Last year, Mickey Guyton was tasked with the patriotic pregame moment backed by a gospel choir, while Eric Church and Jazmine Sullivan teamed up in 2021 to perform the anthem as a duet that was equal parts country and R&B. This year, Babyface's number was preceded by Sheryl Lee Ralph belting out "Lift Every Voice and Sing." Colloquially known as the "Black national anthem," the spiritual prayer of thanksgiving has been added to the lineup of Super Bowl musical moments since 2021, when Alicia Keys became the first artist to ever perform it ahead of kickoff.īabyface Reflects On Collaborating With Whitney, Toni, Ella Mai & More: How The Legendary Hitmaker Learned To "Speak In Their Voices" Artists who've performed the song in recent years have included Leslie Odom Jr. However, "America the Beautiful" didn't officially become an annual staple of the pre-game festivities until 2009. Three years later, "America the Beautiful" was actually performed in place of the national anthem by Vikki Carr - which marks the only time in NFL history that the game didn't include the latter. Ward was first performed at Super Bowl VIII in 1967 by Charley Pride, who also sang "The Star-Spangled Banner" that year. Here’s the earliest first verse:Īnd here are the lyrics as we know them today:Ĭroon your way to the patriotic top with these forgotten verses of “The Star-Spangled Banner.The 1895 patriotic standard written by Katharine Lee Bates and church organist Samuel A. The original poem published in 1895 was a little different than the one we’re familiar with today. The lines “O beautiful for pilgrim feet / Whose stern, impassioned stress” recall the history of Europeans landing in Massachusetts, while the stanza beginning “O beautiful for heroes proved / In liberating strife” references the country’s soldiers “Who more than self their country loved.” Which lyrics have changed over time? The line “thine alabaster cities gleam” is a reference to the buildings she witnessed at the World’s Columbian Exposition (alabaster is a type of white rock often used for ornamental carvings).įrequent references to God show Bates’s strong religious beliefs. The man-made aspects of the country inspired Bates as well. The “amber fields of grain” in the Midwest, for example, and the “purple mountain majesties” that she viewed from her perch on Pikes Peak. What inspired the lyrics to “America the Beautiful”?īates drew from what she saw in Massachusetts, Colorado, and everything in between to write her poem. The accompaniment stuck, and that version is the one Americans know and love today. Ward’s 1882 hymn “Materna” (also known as “O Mother Dear, Jerusalem”). She self edited once again in 1910, and changed the title to “America the Beautiful.” Bates tweaked the lyrics a bit to add the lines “And crown thy good with brotherhood / From sea to shining sea” in 1904, and the poem was republished in the Boston Evening Transcript. The poem wasn’t yet set to music, but by some accounts, as many as 75 song versions existed by 1900. Two years later, in 1895, a religious Boston weekly newspaper called The Congregationalist published the poem under the title “America.” Fittingly, it was published on July 4. The views were, and are, expansive-you can see Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Kansas from the mountain top on a clear day.īates later wrote in her diary that the view showed “the sea-like expanse of fertile country,” and that “all the wonder of America seemed displayed there.” Her experiences inspired her to write a poem called “Pikes Peak” before she left Colorado. Toward the end of her class, Bates took a wagon more than 14,000 feet up to the top of nearby Pikes Peak on the front range of the Rocky Mountains. The exploration didn’t stop once she arrived in Colorado. Her cross-country travels took her through much of the heartland in the Midwest, as well as the World’s Columbian Exposition happening in Chicago that year. In 1893, Bates, a professor at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, went to Colorado Springs to teach a summer class on Chaucer. The song promotes the idea of a bountiful country with spacious skies, amber waves of grain, purple mountains majesty, and a fruited plain.īut do you know which scenic lands inspired author Katharine Lee Bates to write the immediately popular lyrics? Or, for that matter, what Bates meant by “ alabaster cities”? The origin of “America the Beautiful” ![]() “America the Beautiful” isn’t the United States’s national anthem (that honor goes to “The Star-Spangled Banner”), but it’s arguably just as well loved.
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