Try Not to Laugh: The Worst National Anthem Fails 

"shes modulating more than shostakovich" -twoset 2021

“She is Modulating” is a very nice way of saying she has no pitch

Every other country: lets just play an instrumental version and let the audience sing it together. America: which B-list celebrity is available to butcher our anthem?

Classical soprano here. The United States national anthem (The Star Spangled Banner) is not only just inherently difficult in composition (particularly when you get to "and the rocket's red glare" where everyone tends to mess up lol) but it was not meant to be belted. Francis Scott Key wrote it in 1814, meaning our modern belting style was not a "thing" yet, therefore it was meant to be sung in classical, or what we call "legit" voice. Though not the original key, nowadays it's typically performed in Bb major, so the highest note you'd be attempting to belt is an F5. That is NOT an easy note to belt! Once you get to that point on the staff, singers should be switching into what's called "head voice" to keep themselves on pitch. Belting is typically done in middle and chest voice on lower notes. If you try to take your middle voice belting sound into head voice range, chances are you're going to fall flat or just sound like you're screaming. (People can talk about "mixing" all day, but it's not any easier of a technique) It's one of those technical things that's difficult to put into layman's terms. Think of it this way: Have you ever tried to sing "Let it Go" from Frozen? The top note Idina Menzel sings there at the end is an Eb5. So you're trying to belt a half step higher than that in the US national anthem lol. Please just don't. ESPECIALLY don't try to make some poor person sing a piece with so many skips a cappella. That piece requires a good ear. Hire classical sopranos/tenors or use military/marching band lol. Case in point: The Star Spangled Banner is not a pop song, nor musical theatre. Don't treat it like one, or you'll be immortalized on reaction RU-vid lol.

As a wise friend once said, “You can’t sexy up the national anthem.”

That woman at the GOP CPAC wasn't just off key, she lost the key and got locked out of her house.

I remember when Fergie tortured the USA anthem… it was extremely painful to hear & to bear, for real. She had to make a public apology afterwards lmao 🤣

The awful thing about the NBA one is that she practiced that. She heard herself sing it, and still thought "yeah, this is a good idea"

“Is this anthem (US) just that difficult?” The US national anthem is basically a centuries-long prank on soloists

LMAO PUTINS FACE WHEN SAUDI ARABIA PLAYED RUSSIAS NATIONAL ANTHEM

5:04 that Chinese national anthem 5:40 “it wasn’t that bad” As someone in Hong Kong, I can tell you they messed up the Chinese national anthem BIG TIME.

The US national anthem is especially notorious for getting wrong when singing live. It has pitch variations of more than two octaves and singers are usually advised to start with a low key. Also, in the expression "in the land of the free", you switch quickly from an open vowel sound to a closed vowel sound which is really difficult to pull off.

Americans: can't sing the national anthem in tune standing still Canadian: sings in tune while ice skating, face plants, continues to sing in tune

I feel bad for the ice skating guy. You can’t see anything further than a foot in front of you under a spotlight. They did him so dirty. I guarantee that carpet wasn’t there in rehearsals and whoever was in charge threw it down for some special guest while that guy was in some green room waiting for his performance.

I legitimately felt my jaw drop to the floor when the CPAC girl switched keys ten times in two verses

I definitely laughed. Putin can't seem to get a break. And I'm proud of the Canadian anthem guy. But Fergie...this was actually my first time hearing her rendition of the "Star-Spangled Banner." And while I'm not American, I felt genuine pain for the Americans listening to this.

Noobs: she's out of tune Pros: she's modulating more than Shostakovich

“This is what happens when you defund the arts” That person, whoever you are, you’re spitting facts

I love seeing the expressions of the politicians when their anthems get messed up by foreign bands. They all look like they're going "bruuuuuh" inside

I have played in a military orchestra and sometimes you get out of the bus, you tune up and then you wait for 15 min in the sun and especially the brass heaths up and you start and EVERYONE is out of tune and everyone is trying to compensate, but as you play your breath cools down the instrument and it’s all different for everyone. My two worse extreme performance was an +42C for around an hour in total and at -27C for around 4 hours going in and out every 20 min for around 20min. If you put musiciens through this and also their instruments for years, what do you expect. That’s why we had concerts once a year so we can just care about the music…

The entire problem with Fergie's national anthem can be summed up with: a non-jazz singer trying to sing a jazz rendition of a non-jazz song. It was a disaster waiting to happen. I can imagine a great jazz singer killing on that arrangement though.

