ABOUT THE BOOK

The Green Bay Packers defeated the Pittsburgh Steelers in Super Bowl XLV. It was the first Super Bowl held in the Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas, and was also the first Super Bowl without cheerleaders. Former president George W. Bush was in attendance, and the asking price for a celebrated 30-second ad was $3 million. “Super Bowl XLV averaged 111 million viewers to become the most-watched program ever.”

A severe winter storm rocked Texas with snow and ice in the days leading up to the big event, and the fate of the 2011 Super Bowl was questionable. Seven people were injured by snow and ice that fell from the stadium roof before the game. One of them, a photographer, had his shoulder broken in four places by falling shards of ice. More than a thousand flights to the region were cancelled.

But the monumental Super Bowl XLV, full of firsts and excitement, was soon overshadowed. Headlines the next morning had more to do with the Star-Spangled spectacle than the sport.

Standing alone on a stage at the 50-yard line with her famous platinum blonde hair in stark contrast to her all-black knee-length dress and tights, Christina Aguilera stood unabashed as she opened the show with The Star-Spangled Banner.

Everything started well; her robust, signature vocals blasted through the stadium. It was her biggest venue ever, and it would go down as her biggest flub.

After accidentally singing the line “O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming” as «what so proudly we watched at the twilight's last [something],” the camera panned out to show athletes smirking, and stone-faced military personnel stationed at Camp Latherneck in Afghanistan.

As the Daily Mail noted, the erroneous lyrics she belted out for a hundred millions viewers matched those printed on Wikipedia at the time.

Although the rest of her performance seemed to put things back on track, the media seized on the error. News outlets reported the singer was “devastated” by the debacle before issuing a statement apologizing for the mishap: “I can only hope that everyone could feel my love for this country and that the true spirit of its anthem still came through.” And she apparently wasn’t the only one upset; according to a survey conducted by the Washington Post, two-thirds of people considered the mistake unforgivable.

Not all Super Bowl performances have passed without incident. Janet Jackson’s infamous “nip-slip” wardrobe malfunction at the 2006 Super Bowl led the National Football League to push for more family-friendly performances. At Super Bowl XLIII two years earlier, Jennifer Hudson was found to have lip-synced her national anthem performance.

EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK

Unlike some singers who struggle for decades to get a break, Aguilera had an early start. But even before she was old enough to become a Disney starlet, she faced her own share of adversity.

She was born in Staten Island in 1980. But a few years later, her mother, Shelly Loraine, decided to leave her violent husband, Fausto, and restart their lives in southwestern Pennsylvania. Her mother got a divorce and the family moved in with Aguilera’s grandmother, who lived outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Speaking out about the divorce to E! Magazine, Christina said that her father, a sergeant who was frequently stationed abroad for the US army, was both emotionally and physically abusive to her family and she did not feel safe growing up. Before the divorce, her parents were married for ten years.

Aguilera said that her singing career began as a way to get past her painful memories. Singing allowed her to express things she struggled with as a child. “Feeling powerless is the worst feeling in the world…

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Michael Tabb

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