It’s one of the most stirring and glorious melodies ever sung – and it can be one of the easiest tunes to sing badly.
But did you know that our national anthem, “The Star-Spangled Banner,” started out as an English club song? And it has officially been the national anthem for less than a century?
Mark Clague is a musicologist with the University of Michigan. He’s been working on a project, “Poets and Patriots: A Tuneful History of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’”
Today, he shared some of that history with us.
* Listen to the full interview above.
* This segment originally aired on February 12, 2014.
