But I tough it out, only hammering the pause button again when Chance the Rapper’s face blooms into a sunburst smile as Fergie throttles the word raaaaaamparts until it confesses treason.ġ:08 to 1:41. She sounds like Miley Cyrus spoofing Amy Winehouse on an SNL episode that I am not watching no matter how outsized its national importance. The bunker-busting syllable-by-syllable shrapnel of perilous alone, yikes. I don’t see the problem yet, but I can see that it will present itself very soon.Ġ:46 to 1:07.

That said, yes, OK, she sounds like she just jumped out of a cake, and the jazz-scat overtones are very threatening and discomfiting indeed, and the tempo suggests this rendition is gonna be, like, 10 minutes long. Thompson wrote (not about Fergie), “Buy the ticket, take the ride.” It would disappoint me greatly if Fergie aged gracefully, or did anything gracefully other than maybe vape, or if she ever treated the national anthem with any delicacy whatsoever. This is the human who single-handedly transformed the Black Eyed Peas from chin-stroking conscious rappers to imperial cornball pop stars, whose previous meme-worthy low/high point was the time she wet herself onstage, who sang one of the worst songs that I nonetheless unreservedly love. Let’s make clear at the onset that Fergie’s whole shtick is a complete lack of nuance or capacity for embarrassment: Everything Fergie does is designed to send you on a whiplash journey from Oh, no to Oh, wow to Oh, fine. Granted, the first 18 seconds consist of the arena announcer’s gushing intro (Fergie has won eight Grammys?) and her slow sashay up the microphone, which is wildly inappropriate in a way that is, you have to admit, Totally Fergie. I am, quite frankly, impressed with myself for lasting way longer than I expected. Here, now, is a brief rundown of how many times I had to pause this video to recompose myself.Ġ:00 to 0:45.

Clearly, this had bloomed into another one of those socio-cultural events of such outsized national importance that I would be forced against my will to monitor, as with the presidential debates or Game of Thrones.įine. I’ve got enough problems and enough complicated feelings about flamboyant public displays of patriotism.Īnd yet the internet beckoned, with wild tales of this particular performance’s cataclysmic horror, miniature hot takes from the likes of Roseanne ( she’s wrong), and amusing memes. (Though there are exceptions.) And so I spent most of Monday very aggressively not clicking on footage of Fergie singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” at Sunday night’s NBA All-Star Game. I do not enjoy cringing, or basking in the humiliation of others, or poorly executed jazz scatting, or radical deconstructions of the national anthem.

Fergie national anthem