Before American Idol, there was some lover of preteen girls in charge of booking national anthem singers to absolutely butcher America's Star Spangled Banner prior to Angels home games.
And in 2006, that front office drooler booked a young Tori Kelly to hold the microphone and make our ears bleed as we witnessed the audio desecration of our land's most cherished waltz.
Little did the lover of little girls know that Anaheim's prized pedi would end up in the clutches of Rupert Murdoch and Fox's American Idol.
Tori Kelly wows millions with her mediocrity weekly on the boob tube and she got her start in front of thousands of us at Angels Stadium of Anaheim making poor old Francis Scott Key roll over in his grave.
Perhaps 2010 will be the season with adults who can carry a tune in Anaheim, but I would not hold out hope for it, not with the current success of Tori Kelly and American Idol in destroying what little taste in quality this collective culture can muster. This is not a plea for solemn Fort McHenry memorials. This is one fan's request for someone who delivers a melody and not an off-key memorization of a bad sentence structure mutilation of poetry... And the occasional B-List star like Kenny G or Chaka Khan (i.e. an approximation of major league-level celebrity) would be nice.
Without further commentary, here is a 2006 video of Tori Kelly performing the Star Spangled Banner before a day game at Angels Stadium of Anaheim.