Photo: Photo by Thearon W. Henderson
Charlie Puth understood that if you want to sing the national anthem at the Super Bowl, you don’t just wait to be asked to sing the national anthem at the Super Bowl. Sometimes you have to take matters into your own hands. Puth submitted a demo to Roc Nation earlier this year, eager to sing what he called the “hardest song ever written.” Puth seemed, perhaps, to be realizing that this was the hardest song ever written in real time as the camera zoomed in on him and his keyboard out on the field on February 8. Dressed in what were probably very expensive versions of normal-looking clothes (a leather jacket, a collared shirt, a tie, and jeans) and sporting his signature forehead curl, Puth gave the camera a nervous smile and launched into “The Star-Spangled Banner” by way of some jazzy little notes on his keyboard. “I’ll never claim to be as good of a singer as Whitney Houston ever was,” he tweeted when his performance was announced last December. “But I assure you we’re putting a really special arrangement together- in D major. It’ll be one of my best vocal performances.” It’s always immediately nerve-racking the second it becomes clear that someone is going to put “their spin” on a song so famous, but Puth’s rendition of the national anthem was soulful and gentle. When the song ended, Puth stepped back from his keyboard and looked up, clearly overwhelmed, at the crowd and the sky. It might be the hardest song ever written, but he made it look easy.
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