Octane-fuelled octave and a half

«That it is sung to a tune more suited either to a drunken karaoke night in downtown Tokyo, or perhaps the finale to a Verdi opera as a fat lady dies of consumption, is not the point. It is not the fault of the great American public that their anthem has an octane-fuelled octave and a half to it. It is regularly mangled at baseball, basketball and 'football' games by someone who won a Little League competition the year before and gets to destroy it by pitching their voice too high or too low. It is such a complex mix of chord changes that if you start wrong, you will finish wrong.»

Worth dying for, Tim Marshall