Super Bowl organizers tapped singer Brandi Carlile to perform“America the Beautiful” at the big game on Sunday, and the vocalist said she viewed that as a good opportunity for her to represent “the queer community.”
The 11-time Grammy Award winner did an interview with Variety to discuss singing the patriotic song at the game. Unlike many other recording artists who have made headlines recently for trashing America, Carlile indicated that she still loved this country. But she also said that she believes the song “America the Beautiful” has an underlying message about radical change, which as an LGBT activist, she fully supports.
“I have my own moral code, my own moral imperative, that I have to answer to at the end of the day, as a wife and mother, and I believe in my ability and responsibility to do this, and that’s why I’m here,” she told the outlet of deciding to sing at the Super Bowl despite ongoing political tensions.
“And the throughline to being queer and being a representative of a marginalized community and being put on the largest stage in America to acknowledge the fraught and tender hope that this country is based on, it’s something you don’t say no to. You do it.”
“I think if we’re gonna save this country as a people, we have to be reminded on some level that deep down we love it,” she added.
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“America the Beautiful” was written by American author and poet Katharine Lee Bates in 1893. The interviewer pointed to a line of the song which he suggested could be a call to change the country in a certain way.
“’God mend thine every flaw…’,” he began, prompting Carlile to respond,
“’… Confirm thy soul in self-control / Thy liberty in law’! Yeah. I don’t want to put words in her mouth; she was beyond brilliant. But it almost feels like she was feeling the way about the country when she wrote it that I’m feeling today singing it. Just this fragile hope, love and belief in where it could be, and acknowledging where it’s been, and acknowledging that we’re not there yet.”
The singer also said Bates was “totally gay.” Though this has been the speculation of some scholars due to her close female friendships, there is no definitive proof that Bates was part of any same-sex romantic relationships.
“I feel motivated by the fact that she was very likely gay, and a woman relying on her intellect in a time when that was difficult for women to do so, and living with a partner who was doing the same thing,” Carlile told Variety. “And still choosing … to still love America and to still believe that it could get to a place of goodness. I won’t say greatness, because that feels a little, you know, patriarchal. But goodness. And I believe the same thing.”
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