Your guests will delight in these American classics , and you’re able to serve them scrap of melodic Americana , one Sung dynasty at a time .
1. “Star-Spangled Banner,” Jimi Hendrix
Fact : Paul Allen ( of Microsoft renown ) now owns the white Stratocaster guitar on which James Marshall Hendrix perform his famous rendering of the National Anthem at Woodstock .
2. “America,” Neil Diamond
Fact : This was the melodic theme Song dynasty for Michael Dukakis ’s 1988 presidential campaign .
3. “American Pie,” Don McLean
Fact : Your guests will already be cognisant that the birdcall was inspired by the tragical death of instrumentalist Buddy Holly , Richie Valens , and the Big Bopper in a plane crash on February 3 , 1959 , also known as “ The Day The Music die . ” But throw in a lesser - known titbit : Don McLean was a 13 - year - old paperboy on that Clarence Day and learned the news the next dawn when he opened his sunrise stack of papers and saw it on the front pageboy .
4. “Firework,” Katy Perry
Fact : The inspiration for the song came , in part , from Jack Kerouac’sOn the Road . The passageway that inspired her :
5. “Pink Houses,” John Mellencamp
Fact : In 1984 , MTV buy a pink sign in Indiana to give away as a part of a promotional material associated with the Mellencamp single . In accession to the house , the succeeder received a pinkish Jeep full of Hawaiian Punch and Mellencamp grilled and jammed for her and some friends at her housewarming party .
6. “American Girl,” Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
Fact : The circle recorded the rails on the 4th of July , 1976 .
7. “Living in America,” James Brown
Fact : Many acknowledge it as Apollo Creed ’s anthem fromRocky IV(get the MF Balboa / Creed t - shirt here ) but they may not know that , despite being unfamiliar soil for Brown ( singing a birdcall someone else had written and doing so specifically for a film ) , it earned him a Grammy and was his second biggest hit — second only to “ I Feel Good , ” which he read 20 years earlier . Another fun tidbit : Weird Al Yankovic recorded a parody version of this number entitled “ dwell with a Hernia . ”
8. “God Bless the U.S.A.,” Lee Greenwood
Fact : A crowd - pleaser from its origin , when Greenword first introduced the song into his shows , he sport it in the center of the show simply because it was unexampled . After two workweek , the audience reactions to the songs forced Greenwood to move it to the final stage of the show as his encore . In his own word , “ I could n’t follow it . ”
9. “The Star-Spangled Banner,” Whitney Houston Super Bowl XXV version OR Beyonce 2012 presidential inauguration version
Fact : Everyone was in a dither when we read that B lip - synced her inauguration translation of the hymn , but the oft - praise 1991 Super Bowl carrying out by Whitney Houston was also pre - recorded . Whitney sang , but the microphone was off and the hearing , both in Tampa and at abode , heard a taped adaptation . Bottom line : they are both amazing . Take your pickaxe . You ca n’t go wrong , here .
Whitney :
Beyonce :
