Eric Church was paired up with RnB singer Jazmine Sullivan to sing the National Anthem at Super Bowl LV on Sunday February 7th.
While singing the National Anthem at Super Bowl event is a rare honor for musicians, for Church he has always been apprehensive about it.
The country singer admitted in a recent interview that he had shied away from singing the vocally challenging National Anthem for years, fearing it might be too daunting a task.
“It’s so hard. My first response was, nuh-uh … I can’t. I’m a stylist, not a vocalist,” Eric Church said during an interview with Apple Music Country’s Today’s Country Radio With Kelleigh Bannen.
Church however gathered the courage to sing the National Anthem at Super Bowl LV when he was picked to perform alongside Jazmine Sullivan.
“I thought, ‘That’s cool; that sounds like me,’ and then I heard her, and I’m not missing a chance to sing with her. And that was it. Once I heard her voice, I said, ‘Okay, I’m in’,” Church said.
Church and Sullivan finally took to the stage to sing the National Anthem at Super Bowl LV on Sunday to kick things off before the Kansas City Chiefs and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers faced off at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida.
The two singers didn’t disappoint, Church’s apprehension about singing the National Anthem at the Super Bowl event was actually unfounded.
After the Super Bowl LV performance, Church told Los Angeles Times that he felt joint performances from artistes of such diverse backgrounds and genres might provide a much-needed patriotic moment during a time of social divide.
“I feel like, in this country, we’ve given up the common ground. When I’m at a concert, I’m not thinking about how many people there are Republicans or Democrats. But that’s how you win elections — you have to create the division, to rile up a base. And because of Covid, we’ve lost the things that used to unite us: concerts, sporting events, trips to Vegas with the boys,” said Church.
Adding that;
“I can tell you from the concert standpoint, the longer we go without people being able to put their arms around the person next to them and have a moment of communion, it gets more tenuous and more dangerous. And I think the reality of that is what happened at the Capitol.”