The Super Bowl national anthem went from a fine duet to a complete mess

The NFL took a bold choice with the Super Bowl national anthem by having a duet with country music singer Eric Church and R&B singer Jazmine Sullivan. It started out fine, with each singer taking turns and showing their own spin on the Star Spangled Banner, then everything went off the rails towards the end.

The basic idea of a duet should be two singers supporting, and complementing each other. As hilariously on the nose as mixing country and R&B is, especially with the NFL’s half-hearted messages of healing and racial unity, this really was a pretty good anthem ... at first.

Instead of working together, the anthem turned into something you’d see at a dueling pianos bar at a beach boardwalk. Nothing meshed well together on the back end, and you’ve got to wonder why they went for this. It would have been so simple: Church plays guitar, Sullivan sings. That would have worked perfectly, as we saw during Sullivan’s verse. We absolutely did not need the two of them singing at the same time.

At least the patriotic pre-game entertaining wasn’t all bad. H.E.R played American The Beautiful, and absolutely killed it with one of the best performances of the song we’ve seen before the game.

H.E.R sang beautifully, played the hell out the guitar and made me feel something. The anthem just made me feel confused.