Rachel Platten Recounts ‘Embarrassing’ National Anthem Blunder
Rachel Platten experienced a singer's worst nightmare Saturday (April 14) when she forgot the words to the National Anthem at a NWSL soccer game at Rio Tinto Stadium in Sandy, Utah, and had to restart twice. And now, she's telling People that while the moment was uniquely horrible, it's also taught her some valuable lessons.
“I feel really embarrassed, honestly. I’m having a hard time forgiving myself, but I’m working on it. It was incredibly, incredibly embarrassing,” she said. “I’ve been trying to retrace steps of what happened...it has just been hanging over me.”
Platten said the song carries a particular pressure that she doesn't necessarily feel while performing other tracks.
“I was so nervous going into it," she said. "The anthem is such a big deal; it’s probably the most important song for our country. I always get nervous because it means so much because it is so powerful. I always want to do it justice, do a good job and give people the exact version they expect and they want."
Platten added that — considering she's performed the National Anthem without error — the flub is particularly frustrating.
“I have done it a bunch of times, but I stepped in front of the people and I felt the expectation. I was ready to open up and do it, and my mind just went blank,” she said. “I was trying to explain it to my husband: It was like a test that you know all the material to, you study so much and you get in there, and your mind doesn’t cooperate.”
Still, that she was able to complete the song after the blunder is something she can be proud of, she added, and remembered telling herself: “‘What I’m not going to do is run away. I really want to run out of the stadium right now, but I’m not going to do that. I’m going to finish this song.'”
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