His concert at Fenway had far more life, and that was just a few years ago.
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p>The SB needs to stop getting acts who are in their 50s or 60s. Maybe get a good band near their peak, instead of a resurgence put together by the TV/Music industry interested in pumping out a bunch of sales from records pressed in the 1970s and 1980s (plus three different greatest hits albums).
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p>Let’s recap, in reverse order (age of lead singer at time):
Boss (59)
Petty (58)
Prince (49)
Stones (63)
McCartney (63)
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p>Average age: 58.4 years old. Note: may be off by a year due to not worrying about date of birth, just year.
They figure they’re safe if they hire people who nobody would want to have a wardrobe malfunction.
anyone remember “Up with People”?
Heal the world?
Someone could hurt themselves remembering that. I’m having some severe flashbacks myself.
unfortunately, only the game was “live”, while the other was recorded a week earlier.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…
It was still a great performance.
That’s what this report sez. The NFL required them? Am I reading that right?
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p>Pre-recorded or not, it was pretty damn good.
They don’t want any surprises.
Just over 30 years ago, legendary baseball broadcaster (and the voice of baseball for me) Ernie Harwell was put in charge of picking the anthem singers for the home games in Detroit during their World Series with the Cardinals. For one of those games, he picked Jose Feliciano, and if you can remember what 1968 was like you probably remember the backlash to what was probably the first non-traditional anthem rendition at a major sporting event.
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p>FWIW, Harwell enjoyed the performance and still defends Feliciano to this day.
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p>I wonder what it would take to make a stadium uncomfortable with an anthem performance today? An unconventional time-signature version a la Dave Brubeck? An Ornette Coleman free jazz arrangement? Guitar noise from Sonic Youth? Or are we to the point where you have to show skin to offend?
Someone complained he had to hit the mute button because the arrangement he felt was unbecoming our national anthem.