The Canada guy was the best singer. Even after he tripped.

As a Chinese, I can proof they sang the china nation song almost all wrong

I was wearing headphones on full volumes on the American anthem 😢

This should be a try not to cringe challenge, not a try not to laugh challenge.

YESSS the canadian anthem (ice skater guy) was like the only one that's not totally out of tune lmao, way to represent my man

She is modulating more than Shostakovich!!! 🤣🤣🤣🤣 I have taught elementary music and middle school orchestra since 2008. I am good at not laughing at musicians not being perfect. That line was hilarious

Oh my god this video brought back a hidden memory of mine. Ok so once in grade 3, (I was doing online school) there was this huge assembly like I'm talking 700 students + teachers in 1 call and at the start of the assembly they needed a person to sing O Canada. Only 2 people volunteered to sing. The day before the performance, my parents found out that someone needed to sing for the assembly, and forced me to volunteer, I had not told them about it because I was terrified myself to sing in front of that many people but I did anyway. When the 2 previous students found out that I was volunteering they dropped out instantly, so I had no choice but to proceed now. On the day of the call I was terrified, once everyone had joined the call I had to sing. I was so friggin nervous that my voice sounded so crappy and I'm still embarrassed of it to this day. The worst part was, one of the teachers recorded it, and sent it to my parents so they could remind me every once in a while of "How good" my singing was, every family reunion/holiday they played that recording in front of everyone and I would just run into my room and start crying. It upsets me because I know I could have done better.

You can tell that TwoSet doesn’t have much experience with wind bands. They were WAAAAY too kind.

After looking up the American anthem, I was like “Seriously America, why did you pick such a hard song to be your national anthem? How normal people can hit such random high notes?”

In case this hasn't yet been mentioned regarding the national anthem chick changing key a bunch (2:00). People modulate unintentionally all the time when singing, and get back to the "original" key off and on, but not for the reasons one might think. Singers memorize certain pitches for certain songs and some singers really can't sing those certain phrases in any other key. So if they go off the rails off-pitch in one verse, they might end up singing in multiple different keys, due to nervousness mixing with that vocal muscle memory (As TwoSet said, practice practice practice is what is necessary to overcome that problem. A singer needs to try to memorize the pitch vibrations and muscle feelings of all the pitches throughout the whole song.) 😅

6:18 free vacation in siberia

She is like "If you can sing slowly, you can sing loudly"

In brazil we don't usually have a person to sing, we all do it together. But the problem is that the WHOLE NATION struggles in one specific verse of the anthem so it aways turns out kinda bad

Well.....I LOVE BOTH OF YOU ! I've heard your playlist and i fell in love with it ! I started playing the violin some days before and I wouldn't decide it if I haven't watched you ! Your humour , your musicality is just WOW!!! Greetings from Greece !!!♥️♥️♥️🇬🇷🇬🇷🇬🇷🎻🎻🎻

‏‪0:27‬‏ god is NOT saving the queen with this one

Fergie's NBA All-Star anthem singing was so bad the players looked like they were playing YLYL.

That girl at CPAC had so many keys she must be a janitor!

6:47 As a violinist and pretty much musically trained most of my life, that moment irritated me SO MUCH-

A veteran BBC sound technician who did outside broadcasts said he dreaded working on events like the Trooping of the Colour, a big military parade involving lots of military bands. He pointed out that they're moving, that a military band covers a lot of space, and you have to be so careful where you put your mikes (and indeed, how many mikes?) and that mixing the sound - live broadcast for TV - means pinpoint precision. Otherwise a mike might pick up, for instance, only drums with the rest of the musicians being drowned by them; or else there's too much trombone and not enough woodwind which gets drowned out by the brass, and you ends up with something as utterly disjointed as some of the stuff featuring in this video. That might not have been the fault of the musicians but of the techs recording them.

