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" If you can set aside whatever emotional attachment you have to &amp;quot;The Star-Spangled Banner,&amp;quot; it&amp;#039;s hard to argue that it&amp;#039;s anything other than a terrible choice for a national anthem. From a musical standpoint, it&amp;#039;s awful \u2014 the tune was originally the official song of a British social club comprised of amateur musicians, and its melody sprawls over a one-and-a-half octave range that most singers find intensely hard to handle. (Why a bunch of non-professionals would choose such a challenging song as their signature is a complete mystery. Meetings of the Anacreontic Society were probably tough on the ears, especially after a few rounds of drinks.) And the lyrics are a jumble of disconnected images set in an ostentatious form of archaic English so densely tangled as to be almost impenetrable, and once you do figure it out, you realize that it&amp;#039;s a whole bunch of words about a guy looking at a flag. There&amp;#039;s a reason why every year there&amp;#039;s at least one game-opening rendition of the national anthem so bad that it makes the evening news, and that&amp;#039;s because objectively considered it is a godawful song with lyrics so boring that the average person can&amp;#039;t even make it through the first verse without screwing up. (And there are three more verses that barely anyone even knows exist.) Until recently, &amp;quot;The Star-Spangled Banner&amp;quot; was one of those vestiges of colonial American culture, like the imperial system of measurement and the bicameral legislature, that were so deeply woven into the fabric of our national character that changing it seemed impossible despite the number of vastly better options out there. But that may have changed with the introduction of awhitehouse.gov petition to officially designate R. Kelly&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;Ignition (Remix)&amp;quot; as the new national anthem.      The advantages that &amp;quot;Ignition (Remix)&amp;quot; has over &amp;quot;The Star-Spangled Banner&amp;quot; are numerous. For one, it&amp;#039;s a song that people enjoy singing and actually know all of the words to, as anyone who&amp;#039;s been to a wedding reception, amateur DJ night, karaoke bar, or strip club in the decade since it was released is already well aware. And adopting &amp;quot;Ignition (Remix)&amp;quot; as our national anthem could do wonders for improving America&amp;#039;s standing in the international community. The single made the charts in the UK, Sweden, Germany, France, Australia, Ireland, and New Zealand, and R. Kelly&amp;#039;s got an Ali-like African fanbase, so when Americans win at the Olympics, they&amp;#039;ll go to the rostrum in their medal ceremonies to the accompaniment of a song the whole world will bump along to. Yes, there are some arguments to be made against the plan. As someone with an established history of taking advantage of underage girls and, well, peeing on them, R. Kelly may not be the person Americans want representing them musically. And that&amp;#039;s understandable. Then again, Francis Scott Key spent much of his career as a lawyer viciously attacking anti-slavery activists, so he&amp;#039;s not exactly a top-shelf human being either. There&amp;#039;s also the fact that the lyrics to &amp;quot;Ignition (Remix)&amp;quot; aren&amp;#039;t about America&amp;#039;s national character, or at least not directly, but this could actually be an advantage. Right now our country&amp;#039;s walk-on song in the global arena is an ode to a violently destructive encounter between nations, and after a century&amp;#039;s worth of aggressive military presence around the world, our image could use a facelift. Rebranding ourselves as the international community&amp;#039;s cool guy who knows where the after-party is doesn&amp;#039;t seem like a bad idea. As of this writing, the petition has 7,180 out of the 100,000 signatures it needs in order to receive an official response from the White House. There are well over 100,000 people in America who know that &amp;quot;Ignition (Remix)&amp;quot; is the national anthem that our country deserves. The White House has been known to dismiss petitions it considers jokes, like the one to fund an American Death Star, but if we can get 100,000 signatures \u2014 or better yet 500,000 \u2014 they&amp;#039;ll know that we&amp;#039;re deadly serious. The time is now. America can, should, must, and will make &amp;quot;Ignition (Remix)&amp;quot; our national anthem.      -- Miles Raymer is a music writer based in New York City who has contributed to the Chicago Reader, Vice, Pitchfork, and others. Follow The Culture Blog on RSS and on Twitter at @ESQCulture. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/music/a20370/r-kelly-national-anthem-petition-15184700/>