"The Star Spangled Banner" is a charity single recorded by American singer Whitney Houston to raise funds for soldiers and families of those involved in the Persian Gulf War. It is a cover of the national anthem of the United States of America, written by Francis Scott Key and composed by John Stafford Smith and inspired by a rendition performed by Marvin Gaye at the 1983 NBA All-Star Game. The jazz and gospel arrangement for Houston's rendition was done by conductor John Clayton. The recording was produced by music coordinator Rickey Minor with all vocal arrangements credited to Houston. Considered the gold standard of all national anthem performances, it helped cement Houston’s status as a pop culture icon.
Mainly performed at American sports games, the song was performed by Houston at the original Tampa Stadium in Tampa Bay, Florida for Super Bowl XXV on January 27, 1991. Although Houston was singing live, she was singing into a dead microphone, and television viewers were hearing a non-live pre-recorded version of the anthem due to her musical director making her aware of the risks of performing live, including the sound of the crowd, jets flying overhead, and other such distractions from pregame activities.
Ten years later in 2001, the song made a commercial resurgence following the events of the September 11 attacks in New York after Houston reissued it as a single. It eventually made its biggest peak at number six on the Hot 100, becoming the only instance of a national anthem recording reaching the top ten and Houston's last top ten hit of her lifetime, also topping its sales chart. In addition, the song crossed over to other charts, reaching the adult contemporary chart in its initial 1991 release and the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart in its 2001 re-release where it reached the top 30. Its top 20 re-charting on the Hot 100 made Houston the first woman to re-chart the same song inside the top 20 twice.
Publications such as Rolling Stone, USA Today and Billboard have had the song either top or be placed in the top five of their all-time national anthem lists, either for the Super Bowl or in general. The televised performance's impact was comparable to that of Elvis Presley's 1950s performances on the Ed Sullivan Show. In some retrospectives, Houston was praised for making a "radical reclamation" of the anthem for black Americans with the performance being compared to Marian Anderson's performance of "My Country, 'Tis of Thee" at the Lincoln Memorial and also favorably comparing it to similar re-imagined renditions by Marvin Gaye and Jimi Hendrix.
Background
In November 1990, it was announced by the NFL that Whitney Houston would be the singer to perform "The Star-Spangled Banner" at the following January's Super Bowl XXV. Around this time, tension between the United States and Iraq over the control of Kuwait was growing. Back in August 1990, Iraq, governed by Saddam Hussein, invaded Kuwait and occupied the country within two days.
Within hours of the invasion, Kuwait and US delegations requested a meeting of the UN Security Council, which passed Resolution 660, condemning the invasion and demanding a withdrawal of Iraqi troops. Then, on November 29, 1990, the Security Council passed Resolution 678, which gave Iraq until January 15, 1991 to withdraw from Kuwait, and empowered states to use "all necessary means" to force Iraq out of Kuwait after the deadline.Resolution 678 (1990) قطعنامه ۶۷۸ (۱۹۹۰) Retrieved 21 July 2025
When Iraq refused, the United States sent troops flying over the Iraqi bases on January 17, dropping bombs, signaling the start of the Gulf War, a war that would last until February 28 when Hussein and his troops retreated from Kuwait, leading President George H. W. Bush to declare that Kuwait had been liberated from Iraq.
In the lead-up to the Super Bowl, which was to occur ten days after the first strikes, many Americans feared that Iraq would retaliate by attacking a major city in the United States, namely Tampa, Florida where the game was to be held. With organizers on edge, SWAT teams were sent to patrol the stadium. The Goodyear Blimp that would usually fly above the stadium during Super Bowl weekend was suspended and scheduled parties were postponed. Initially, Jim Steeg, then senior vice president of NFL special events, was not sure of having the national anthem played before the Super Bowl but President H. W. Bush insisted on them to keep up with the tradition of having the anthem played before the game.
Houston was initially sought after to perform the anthem at Super Bowl XXII but scheduling conflicts involving an important date for Houston at an Australian stadium during her Moment of Truth World Tour kept her from performing there. Eventually through Steeg's friend, Anthony Baldino, Houston and her management worked out plans for her to sing the national anthem at Super Bowl XXV.
Recording and inspiration
For the Super Bowl performance, it was decided that Houston would record her rendition of the song due to the NFL wanting to use the recording for safety measures for the televised live performance since F-16 fighter jets were gonna be used as well as their focus on the meter.
Houston picked her musical director Rickey Minor to produce the session with bassist John Clayton becoming the main arranger. Houston was a fan of Marvin Gaye's slower soul-arranged rendition of the national anthem at the 1983 NBA All-Star Game and decided to use the Gaye version as inspiration for her own version, telling Minor, "It wasn't rushed, he was able to take his time."
The Florida Orchestra was picked to provide musical accompaniment in the recording, led by conductor Jahja Ling, who after some apprehension about the slower, soulful rendition of the anthem by Clayton, eventually was able to successfully conduct the arrangement with the orchestra.
