"Star-Spangled Banner" - Marsh Family adaptation of the US National Anthem for 250th 4th of July Day

Wishing a very happy #4thJuly to our many friends and supporters in the USA. To mark the 250th anniversary today, we've re-adapted the British popular 18th-century song "The Anacreontic Song" which became the US national anthem the #StarSpangledBanner after Francis Scott Key wrote powerful and moving words to describe the survival of a fort under bombardment during the War of 1812 (against the British).

We've taken as our topic for the re-adaptation the current state of the United States in 2026 as seen against its majestic history, using the metaphor of a ship sailing. Lyrics below, with nods to some of the great speeches and moments in American history, and with hopes that the current distortion of its values and direction will not endure, but be another storm to pass through.

Downloadable as a track: https://themarshfamily.bandcamp.com/track/star-spangled-banner ❤️🇺🇸🎶

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Order our new album "Hollow Chapters" (came out 27 March):
DIGITAL: https://orcd.co/hollowchapters
PHYSICAL: CDs or LPs: https://themarshfamily.bandcamp.com/album/hollow-chapters

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LYRICS

O say, can you see, through the dusk’s ebbing light
What so proudly once sailed on a tide fit for dreaming?
Whose design from her start, bearing freedom and right
O’er the dark waves seems lost, in the storm’s ghastly screaming
And the rocks rip and tear, the old timbers impaired
Ne’er proofed ‘gainst the might that the kraken could bear
O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave?
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave

From the shore dimly seen over history’s deep,
Linger ancestral ghosts who had bled for each passage
For twelve score and ten years, o’er the towering steep
Out of slavery’s throes, every era less savage
Now the shipwreck falls hard, but atop, torn and scarred
‘Cross the violent vast sea flutters life, liberty:
O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave?
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave


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THANKS SO MUCH TO PATREONS (HOWLERS below):

Jeremy Sedgley,
John Hanger,
Stephen Shuttleworth,
Sacramento Scott,
Christian Schranz,
Peter Green,
Richard Boutbee,
LisaMarie Fitzpatrick,
Ed Rocheck,
Wolfgang Tampier,
Dan McColm,
Douglas Lind,
David Ryan,
Simon Haslam,
Lew,
Mike Smith,
Andy Riches,
Cliff Hope,
Carol Leff,
Geeta & Karen (Alyssa Sangeeta Jacobson Memorial),
David Patrao,
Grandad