There are two songs that are fully guaranteed to be played in PA at any 4th of July celebration in America: Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA” and Katy Perry’s “Firework”. Since Greenwood allowed himself to become the closest thing Donald J. Trump had to a house band, there wasn’t much suspense about what the artist would have to do on the soundtrack of the pyrotechnic display at the Washington Mall that culminated in a day of festivities. in honor of Trump’s sworn oath of antagonist, President Joe Biden.
All that was missing was the part where Perry would be able to “make them go, ‘Oh, oh, oh,'” because there were few humans between Perry, in front of the Lincoln Memorial, and Joe and Dr, Jill, stepping out onto the porch from their new home across town at 9:55 ET for ooh and aah. In the midst of this, lit by bombs exploding in the air, tens of thousands of flags representing human participants who, thanks to rioters, can no longer have socially distanced good things, except on television.
The fact that the inaugural festivities were all made for TV, like the Democratic convention produced by the same people six months ago, brought bonuses and obstacles. The biggest benefit was the opportunity to involve hordes of average Americans as temporary players in the festivities – at least during the virtual “this is what America really looks like” on Wednesday afternoon, and in certain segments of the “Celebrating the America “that ended the night. The downside was necessarily having to use so much pre-recorded material throughout the day that there was little chance of going much further and equaling the galvanizing power of Aretha Franklin, Beyoncé or even Bob Dylan playing live at previous openings.
Let Bruce Springsteen crystallize the moment, at least when the moment involves, for a preponderance of the most invested viewers, a chance to literally save the world, or at least get close enough to rock ‘n’ roll. Springsteen began the 90-minute broadcast of “Celebrating America” as just one of the few live artists and at the place there at the memorial to share great moments with Mr. Lincoln, there to sing, without a doubt, the most exciting song that he has already written (in less the one that is most exciting about America and paradise, not motorcycles), “Land of Hope and Dream”. It would have been more grand if the E Street Band were there at Lincoln Circle, so viewers could get the full gospel ecstasy of the nine and a half minute version of the band, instead of the melancholy of the three half-minute solo versions. But on the last day of New Start, it’s hard to ask for much more than the guy who could be the greatest singer and songwriter of our lives, even giving a silent version of one of his most exciting classics.
(There has been a lot of talk over the years about switching from “The Star Spangled Banner” to “America the Beautiful”. The nation is unlikely to really consider an exchange, but if it did, it would be too much to launch “Land of Hope of Dreams ”in the mix? For some of us, already It’s the hymn.)
Musical performances also had to necessarily follow the inspiration, which means that the darkest songs that were able to creep into last summer’s Democratic convention, such as Leon Bridges’ song of protest against racial injustice, “Sweeter”, were necessarily out of the running on this day of celebration. Performances directed to the good side of the road with renewed old tunes: John Legend, also personally on site in DC, singing the song from Anthony Newley’s popularized and identified by Nina Simon, “Feeling Good”, against a big band of support. And Demi Lovato, rocking a new look, rocking an old R & B-pop classic, “Lovely Day” by Bill Withers, in a Los Angeles studio. Jon Bon Jovi, who felt a strange choice to level a song as rich as the Beatles’ “Here Comes to the Sun” into something banal.
Joe Biden and family watch Demi Lovato in the opening special
CNN
Dozens of Broadway actors sang a line from each of the intergenerational medley “Seasons of Love” / “Let the Sunshine In”. Get it wrong there, except that, damn it, sometimes you just want to hear a lively singer-actress like Mandy Gonzalez sparkle for three or four minutes alone, instead of playing a “who was it? – oops, too late. ”(If only the program could have featured the hilarious Trump satire of the recent Gregory brothers, which was defined as” Seasons of Love “,” 11,780 votes “, but we have to wait a day or two to return to partisanship – good.Lin-Manuel Miranda’s contribution to the program was talked about, so fans of “Hamilton” didn’t get a chance to have that brilliant show openly linked to current events.
Filmed alongside the Cumberland River in Nashville, Tim McGraw / Tyler Hubbard’s country unit anthem “Undivided” was so desperate to be harmless in his statement that there is nothing worth fighting for because it probably brought the majority together viewers on one side – the meh side. Moving from central to western Tennessee, a more fruitful partnership had Justin Timberlake staying with Ant Clemons for his co-author, “Better Days”, accompanied by a chorus of students from the nearby Stax music school. The performance made that empty Memphis intersection sound suspiciously like the interior of a top-notch recording studio, but the combination of a plug for music education, the vision of that neon Stax and a not-too-bad update on the old tradition the inspiration of school R&B becomes difficult to resist.