Because the song was originally arranged on a time signature of , Houston advised Clayton and Minor to slow it to a time signature, similar to Gaye's rendition as well as many soul and rhythm and blues recordings while additional arrangements by Clayton brought out jazz and gospel elements to the song. Houston's rendition of the anthem is set in common time and moves at 76 beats per minute.
Said Minor: "The original version is in time, which is more like a waltz... what we tried to do was to put it in meter... We wanted to give her a chance to phrase it in such a way that she would be able to take her time and really express the meaning." The time signature change gave Houston "more room inside each measure to nurture the notes." In addition, the pitch of the song, originally at B-flat, dropped to A-flat for Houston's version.
Minor stated that he sent the track to Houston but the singer never got to hear it, having been preoccupied with trying to secure her film role in The Bodyguard, to which she eventually succeeded after a screen test conducted by Kevin Costner. Houston recorded her vocals for the song after Minor played the song for her once in the studio. Minor claimed that Houston recorded her vocals in a single take, with an additional take on the same day. Minor later told people during a pre-Grammy event in 2023 that Houston's "unique and natural ability to sing and interpret music" helped to make her rendition stand out, saying "she had that instinct. She knew exactly what to do. You didn't have to tell her anything. She knew innately what to do, and that's the magic. Each time that she sang, it's different every single time, because she's singing from a deeper place — not from her head but from her heart. It was a bigger place."
Minor explained in 2022 why there were differences between the belting in the first verse and the softer crooning in the second verse, saying the first verse was "nice and strong", but that the second verse was created to “get more intimate, so that it can give you someplace to go because if you're just big, big, big the whole time, it doesn't give you a chance to breathe and doesn't give you a chance to bring the people in.”
During the final verse, Houston holds a note on the word "free" and then transitions into a two-note melismatic head vocal flourish, which would later draw much attention.
Cinque Henderson of The New Yorker wrote: As Houston’s voice approached the high note on the word “free,” she slowed for suspense and for air, then rang the E-flat above middle C like a bell. With the extra room Minor had given her, she held on to the note for three counts (the traditional score affords "free" only a single count, but [Marvin] Gaye had also lengthened it, whether Houston explicitly remembered that or not). And then, in the split-second relay circuit of choices that we know as instinct, Houston leapt off the back of that E and sent her voice soaring even higher, dragging out the word “free” with a two-note flourish she invented in the recording booth, just as the measure was about to close. It had the sensation of a frighteningly tight line being pulled even tighter. The world would follow.
In addition to the octave shift on the word "free", Houston sustains a note on the word "brave" that lasts around 12 seconds.
NFL's initial reaction to Houston's recording On January 17, according to Jim Steeg, NFL senior executives asked to hear the recording. A tape of it was sent to Buffalo, New York where the AFC Championship Game was played.
The following day, Steeg was told by the executives that the Houston version was "inappropriate" and "too slow and difficult to sing along with. Could I ask to have it redone." In addition, NFL executives worried that the rendition was "too 'flamboyant' for wartime".
Journalist Danyel Smith compared the situation to José Feliciano whose own slower, lengthier Latin jazz-arranged rendition at the 1968 MLB World Series was met with an initial negative response, with NFL officials fearing Houston would be met with the same negative reaction for her interpretation of the anthem.Zang, Dave. "Feliciano ignited a star-spangled controversy." Article in The Sporting News on October 25, 1993.Chass, Murray. "When the Pitchers Needed Less Rest In the Postseason." Article in The New York Times on October 22, 2006.
Similarly, both Gaye and American rock musician Jimi Hendrix were also heavily criticized for their own reinterpretations of the anthem in their respective performances.
Rickey Minor explained in 2022: "The NFL didn't want it, CBS didn't want it, they actually had me record a standard B-flat version for safety. They said this is the national anthem, its sacrilegious to touch it."
According to Steeg, he called Houston's manager and father John Houston Jr. to go over the recording. As Steeg recalled, the conversation was brief: "There would be no rerecording." Steeg and the NFL executives eventually decided to let Houston's recording stand.
The Super Bowl XXV performance
Houston arrived at Tampa Stadium on January 25, 1991, briefly rehearsing the performance with the Florida Orchestra before heading off to St. Petersburg, where she gave a concert at the Bayfront Center on January 26, previewing for fans her then-upcoming tour. A day later, on January 27, Houston took to the field where in front of an audience of 73,818 in attendance, she performed the national anthem with Ling and the Florida Orchestra backing her.
Initially, Houston was to wear a black cocktail dress for the event but on the day of her arrival to the stadium, temperatures in Tampa had cooled. Houston changed her mind on wearing the dress and decided on wearing a white Le Coq Sportif tracksuit with a matching white headband and red and white Nike Cortez sneakers as part of her performance instead.