In defense of Fergie

Fergie’s cover of the “Star-Spangled Banner” was terrible, and I’m so happy it is in our lives. For some reason, in the Year of Our Lord Two Thousand Eighteen, she tried to sing it like a lounge singer in a syrupy 30s bar laying on top of a piano played by the Ring-a-Ding Kid. It might have worked if the crowd had been sensually drunk on Manhattans sitting at two-top tables. It didn’t work in a corporate arena before the NBA All-Star Game, and I’m not sure it could ever really work in any universe where, like, Joel Embiid exists.

Fergie begins the anthem like your friend over-emoting during drunk karaoke. It sounds like she’s doing a Lady Gaga impression when she does that throaty thing where she sort of eats the lyrics at the roof of her mouth. No one has ever pronounced “perilous” like “pair-RAH-luss” before, I don’t think, and Fergie throws everything she has behind that second syllable to knock us all on our asses with a minute-and-a-half still to go in the song.

This is all according to plan, by the way. We’ve seen terrible anthems before where the singer seems to just wing it — Carl Lewis and Roseanne are the obvious ones. Fergie sang the song exactly how she intended, however. We know this, because Deadspin got footage of her rehearsing before the game, in which she hits all the notes and susses out the proper pronunciation of baaaan-ner-wer yea-het way-yyyave.

I cannot defend Fergie’s rendition in a vacuum: It’s bad. But it is a net positive for this world, for two reasons:

Look, the “Star-Spangled Banner” was made to be mangled. It’s a bitch to sing, and the long crescendos and fortissimos and pianissimos leave a lot of room for interpretation. There can be no such thing as disrespecting the anthem while singing it when so few people can actually sing it properly. The only way to sing it right is to sing it however you can do it best, and most of the time that’s terribly.

That’s unlike, say, “La Marseillaise,” which is good, and everybody can sing it pretty good, and mostly everyone leaves it alone. “The Star-Spangled Banner” practically taunts everyone who sings it, and anyone who can manage to sing it competently sounds exceptional because it leaves no room for only so-so interpretations.

Fergie’s intention was to make the national anthem feel sexy as hell, following the footsteps of Marvin Gaye’s 1983 All-Star rendition which actually was sexy as hell.

Gaye’s rendition was an understated sexy, however. Fergie tried to move that legacy forward by turning the dial all the way the hell up and seeing what happened. If Gaye’s rendition was a minx-like wink to America, Fergie’s was an all-out, fumbled come-on. Her elbow slipped on the bar, she knocked over our drink, and she probably feels sheepish today.

But she went for it, damn it. And I hope she inspires future generations of seductive anthem singers, because: 1) Every failure along the way will be (earnestly, nobly) hilarious, and 2) Someone’s going to nail it at some point.

Brian Eno once noted that the Velvet Underground’s cacophonous mess of a first album only sold about 30,000 copies in its first five years, but that “everyone who bought one of those 30,000 copies started a band.”

Some day, I like to believe, someone will sing a definitive version of the “Star Spangled Banner” that will make us all want to make love to America and each other. When that day comes, we’ll have Fergie Happy Birthday Mr. President-ing the shit out of the national anthem to thank.