Star Spangled Bungle
There are certain big events in American Culture, and among those the Superbowl is the very biggest. It's so big that even the commercials are events .Well they should be. Some one once calculated that out of a 4 1/3 hours Superbowl broadcast there was only about 11 mins of actual playtime. The rest went to pre show, half time show, post show, commentary, and reams of ads. The ads are so important that they get promoted themselves for about 2 weeks prior to the game - in what amounts to advertising for commercials. Then after the show's done, viewers can go online and vote for their favorite Superbowl ad in what amounts to an online focus group!
"She was the only high profile performer we could get who didn't need to lip synch"
Now when an event is that big, being asked to kick things off as an opening act is an honor, and something that you don't want to mess up. That's why Superbowl organizers asked Christina Aguilera to sing the national anthem, and start the ball rolling. After all, Christina is a talented & charismatic young woman, and she knows a thing or two about not messing up - well compared to her erstwhile rivals Britney Spears and Jessica Simpson anyway. Of course there was her sex tape, and a few other minor career glitches along the way; so in retrospect this has to be one of those "What were they thinking?" situations.
she got the idea from the Simpsons
I say it's clear in hindsight that this was a bad idea because now everyone knows what a shit awful job Christina made of the Star Spangled Banner. She could have gone out and done a low key pro job that everyone would've appreciated. It is the Superbowl so everyone is eager to move onto the main event. However her highness had to turn it into the Christina Aguilera show by showing her full vocal range. Show her full vocal range meant balling and screeching like a cat in heat, or like Bleeding Gums Murphy when he sang the National Anthem for the Springfield Isotopes on an episode of the Simpsons!
jib jabbing and ad libbing
Apart from chewing up the scenery Christina made another notable blunder - she fucked up the words. When Xtina got to the part that was supposed to go "o'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming", Xtina sang "what so proudly we watched, at the twilight's last reaming". Now we can only hope that was an innocent blunder - of the kind that have become more common as the American Public School system sips farther; and not Xtina's idea of an edgy ad lib. However ad libbing would be consistent with the rest of her over the top performance. She not so much performed the anthem as much as she used it to try and hijack the Superbowl!
... and they say that there's no such thing as bad publicity
So Christina got her moment and made a spectacle of herself. The upshot is that she did get talked about the next day. She got even more coverage than the actual game - which must have been the idea when she tried making a meal out of the anthem like that. Of course it's not the kind of attention she might have wanted, since her American Idol routine wasn't appreciated. This kind of attention is more like Ricky Gervais after the Golden Globes. The difference being that there's no good side to this. Even Christina is a little defensive about the incident - as she took to twitter to lash out at her critics:
Christina says "Fuck Off"
this isn't the worst thing that ever happened at a Superbowl
That attitude isn't going to help her. Why not try looking on the bright side? She did make a big day even bigger, in an epic fail sort of way. Also her National Anthem performance has probably gone viral on youtube hours ago, and that's' gotta count for something. Finally she's not the first celebrity to make an ass out of herself at the Superbowl. Remember when Justin Timberlake went a little too far in bringing sexy back with Janet Jackson?
The main thing is that Justin recovered from that - mainly by not talking about it or bringing it up ever again. So let's not blow everything out of proportion. Celebs like attention so sometimes that can go a little nuts when the spotlight hits them. So not only is Christina not the first Superbowl blow out - she won't be the last. In fact some of us are already trying to guess who next year's hi profile potential fuck up might be. Word of advice to who ever that is - use a teleprompter, tape it ahead of time if you can, and whatever you do don't over do it. Remember the Superbowl isn't about you.
PS. Christina has gotten around to an official response. It's a little more tactful than her Twitter "Fuck Off" too. Aguilera was quoted in US Magazine just recently, and by recently I mean minutes ago, saying that she only got fucked up on the anthem because she was carried away (Though some others are saying that she was half in the bag. Some comment is being made about how her voice is starting to go too, like Whitney Houston's, so the inference can be made that she's riding the rehab railroad all the way to rock bottom!).
She wasn't carried away with herself either - despite what many may think - but was full of a patriotic frenzy! Says Christie - "I got so caught up in the moment of the song that I lost my place," says the star. "I can only hope that everyone could feel my love for this country and that the true spirit of its anthem still came through."
She must have got caught up in the moment of her excuse too, because the girl goes on to say, in the very same statement to US, that "I have been performing the anthem since I was seven years old and I must say the Super Bowl is a dream come true...I am really excited to be part of such an iconic event." So she's been performing the anthem since 7 and still couldn't get it right - that's just adding insult to injury!
