The Anti-Anthem

Text: Clemens Matuschek, May 2026

The United States of America was founded 250 years ago with the Declaration of Independence. But it was still a long way to go before it had its own national anthem …

Given the United States’ many military entanglements to this day, it seems almost symbolic that the American national anthem was composed during a battle. In 1814, Britain laid siege to the city of Baltimore as part of a military conflict which, shortly after the end of the War of Independence, defined the spheres of influence of the fledgling American nation and the British mother country. From aboard a ship, the American lawyer and amateur poet Frances Scott Key watched as the British bombarded Fort McHenry, situated just off the coast of the city, throughout the night with cannons and rockets – a weapon that was still a novelty at the time. Yet, to his relief, the US flag, measuring more than 100 square metres, was still flying over the fort the following morning; the British withdrew. (The flag is now on display as a national relic at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington.) Key captured his impressions in a patriotic poem, which he had published in several newspapers. It comprises four stanzas, but as a national anthem, only the first is usually sung – although, according to popular belief, hardly any American knows more than the first few lines by heart.

The Star-Spangled Banner

O! say can you see
by the dawn’s early light,
What so proudly we hailed
at the twilight’s last gleaming,

Whose broad stripes and bright stars
through the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watched,
were so gallantly streaming?

And the rockets’ red glare,
the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night
that our flag was still there;

O! say does that star-spangled
banner yet wave,
O’er the land of the free
and the home of the brave?

It was Key’s brother-in-law who noticed that the poem could be set to the tune of »To Anacreon in Heaven«, a song that was popular at the time. However, there was a rather piquant background to this: it had been written around 1775 by the English composer John Stafford Smith as the anthem of the »Anacreontic Society«, a London club for music-loving gentlemen of the upper classes. Founded in honour of the ancient poet Anacreon, the society had two aims: to organise monthly concerts – Joseph Haydn was even a guest on one occasion – and, like the ancient Greeks, to drink their way into a supposedly higher realm with red wine. After 25 boozy years, the club disbanded following an incident in which an influential noblewoman attended a meeting and complained about the inappropriate songs. None of this prevented Keys, his brother-in-law and a music publisher friend from immediately publishing the lyrics and music together.

Now, although the United States had a national song that could not have been more patriotic, it still had no national anthem. The Constitution simply made no provision for one. Instead, there were several representative songs and marches that were played at public events and military ceremonies. First and foremost: »My Country, ’Tis of Thee« – although set to the tune of »God Save the King«. They had won the War of Independence, yet as a republic they were still singing the praises of the hated king! This even rankled with a foreigner like Antonín Dvořák. The Czech composer had been appointed to the New York Conservatory in 1892 as a musical advisor and heard the retro anthem more than once, as that same year saw the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s discovery of America being celebrated with numerous ceremonies. Annoyed, he sat down at his desk and wrote a new, original melody for »My Country«. However, it never gained public acceptance – so he shrugged his shoulders and used it for his new string quintet.

Many Americans felt much the same as Dvořák. And so, more and more US Army band leaders and organisers of public events began to treat »The Star-Spangled Banner« effectively as an official anthem. From the turn of the century onwards, the tradition – which continues to this day – of playing the song before major sporting events, such as the opening day of the baseball season or the Super Bowl final, became established. Only the political sphere remained stubbornly opposed. Six times in the 1920s, the Democratic Congressman John Charles Linthicum tabled a motion to recognise the anthem as such – to no avail. Instead, a public competition was launched to find a completely new alternative, but despite 900 entries, no winner was chosen. It was only when the American Veterans’ Association campaigned for »The Star-Spangled Banner« and presented a petition with five million signatures that President Herbert Hoover gave his approval in 1931.

The purpose of a national anthem is, of course, to glorify the country. However, not all composers saw it that way – Igor Stravinsky, for example, who had fled to the USA in 1940 ahead of the Second World War. For a concert in his adopted home of Boston in 1944, he created his own version featuring unusual dissonances, which paid homage both to his status as an avant-garde composer and to the USA’s entry into the war. When the Boston police got wind of this, they saw it as a threat to national honour and threatened him with arrest, so he grumblingly withdrew his arrangement. Yet his version is downright harmless compared to the one Jimi Hendrix unleashed in 1969 at the close of the Woodstock Festival, playing with a heavily distorted guitar. In it, the melody is drowned out by a storm of sound created with feedback, effects pedals and the vibrato bar, imitating the falling and explosions of bombs, the rattling of machine guns and the screams of the wounded. A deafening protest against the Vietnam War, which sparked a nationwide outcry and remains to this day a defining moment in the history of the electric guitar.

Even during the approval process, critics warned that the anthem was too difficult to sing. The modulations in key, but above all the wide leaps and the melodic range of more than one and a half octaves – which far exceeds that of normal folk songs – would be too much for any singer to handle. A prediction that has come true a thousand times over to this day – mainly because pop stars are time and again roped into performing it at high-profile sporting events under uncontrollable live conditions. Entire YouTube playlists are filled with the disastrous performances of Taylor Swift, Christina Aguilera, Fergie, R. Kelly, Justin Timberlake and others, who fail hopelessly in one way or another, whilst prominent sportspeople or politicians in the audience roll their eyes or bite their lips to stifle their laughter and keep their composure. By far the most cringeworthy performance was delivered by a singer who has managed to keep her name a secret to this day, at an event during Donald Trump’s first election campaign in 2016 in the small town of Eugene (Oregon). She went off-key about eight times – which subsequently inspired a New York jazz pianist to provide a highly entertaining piano accompaniment.