Ingrid Andress National Anthem Strikes Out With Home Run Derby Players, Fans
Rising country star Ingrid Andress is facing criticism after her less-than-stellar rendition of the National Anthem at Monday night’s Major League Baseball Home Run Derby. Some on social media are even dubbing it as the “worst national anthem performance of all time.”
But is it actually that bad? Judge for yourself.
The Ingrid Andress National Anthem Performance
Before MLB’s heaviest hitters started swinging for the fences at the 2024 Home Run Derby, the crowd at Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas stood in preparation of the national anthem. It’s a time-honored tradition at virtually every major sporting event in America, with all eyes and ears mainly directed at the performer who will set the tone for the rest of the game.
Unfortunately, in the case of Ingrid Andress, the word “tone-deaf” may be more applicable in this case. See the complete performance here:
It starts out fine enough, with Ingrid giving at least a passable performance until about the halfway mark. It gets particularly rough around the 45-second mark in the above clip, when the Grammy-nominated country singer hits the “rocket’s red glare” portion of the anthem.
Unfortunately for Ingrid, her performance was downhill from there. Her fluttery vocalization of the final line in particular, “o’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave” reminds me of my cat when I’d accidentally step on her tail.
It got so bad, you can even see some players trying to hold back laughs.
Online Reactions To The Performance
As you can oftentimes expect nowadays, social media was not forgiving toward the musical mishap. An article from SI collected a few of the noteworthy responses from X (fka Twitter) users.
Ingrid’s anthem attempt also inevitably drew comparisons to Fergie’s hilariously bad cover of the song at the 2018 NBA All-Star Game. Fergie’s rendition was so potently awful that it ascended to the annals of internet legend, with many doubting it could ever be topped in terms of pure cringe. But the consensus seems to be that Ingrid Andress may very well have taken Fergie’s crown. Which do you think is worse?
What Went Wrong?
I don’t think there’s any denying that Ingrid Andress’ national anthem performance was far from a home run. However, there is a myriad of reasons to account for it. After all, Ingrid is a four-time Grammy nominated artist and a deeply gifted singer, as evidenced by some of her biggest country hits like More Hearts Than Mine and Wishful Drinking.
So how could an artist as talented and consistent as Ingrid perform the anthem this poorly? Neither Ingrid or her team have addressed the situation as of the time of this article, but things like possible illness and exhaustion can always play a factor for singers.
It could also be that, simply put, Ingrid’s vocal style just doesn’t mesh well with the anthem. That certainly isn’t a mark on her, as the Star-Spangled Banner is a notoriously tough song to nail even for the best of singers.
When it comes down to it, we all have tough days at the office. Unfortunately for Ingrid Andress, her tough day happened to be in front of a nationwide audience, and an even larger audience online at that. None of this changes the fact that Ingrid has proven herself to be a highly-skilled artist and valuable asset in the music industry.
While she hasn’t commented publicly on the matter, Ingrid doesn’t seem to shy away from poking a little fun at herself. Hell, she calls herself a “4-time Grammy losing singer songwriter” on her social handles. With that in mind it’s highly possible that she’ll be a good sport about this whole thing, and maybe even steer into the skid by playing along with the jokes. A future Fergie feature, perhaps?
