Chris Stapleton’s Soulful, Bluesy National Anthem Performance Draws Tears From Players on Field

Chris Stapleton‘s turn at singing the National Anthem at Super Bowl LVII represented the third consecutive year in which a country artist has sung all or part of the pre-game song, following Mickey Guyton in 2022 and Eric Church doing it as a duet with R&B star Jazmine Sullivan the year before. But Stapleton confirmed what many of his fans already know — that he’s at least as much a classic blues singer as he is a country stylist.

Stapleton is the last singer to ever overtly milk a song for sentimentality, but it was either in spite of or because of his unusually gritty take on “The Star-Spangled Banner” that cameras were were able to cut to openly weepy reaction shots among the game’s participants. These included Eagles lineman Jason Kelce, who appeared to be fighting off tears, and coach Nick Sirianni, who was saving the fighting for the battlefield, just going into full spigot mode.

The sight of Stapleton standing alone at center field with nothing but a Fender Telecaster, a tiny mic-ed amp and a couple of monitors was a symbol of American individualism, right before a game (and probably a Rihanna performance) devoted much more to the idea of teamwork. As many superior anthems as have been delivered over the years, Stapleton’s delivery of it as something rugged and interior made for an inspired contrast to the sturm und drang with which it’s often delivered.

The other two musical performances before kickoff provided a real study in contrasts. Babyface was even less showy than Stapleton, if also less rugged, also accompanying himself on guitar — albeit a flag-emblazoned acoustic one, with a full, pre-recorded backing track — as he sang the least belt-y version of “America the Beautiful” in memory, going for a quiet-storm approach to patriotism.

Sheryl Lee Ralph, for her part, did not leave any lungpower behind in her highly demonstrative take on “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” which even had her marching in place at times as she belted what has come to be known as the Black national anthem. While Stapleton and Babyface wore black for the occasion, Ralph was the most elegantly and colorfully decked out performer in recent Super Bowl history, with a red train behind her on the white platform that presumably was not meant to deliberately convey any bias toward the Chiefs.

This marked the third year in a row that “Lift Every Voice” has been added to the pre-Bowl lineup for a musical triple play, although it had been a part of some NFL games for years prior to that. By now, it’s a solid, accepted tradition, although its presence seemed to come as a shock to some right-wing voices, who perhaps started paying more attention because of the game being on Fox — and the Black national anthem being played up as a controversy by the network’s website.

Conservative gadfly Kevin Sorbo called the performing of the song “racist” against white people, while Lauren Boebert tweeted, “America only has ONE NATIonAL ANTHEM. Why is the NFL trying to divide us by playing multiple!? Do football, not wokeness.” Presumably Boebert bears as much enmity against “America the Beautiful” for taking attention away from Frances Scott Key’s work and has just not gotten around to hating on that yet.

Whatever reviews Rihanna’s halftime performance gets, the pregame music came out as a win for most of non-troll America — not least of all because Stapleton is a uniter, not a divider, even when he’s making the National Anthem sound like it was born out of a great American Black music artform.

And for anyone who wonders where guitars ever went in the pop landscape… between the performances by Eric Church and H.E.R. in the recent past and Babyface and Stapleton now, it seems like, against all odds, they are destined to keep gravitating toward the Super Bowl every year.