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Come Fan with UsTuesday, June 23, 2026

T-Pain sang the national anthem at a Dodgers game -- without Auto-Tune! -- and it was BEAUTIFUL

Did you know that T-Pain could sing without Auto-Tune? Did you know that he could sing WONDERFULLY without Auto-Tune?

At first, hearing that T-Pain was singing the national anthem at a Dodgers-Giants game, you might expect something not-so-great. Just listening to T-Pain’s most popular songs, you don’t get a great impression of him as a vocal talent. You don’t really hear the timbre of his voice through the modifications. You can’t really confirm that he actually knows how to hit notes while using a software that shifts his voice to the right tone regardless. You never hear him use vibrato, and if you did, it might not even make it through the computer.

But let me tell you: T-Pain is a lot different in 2015 than he was in 2009 when you couldn’t flip on the radio without hearing his voice. He no longer wears silly hats. He no longer has long hair. And he doesn’t frequently use the Auto-Tune that made him famous.

So if you expected something not-so-great, please watch the above video of T-Pain singing the national anthem at a Dodgers game. No, he doesn’t hit every note perfectly, but the passion in his voice convinces me that T-Pain is about to turn into an enormous anthropomorphic eagle and sing “cliiiiiiiimb on my anthropomorphic eeeaaaaagle baaaaack” and fly me over Mt. Rushmore.

T-Pain’s career has gone weird places. He’s supposedly releasing an album called “Stoicville: The Phoenix,” but he’s been trying to release that for about a year and I still can’t find an official release date.

But hearing T-Pain sing this national anthem, he just seems so happy to be singing. Like this hatless, hairless man, I am born anew.

(fwiw, I tried to come up with some awful T-Pain national anthem jokes and all I could come up with was:

“ALL I DO IS WAVE WAVE WAVE NO MATTER WHAT”

“Buy U A Flag (Shawty Spangled)”

(I’m so sorry.)

* * *

SB Nation video archives: And then there are bad national anthem performances (2014)

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