“The Star-Spangled Banner,” our country’s national anthem, is a famously hard song to sing. Why is that? I don’t know. I’m not a music theorist; I just pay attention to when everyone starts applauding like crazy whenever someone sings the part that goes, “O’er the land of the free(eeeeeeeee).” Thankfully, Charlie Puth — a.k.a. “Professor Puth,” as he calls himself whenever he’s explaining music stuff on Instagram — graciously explains why and how in a November 30 video announcing his Super Bowl LX gig.
“Most hard-to-sing songs span just one octave range, like a low D to a high D,” Puth displays on a whiteboard, providing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and “Closing Time” as relevant examples. “The Star-Spangled Banner,” however, not only jumps up an octave range but also goes five notes further to a very high A. It’s okay if this doesn’t make a lot of sense to you, because it doesn’t make a lot of sense to the football players that Puth is lecturing in his video either. The only person who really has to know all this information is Puth himself, who will join Brandi Carlile (singing “America the Beautiful”) and Coco Jones (singing “Lift Every Voice and Sing”) in the Super Bowl pregame show ahead of Bad Bunny’s halftime performance. 2026 is shaping up to be a big year for Professor Puth, with his new album, Whatever’s Clever, out in March, as well as his forthcoming first baby with his wife, Brooke Sansone. If his short lecture on “The Star-Spangled Banner” is any indication, Puth is ready for the test.
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