National anthems are a heartfelt, patriotic, musical homage to a country, not... sexy time.

As a vocalist who’s sung the USA’s national anthem many times, I can tell you: Yes, it’s hard to sing. You really have to have great pitch, breath support, and tonal control. Practice, practice, practice ❤️

Singer: *and the rocket's red glaaaare* Eddy: quacks in disapproval

4:51 - why the hell do they agree for you to just iceskate on the ice and then they just put the carpet in the middle of it.

4:31 that's not a fail, that's one of the greatest wins of all time. Dude does a faceplant mid song, gets up, skates it off, and finishes the performance like a boss.

Singing US National Anthem Fergie: sing it in *_c u r s i v e_* way

Literally the US anthem’s “Rockets red glare” is so hard for sum reason🤣 8:03 tho oh yeah Brett’s face on the thumbnail 🤣

There was this guy in 1994 who sang Oh Canada in Las Vegas....but completely changed the melody and words....

Putin is like: "Ivan, get me the nukes"

I love how the guy who was skating kept singing. THAT IS A PERFORMANCE

About the standards for military bands... they are pretty good! I mean... they have sargeants specialized in music serving in the military. As someone who studied in a military-associated engineering school, I'm pretty sure the band was the only functional piece of military in the whole base in which I lived. They low key rocked, though. Their repertoire would range from military marchs to soccer team anthems and popular samba and bossa nova tunes. I mean, we would sing our random university chant and the band would in-promptu accompany us at any time. That was kind of impressive!

The Star Spangled Banner isn’t even actually that difficult. We have to play it for marching band every once and a while, and somehow my section is always unprepared. Sometimes half of us don’t have our music, sometimes we can’t agree on whether to have our concert baritones or marching baritones. One time there were three of us, including myself. Only one of us had a lyre. I had my concert baritone and just held my music. Another girl with a marching baritone DUCT TAPED it to her bell. The last girl had a concert baritone and lyre, but had lost her music and printed off a completely different arrangement of the song from Google. We were in middle school, but that is my funniest memory of marching band.

The Fergie national anthem is a perfect example of interpreting a song without ever understanding the meaning behind it

I didn't laugh. I just watched in horror. ... Until I saw Putin's patient yet suffering face for the second time. Man, this guy hears a lot of bad anthems.

Anyone else watching this one year later and thinking how much they have improved with their videos

Okay, American here: LET US SING OUR OWN DARN ANTHEM. Why do they always get a soloist up there, messing with it, showing off, wobbling her voice all over? I have never, in my entire life - and that is not hyperbole - heard it done well when they get a soloist to sing it at an event, whether it's a high school kid who's been chosen for the honour, who inevitably gets an attack of nerves in the middle of it, or some famous person, thinking she has to make it sound unique and fancy so that everyone knows she's the one singing it. How are we supposed to join in when they're butchering our anthem? It's our anthem, and the crowd wants to sing it too, and a lot of us know the harmony, if someone would only sing the melody properly. It's not that hard to sing, if the person who leads it stays on key and resists the temptation to make the moment all about them. Or, better yet, just give us accompaniment, and you will hear a large crowd of people who collectively are way more on tune than any of these soloists.

Singing Skating Man: Starts singing again while getting back up. The audience: *Liked that*

I have fallen like that on the ice, and it not only really bruises your knees an arms, it kind of takes the wind out of you. I'm impressed he not only kept hold of the mic (audio techs probably sighed with relief, mic drops are the worst), but that he got back up and kept singing AND skating. Like, damn. I'm just impressed. Also, yes. When there are spotlights on the ice, it can actually be really hard to see. Not just because the rest of the rink is dark, but because the light reflects off the ice very strongly. Between the light and dark extremes, it can be really difficult to parse your surroundings. Worse yet, it's possible they didn't bother rolling the carpets out in rehearsal, so he wouldn't have had a good idea of where they were beforehand. Geeze, what a champ.

The US National Anthem isn't easy to sing because it has a huge range compared to most songs. The song covers a twelfth between its lowest and highest note, and that means that singers have to be more careful how high they start than for pieces with smaller ranges. Inexperienced singers are likely not to give themselves room for the high notes near the end of the song.

The fact that he was in tune even after he fell like-

Hell yeah. Try not to laugh is back.

German Anthem being played horribly. Joseph Haydn: angry noises

lol i laughed and cringed. Every time. Especially Russia‘s. How van your mess up such a good anthem?

the funniest fail imo was at a baseball game when they asked everyone to stand for the US national anthem and then an explicit rap song started playing instead. they cut it off right away ofc but the shocked, collective gasp that rose from the crowd was glorious

The actual “try not to laugh challenge” is for the people listening the anthem

The lady who kept modulating: my aural skills professor put that on the dictation portion of the final as a joke, but most of us students actually notated it, very painstakingly.

oh my god i had never in my life heard the fergie version of the national anthem

As a Canadian I remember when this happened and everyone was so impressed with him and his singing

I think it's a worldwide joke to royally screw up the Russian national anthem now. And we Americans are very good at screwing up our own :)

The problem with all these versions of Star Spangled Banner is they all try to emulate Whitney Houston's versions, and that is something that no singer should ever put themselves against, they will always be inferior!

I used to be the vocalist for our high school jazz band. I also had to lead us, sometimes acapella, sometimes with a pianist, for the national anthem every Monday our school assembly (Australian anthem) and for our school song (we had a terrible school song). Every now and again I'd subtly sing the student 'modified' school song which was a tiny bit spicier to alleviate the monotony. I hated it, but other students appreciated having a guide so I was never ridiculed for it. It would suck to have immortalized public fails like this (except the skater's was a definite win).

Plot twist: The one who sang the Star Spangled Banner is a music theorist. She testing the people on the tonal center of her rendition.

Speaking as an American Soprano: If you want to belt the national anthem... BELT IT IN YOUR MIXED VOICE. NOT YOUR CHEST. Thank you and happy singing

I must say, that national anthem was not quite 'fergalicious'.

As someone who has had to perform our US National anthem at many big events, it's not easy. You have to have amazing pitch and breath control. But God damn...

It reminds me one of the biggest failure I've ever seen in my school orchestra. One day, we needed to play national anthem in front of the whole school. And somehow, all of the trumpets were just absents. Yes, all of the six trumpets were absents. The first part of my national anthem's melody is played by flutes, so even though the first one minute was weird (since there's no trumpets), it's still ...... understandable. However, when we went into the second part, which melody should be played by the trumpets, it's just formally turned into a big speechless disaster. It's really hard to describe. There's no melody going on, only harmony played by rest of us, tubas and trombones, occasionally flutes. I think the whole school just frozen and wished we'd just used the tape.

I wish they'd sing "The Star-Spangled Banner" straight, because those pop/soul versions are nearly always embarrassing. It's the national anthem being sung at a public event, after all, not a school pageant.

You guys missed one: A band played the wrong national anthem at a function hosting a diplomat from China. The host country formerly had years of diplomatic relations with Taiwan, but the leader of the host country wasn't satisfied with the relationship so he dumped Taiwan and hooked up with China. Evidently they neglected to update the band with the music for China's anthem so they just absent-mindedly followed their habit and played the Taiwanese anthem. It was even on the BBC. lol.

8:15 people who use auto tune trying to actually sing

I’m trying not to laugh while completely laughing

When I was 15 years old, I played 2nd trumpet in a band. On arrival at our concert at the church they told me that the 1st trumpet was not there, he was sick. So I suddenly had to play 1st trumpet, unprepared. The stupid thing was: The first trumpet had to play a song for about 1 minute all alone without any accompaniment from other instruments, in honor of deceased soldiers of world war 1... My grandfather was sitting in the back of the church. I played terribly, devastated with stress, the song didn't even resemble the original. After the concert, I heard my grandfather say that they should have shot that trumpeter in the war, instead of our soldiers. He never knew it was me.

