Anthem Singer Redeems Herself

ByABC News via logo
April 24, 2005, 8:24 AM

April 24, 2004 — -- Canadian singer Caroline Marcil had a rough night at a Canada-USA hockey game on Friday.

She was invited to sing "The Star Spangled Banner," but forgot the lyrics not once, but twice.

"It was a lot of things together, the emotion, the stress," she said on "Good Morning America" Weekend.

She left to get the lyrics and when she returned to the ice, took an embarrassing tumble.

When the audience booed, "that made me completely blank. I didn't know what I was singing," she said.

But Marcil, 24, flew in from Montreal to appear on "Good Morning America" to redeem herself, and she sang the American national anthem flawlessly.

Marcil, whose first language is French, isn't alone in not knowing the words to the song. A recent study found 61 percent of Americans don't know the lyrics to "The Star Spangled Banner."

If you need a refresher, the lyrics are below.

Lyrics to "The Star Spangled Banner"

O say, can you see, by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
O say does that star spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free, and the home of the brave?