Aretha Franklin performs National Anthem for Detroit Lions – Minnesota Vikings Thanksgiving game

For one reason or another, today just seems to be the day of legends performing in order to commemorate the Thanksgiving festivities! Earlier today, we saw Tony Bennett perform alongside Miss Piggy during the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade — though it almost appeared for a second as though the Muppet saved him from a nasty fall. (It probably looked worse on TV than it actually was.)

Now, Aretha Franklin is going to be performing the National Anthem for the annual NFL game featuring the Detroit Lions. They’re playing the Minnesota Vikings this year, so you’re also getting an important rivalry game to go along with the annual tradition. (For those wondering, Andy Grammer is going to be playing the halftime show during the Fox broadcast.) Given how often we’ve had a ton of dud games on Thanksgiving, we’re super-thrilled to have one that actually matters for a change!

As we prepared to hear Aretha’s performance, there was only one thought in our head: She’s going to rock this and of course we weren’t disappointed, but we know the internet and how they respond to things…

Our take – When Aretha did officially start her performance, she did it with the assistance of her keyboard, and gave (what we’d argue) was a powerful, emotional take on the song. This was especially important to the city of Detroit — she’s iconic to the city’s population even more so than anywhere else in the world, and judging from her choice in headgear, we had to figure that she’s also a Lions fan.

Of course, we do imagine that there are going to be some purists out there who don’t love the fluctuations that she made here and there to the melody, and to those people, we respond with this: SHE’S ARETHA FRANKLIN. Are you really going to try to tell one of the greatest singers of all time how she’s meant to perform this song? We think she did great and brought some wonderful passion to the Anthem at a time when it and football have been associated more with controversy. We also don’t care that the Anthem performance was long given that there’s going to be around NINE HOURS OF FOOTBALL on today. We feel like you can sit through an extra minute or so of this.

What did you think of Franklin’s National Anthem performance? Share in the comments below! We’ll have more news later today in terms of the anthem during the Dallas Cowboys game against Washington. If you want to check out some of our other Thanksgiving Day stories, then just head on over to the link here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXdM26xVKjo