Brett Young sang the Star-Spangled Banner prior to the NHL All-Star Game on Saturday, and we know what you"re thinking:
There was an NHL All-Star Game on Sunday?!?
There"s still such a thing as the NHL?!?
Apparently, yes and yes. We"re as shocked as you are by both of these answers.
But the surprising existence of professional hockey isn"t the point right now.
Instead, the point is the existence of the following video.
It features the aforementioned country music artist possibly damaging his career permanently by utterly destroying his country"s theme song.
Following a perfectly strong rendition of the Canadian national anthem, Young steps up to the microphone and sounds like he"d rather be anywhere on the planet that center ice at that moment.
His version of this beloved song is slow and stilted. It lacks emotion of any kind.
It seems in certain places as if he"s unsure what the next lyric is.
As you can see, we aren"t the only people who thought these mean thoughts.
One Twitter user wrote that Young sang the anthem as if he was performing at the funeral, which is an apt assessment.
It felt like it took foooooorever for the song to finish, even though Young clocked in at one minute and 50 seconds, which is 10 seconds fewer than the over/under currently set for Pink at Super Bowl 52 this Sunday.
So the performance wasn"t actually that long.
It just felt that long.
So as the pressure turns to Pink and the most-watched Star-Spangled Banner of them all in a few days, take a couple moments below to watch Young totally butcher the famous track.
We"re sure he meant well.
We"re just also sure it didn"t turn out well.
(Young"s anthem starts around the 2:10 mark below.)
