Nelly Furtado, Ne-Yo sing National Anthems at NBA All-Star Game (video)

The 2016 NBA All-Star aired on TNT from Toronto on Sunday night, and just as you would expect from the internet, there were many strong reactions that came about as a result.

What is interesting is that the majority of them have nothing to do with Ne-Yo’s performance of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” since typically the majority of headlines comes when someone botched the National Anthem in America. (Just look at the sort of reviews that Christina Aguilera got for her performance a little while back on it during the Super Bowl.) This time around, more of the attention has been given to Nelly Furtado, who performed “O Canada” in front of the crowd. Let’s say that Twitter was a little bit less-than-kind to her as a result of this. While we personally don’t think it is the greatest performance in the world vocally, we’ve certainly heard far worse.

Ultimately, we’re in a climate now that in order to not be criticized for an anthem performance, you have to have a pretty classical singing voice and hit almost every note. It’s a hard gig to want to accept just because of the fact that so many people are going to almost immediately be negative the moment you do something that they don’t like.

Ultimately, the good news is that the majority of these headlines are very short-lived. Other than a few specific examples from the past few years, are there any National Anthem performances you actually remember with some sort of great clarity?

For all of you who are basketball fans, let’s just hope that there will be a very good game from start to finish to follow this up.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBPAIEmJDo0