“The Star-Spangled Banner”

The third verse is, of course, not even part of the United States’ national anthem, despite how much scrutiny it has received. Decades before Hoover signed that bill, teachers had begun asking for a standardized version of the song that their students might sing. Preempting explicit-lyrics warnings by 80 years, the National Education Association dropped the third verse in 1912; this bowdlerized text soon led to the “Service Version,” the sheet music that established the sound you imagine when you now think of “The Star-Spangled Banner” performed in an official American capacity, especially at military functions.

This codified rendition is a strange seesaw of a song, its constant toggle between quick rests and rising harmonies producing the seasick sensation of moving without actually going anywhere, of bobbing up and down in place. The song is strophic, so that all the verses adhere to the same music. It is a minor blessing, then, that the second, fourth, and (of course) third verses are so rarely performed in public; five minutes of “The Star-Spangled Banner” start to feel like being locked in some cheap state fair’s funhouse.

Dropping the third verse also codified something that was, is, and always should be crucial to “The Star-Spangled Banner” as a national anthem, perhaps its greatest strength: It is flexible. Not long after it was written, a Texas teacher translated it into German, his native tongue. The move became a boon for hundreds of thousands of German-Americans in the Union Army during the Civil War, where the song began to emerge as the de facto national anthem. People rewrote it to decry the Confederacy, to celebrate some dead hero. It was not static.

To wit, Clague has compiled nearly 600 variations on “The Star-Spangled Banner,” a number that continues to grow. Some have become political tools, used to advocate for the rights of those sometimes denigrated as outside of the American experience. There’s an Ojibwe version older than the Emancipation Proclamation that chronicles indigenous battles with alien invaders called Americans; a star-studded Spanish-language version, “Nuestro Himno,” arrived in April 2006, as immigration reemerged as an extreme flashpoint.

There is Pitbull, shouting “Ya! Es tiempo de romper las cadenas” toward the end, telling everyone within earshot to break their chains, to fight. George W.

Bush used this moment to suggest people learn English, not to reiterate the idea of American inclusivity.

By dint of the melody that Key borrowed, “The Star-Spangled Banner” has always been an exclusionary song. Written just before the colonies went to war for independence, “The Anacreontic Song” was the anthem for a London social club that specialized in music, named for a Greek lyricist who excelled in songs about sex and booze. With six long verses and a melodic structure that used very high notes to emphasize dramatic moments, it wasn’t intended for the entire group to sing. It was meant for a talented soloist, someone who could persevere wow. “It was composed to enable the exceptional singer to impress,” writes Clague.