As sb who knows the Chinese national anthem (05:04), it IS massively hilarious, somewhere in the middle the key just changed, the tempo is a mess, the entire band is lost and just faded away in the end... Gotta give it up for the trumpet though, stayed strong throughout and is *actually* on beat and played correctly despite the utter chaos

3:25 she should be a jazz singer bc she was wayyyyyyy out of tune so many wrong notes

5:09 Everyone in this frame, from Wang Huning to the guy in the left hand corner, looks like they're seriously considering the nuclear option

As a vocal teacher I can objectively say that yes, the US Anthem is difficult, but no, it is not THAT difficult. The biggest mistake people make (aside from not being able to stay in tune when a capella) is trying to sing the whole thing in chest voice. The song changes registers, so the singer must as well. Also, people just try to show off, which never ends well. Unless you're Whitney Houston. As a Canadian, I'd prefer to sing the US Anthem; it's much more interesting.

*”Modulating more than Shostakovich”* _- Eddy Chen, 2021_ i’m wheezing

That woman trying to sing the national anthem for USA was PAINFUL and disgusting! She didn’t honor the county at ALL! 💩👎🏻

In this "Try not to laugh" challenge, I laughed while cringing at virtually every one of the fails. The skating singer was my hero. Poor world leaders, having to listen to auditory torture and pretend everything is fine. I, as an American choral singer (mezzo soprano) who regularly practices her singing and has sung solos, have some strong opinions about how the singers of my country's national anthem could have performed it well. They can be summed up like this: practice a lot, listen to other people's good covers of the song often to get the music in your ears, print out and use sheet music, think about the real meaning of the song and convey that instead of focusing on your image, don't overcomplicate the song, and use tall, Italian vowels (AH, EH, EE, OH, OO). Singing in English can be hard at times, even for native English speakers; don't make it harder by switching vowels when you don't have to, preventing native English speakers from understanding you. Oh, and breathe into your belly between musical phrases, NOT during them. Shallow breathing is only fine when you're not singing. Okay, that's it.

I'm very proud that my country's appearance (Canada) was someone being legit AF and just absolutely winning.

Fergie's display was so embarrassing. Singing the National Anthem is not the moment for "self expression".

War is NOT OK! … but… when I hear this, I can understand some people starting wars. 🙈

7:28 why did they have to make it jazzy?

the US anthem really was like “nah lemme be a virtuoso piece”

The USA anthem is a very good example of what NOT to do when writing an anthem. An anthem should be easy to sing by a large group of people, because it's something for that group of people, that represents them. Although the USA's anthem is a beautiful song, it's a very poor anthem. I've always found it weird that it's the one person singing, anthems are meant to be sang by everyone, plus you need an actually good singer to pull it off circling back to the first point.

Like, this is what happens when you don’t practice 40 hours a day

I am proud to be canadian after seeing my dude trip and keep singing what a champ

Fun fact: Most places if you apply to sing the national anthem of America, will SPECIFICALLY ask you to just sing the “and the rockets red glare” section because it is the hardest part and where most performers fuck it up. Pass that, and you’re gold.

What they said about being the "main character" is so on point. Fergie was there to sing a song, she should've focused on doing her job and not trying to be the star of someone else's show. People were watching for the basketball, not for her ego.

2:00 This young woman is attractive and has a pleasant & unique tone to her voice. It's very unfortunaate that she can't sing accapella without changing the key of the song several times....sometimes within the same phrase. I'm wondering if she had ever pacticed without accompaniment? It makes me wonder if she can stay on key and pitch if she has accompaniment? Because, (I'm guessing), if she can, she probably would be pleasant to listen to....

Dude, this was uploaded on my birthday.