Voices of IFD perform National Anthem before Indianapolis Colts – Pittsburgh Steelers Thanksgiving Day game

Today has been a day all about the National Anthem seemingly, given that we’ve had three nationally-televised and very prominent NFL games, and at the same time three very different interpretations of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” First, we had a long-but-powerful rendition of the Anthem courtesy of Aretha Franklin during the Detroit Lions and Minnesota Vikings game earlier today. Then, we had Freddy Jones perform the entire song via trumpet before the Dallas Cowboys took on Washington this afternoon.

Tonight, the Indianapolis Colts are playing the Pittsburgh Steelers, and they went in a slightly different direction when it comes to their version of the anthem. Specifically, this time around we are talking about the vocal group Voices of IFD, who came out and performed an acapella version relying totally on their voices (fittingly).

For those wondering, the Voices of IFD are a renowned group that comes out of the Indianapolis Fire Department, so what makes their performance very special, in addition to it being rather fantastic, is that they are representing the local community in a big way and deserve some recognition for that. It’s a cool move for the Colts to go in this direction, mostly because it helps build more connections and bonds — they don’t necessarily need to get a big star to come in for this, mostly because of the fact that you’re going to have roughly the same number of people watching it either way.

As a whole, we’d say that this was probably our favorite performance of the Anthem today. It was fairly simple, but emotional thanks to the people performing it, and then also the clarity of the lyrics.

Want to get some other news when it comes to the National Anthem? Then be sure to head over to the link here for Aretha’s performance and our impressions of it! (Photo: NBC.)