The virtual parade in the afternoon, seen by far fewer spectators, was more fun, especially for bands doing things for the cameras that they could never have in a quick march on Pennsylvania Avenue. The New Radicals’ reunion after an absence of more than 20 years for one of the greatest hits of all time, “You Get What You Give”, was a gift, even though it seemed even more pomp and circumstance deserved than a sandwich between the college battery. DJ Cassidy did his part to serve America by bringing together Kathy Sledge and Nile Rodgers, with a side of the always welcome Philip Bailey and Verdine White of the EWF. Andra Day added gravity to the afternoon’s levity with a rooftop version of her partially BLM theme “Rise Up”, situated on top of none other than Hollywood’s Roosevelt Hotel.
In the end, most of the day’s music ended up looking at least modestly moving … without ever punching the fences with any kind of bold choice or powerful performance that would be remembered as chilling. But previous performances, Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, came much closer to that moving brand.
The COVID-19 memorial at dusk on Tuesday was so powerful, even close to shattering, that it was almost as if the music was just in danger of spoiling the moment. There is no danger of ruin, however, when it is Yolanda Adams who comes to capture the feeling in music. If only there was something beyond Leonard Cohen’s deeply secular and overburdened “Hallelujah” by the gospel that is great for singing – the solemn environment certainly demanded to severely cut the number of his most irreverent verses – but if there is someone who can make you feel that it’s okay to keep “Hallelujah” out of retirement for a few more minutes, it’s Adams, who convinced us briefly that Cohen did intends music as a Christian hymn.
What about the trio of introductions at the start of the oath? This can be summed up in one sentence: you nailed it. Not everyone will agree: haters will hate it when J.Lo is playing W.Guth, and Garth Brooks’s choice of “Amazing Grace” won no more points for originality than last night’s “Hallelujah” choruses. But in their solemn oath contexts, they worked, as did Lady Gaga’s almost universally unheard of “Star Spangled Banner”.
Gaga’s national anthem is tested on the road, having run smoothly five Super Bowls ago, and she brought it up again. There are so many ways to play with it may or may not work, but the most viable approach after a few hundred years seems to be to find a middle ground between the serious church and the brilliance of the show biz, and Gaga certainly knows how to go there without ever leaving you worry that she might be out of tune.
Jennifer Lopez will never be the first choice of any hardcore Woody Guthrie fan to sing “This Land Is Your Land”, but there was a winning boldness in her performance – first, of course, only in the act of leaving a Latinx artist on one of the songs the most subversive ones ever written questioning a pre-progressive America, and then the extra turns it took further represented additional doses of sheer courage. Including “a nation under God, indivisible, with freedom and justice for all” – in Spanish? Genius, or something like that. So screaming “Let’s make noise!,” briefly playing back to one of your signature hits before heading back to Guthrie? This was one of the best things of the day, or the worst – let’s turn the knob and give a thumbs up, just for brass nerves.
Speaking of audacity, though, you need it even more to sing the cappella at length in front of a live audience of tens of millions. After a brief opening of brass, Brooks went alone, really alone, with his “Amazing Grace”, before asking the audience at home to sing along. Here, unlike anyone else in any of the opening accounts (except, perhaps, McGraw and Hubbard), there was someone with something to lose. He may need an extra measure of grace, because the adjacent QAnon and QAnon crowds have been in force for the past few days, calling for a boycott of Brooks for the sin of trying to be politically ecumenical by appearing for Biden, as he has for all other living presidents at some point or another. He’s very good at acting in the middle to really catch “Dixie Chick-ed”, and we may have suspected a damage control tip when Brooks came up the stairs after his performance, instead of staying and working the crowd like Gaga and Lopez. But political fear is not really something that affects Brooks any more than nervousness a cappella.
Brooks comes honestly for his centrism, even if it makes the left suspicious, as well as making the extreme right deeply enraged. In some of the non-musical moments that followed his presentation – such as the new vice president and first gentleman accompanying Mike Pence down the stairs and then sweetly waving to the car parade; or Obama, Carter and W hanging out on the night special together, like ex-presidents who would like to have a beer together – you got the grace that he was talking long, even after running up the stairs.
In the midst of all these musical considerations, there is no ignoring the real rock star in the room … the junior poet-laureate elephant in the room: Amanda Gorman. But that’s another story.