Can anybody pinpoint when it stopped being a song we sang along with and became entertainment?

Jose Feliciano's rendition is the earliest example I can remember, but was it the first?

I have no answer, but that is a great question!

I'd put my money on Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock back in summer 1969.

You induced me to do a bit of searching, and... Per Wikipedia:


Looks like Feliciano may have been the springboard.

I bow to you (and your investigation) and accede to the facts.
And I want my money back.

nowadays all the stars do is forget the words while trying to sing it

To be fair, we have what is arguably one of the worst national anthems of any country; it's difficult to sing, it's not really what I'd call terribly inspirational, and it ends on a question that you could say calls into doubt the continued existence of the country it's a national anthem for. "America the Beautiful" would, I think, make for a better national anthem.

Tis indeed beautiful.

However, despite my being a member of the Church of the Blessed Infidel, my vote for a 'new' anthem would be Irving Berlin's God Bless America.
If you haven't heard Kate Smith's rendition of it, do so. To say that it's inspirational would be gross understatement.
And you might like to check out how just how inspirational it was/is to the Philadelphia Flyers in the entry for Kate Smith in Wikipedia.

Not "To be fair..." Bad lyrics aren't an excuse for people's forgetting them.

But I agree. Of the national anthems I've heard ours does not rank way up there.

I think it was pretty inspirational at the time it was written, but it's kinda too specific today...doesn't have that generic puff-up-your-chest feeling, either lyrically or musically, at all.

I suggest "Take me out to the ball game."

Ah, c'mon! The Star-Spangled Banner was cobbled together from a poem written on the back of an envelope and a melody stolen from a British drinking song. It's impossible to sing well, it's difficult to memorize because its language is so opaque that even linguists have ongoing disputes as to the meanings of particular phrases, and it mismatches an interrogative syntax with a declarative melody. Throw in an enthusiastic celebration of rockets and bombs, and you've got the definitive American* anthem.
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*Note to grelber—American used inaccurately here in favor of the perhaps more correct yet inarguably less mellifluous Usonian.

Yes I've heard that. I'm nobody's idea of a vocalist, but I've heard that it has a massive range requirement to hit all the high and low notes.

well, "Massive" is a bit extreme, but it does have a wide range, that of an octave and a fifth.

when you're drunk it's not a problem...

I did not know that! Perhaps if we require the singer to pound down a few shots before starting…

There has been at least one effort to "modify" the tune to reduce its range and make it more singable for the general population but apparently it didn't "take". On the other hand church musicians I know contend that because there is so little "public" singing these days and because public school music programs have been gutted, the average vocal range is significantly reduced from that of say fifty years ago.

Touche. It may not be a good song, but those performing in public should probably make a point of remembering all the words nonetheless.



I remember reading a Web article some time ago about how the advent of studio-recorded music caused a lot of performing musicians quite a lot of upset, because it meant that people who were not good performers could now have successful careers as musicians.

Nowadays, of course, successful studio musicians complain that the advent of the Internet means that people who are not good at scoring recording contracts can have successful careers as musicians. But we've come full circle, I think; the advent of the Internet means that a lot of musicians can make a go of it without the studio labels...but in order to do it they have to be willing to tour almost constantly, a la, say, Jonathan Coulton, one of my favorite musicians.

So it's possible the wheel of fortune has now turned all the way, and we are now returning to a time where an ability to perform well live will become more important to successful musicians.

Now there is a revolutionary concept!

Here is another. Vocalists with sufficient training in voice and music they can project the lyrics to the back of the theater without using a microphone and 100,000 watts of amplification and each syllable so clearly enunciated the audience in the back row can effortlessly hear and understand every word. Broadway singers used to do that routinely and opera singers still do -- in multiple languages.

as a church musician, I have noticed that hymns are set now a half- or whole-step lower than say 25-30 years ago. Eb rather than E, that sort of thing.

Vocalists with sufficient training in voice and music they can project the lyrics to the back of the theater without using a microphone and 100,000 watts of amplification and each syllable so clearly enunciated the audience in the back row can effortlessly hear and understand every word. Broadway singers used to do that routinely and opera singers still do -- in multiple languages.

I've also observed that foreign singers often perform english songs with very heavy accent or slight mispronunciations that in itself can lend a refreshing quality to their music and add to its appeal.