o say can u sing

April 24) - "Canadian singer Caroline Marcil had a rough night at a Canada-USA hockey game on Friday.
She was invited to sing "The Star Spangled Banner," but forgot the lyrics not once, but twice. She left to get the lyrics and when she returned to the ice, took an embarrassing tumble.
She left the ice in tears at Quebec Coliseum's exhibition hockey game.
When the audience booed, she told "Good Morning America" Weekend on Sunday, "that made me completely blank. I didn't know what I was singing."
But Marcil flew in from Montreal to appear on "Good Morning America" to redeem herself, and she sang the American national anthem flawlessly.
Marcil, whose first language is French, isn't alone in not knowing the words to the song. A 2004 Harris Interactive survey of 2,200 adults found 61 percent of Americans don't know the lyrics to "The Star Spangled Banner."
Of those who claim to know all the words, only 39 percent know what follows the line "whose broad stripes and bright stars," the survey found.
The lyric problem is often evident at sporting events.
The National Anthem Project has an education campaign to re-teach America to sing the national anthem, with major singing celebrations throughout the country."



i'm not sure what i find so intriguing about this article. maybe it's the fact that it's about a french-canadian's failing attempt to sing the u.s. national anthem (wha??!) or maybe its that so many american's appear to have such a short attention span that they can't even get through the first complete stanza of their own national anthem or maybe that the NAP hopes to revive america's awareness of the national anthem through "singing celebrations." hey! i'm all for patriotism but really, if its not on mtv or in video-game format i don't think the majority of american's are going to care...i especially appreciate the statement that "the lyric problem is often evident at sporting events." cool. welcome to america. we like to spend money writing articles about anthem-lyric amnesia epidemics and how one can observe its impact at sporting events!