We all remember Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction during Super Bowl XXXVIII in 2004. Although everyone has moved on, the incident is still alluded to in the occasional joke. The talk of this year’s Super Bowl XLV was recording artist Christina’s Aguilera’s screw-up of the national anthem. Within the hour, articles were posted all over the web, throwing the singer under the bus.
Why does everyone feel the need to blow up a performer’s mistakes? The “Gotcha!” culture we have created forces us to point our finger at every screw-up a celebrity makes, as well as the need to single-out everyone else’s mistakes. Be it a large scandal or a mere fumble of words, our society is waiting at the ready to catch it and blow it up.
This “Gotcha!” culture we have surrounded ourselves with is purely pessimistic. It focuses on the negative aspects of what famous people do wrong, or the horrible things done by anyone in general. Though it would be unconventional to reference an article dating back to 1899, the New York Times wrote that out of seventy years of a person’s life, the average person spent about a year and five and a half months gossiping. It would seem safe to assume that one hundred twelve years later, gossip consumes a much larger portion of people’s lives. A more recent statistic states that gossip consumes 55% of men’s conversation time and 67% of women’s conversation time. Rather than remember what it actually takes to become famous, let alone perform on stage in front of a multitude of people, society points at the mistakes. Why? …because we can, and because it gives us something to talk about.
Although standards have gradually changed, it used to take natural talent to become a performer. Years ago we did not have the advanced technology to alter music or voices the way we have today. It used to be extremely difficult to get signed to a record label. Today, if you can write a song, however you sound, it can be made to sound a thousand times better when sound equipment comes into play.
For about twenty years, Christina Aguilera has always been well-known for not only her beautiful sound, but the high-level of strength in her voice. Recorded or live, she has forever blown audiences away with her power. It would not come as a surprise that a star of her capacity would be asked to sing at such an event as the Super Bowl.
Rather than appreciate Christina Aguilera’s experience, along with the courage it takes to perform in front of thousands of people, we chose to point out her forgetting the words. R&B artist Macy Gray was even booed for her off-key performance of the Star-Spangled Banner at the Super Bowl in 2001. Though it is our nation’s anthem, a song every American learns the words to at some point or another, it does not leave a performer any less room to mess up.
A song is a song. Performers have their bad days, just like the rest of us. Performers can even mess up their own music. Everyone messes up the words to any song at some point or another. The nervousness that comes along with having to perform a song that is meant to create a passionate moment of patriotism is most likely insurmountable. As humans we make all kinds of mistakes, because at the end of the day, no one is perfect.
