[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b94aBPC5T-E&&w=600]
If you thought that the most notable off-field Super Bowl talking point would be the adverts, think again.
Christina Aguilera has admitted that she messed up a line of the national anthem before the 45th Super Bowl kicked off in Arlington, Texas Sunday night. The 30-year-old singer should have sung, “O’er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?” but instead repeated an earlier line with a slight variation of, “What so proudly we watched at the twilight’s last gleaming.”
(More on TIME.com: The top 10 worst national-anthem renditions.)
As social networks began to buzz, Aguilera put out a statement. “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 said.
If it makes Aguilera feel any better today, she’s not the first to come unstuck when belting out the Star Spangled Banner at a football game. Ten years ago, Macy Gray was booed for an off-kilter rendition at the Pro Football Hall of Fame exhibition game in Canton, Ohio, which is also her home state. And just this past December in Kansas City, before the Chiefs took on the Denver Broncos, Mike Eli of the Eli Young Band had such a nightmare that he actually had to start over.
Aguilera would probably do well to dwell on those less fortunate as you’d imagine that, somewhere right now, Janet Jackson is wishing that all she’d revealed back in the Super Bowl halftime show of 2004 was an inability to sing all the words in the right order. (via BBC)
(More on TIME.com: See the fallout from the Janet Jackson incident.)