In yesterday's New York Times David Segal complained about the arrangement of "The Star-Spangled Banner" that is being played at the Olympics in Rio. Ordinarily, I'm all for harmonic analysis in the mainstream press, but the article takes an irritatingly jingoistic tone, arguing that the presence of a few minor chords creates a "defeatist" atmosphere. To my ears, the harmonization reflects the influence of pop arrangements created for Whitney Houston and others. Listen, for example, to the chord under "free" in the version by that defeatist melancholic Mariah Carey. There is, of course, a long history of hysteria over allegedly unpatriotic treatments of "The Star-Spangled Banner," going back to the police action against Stravinsky's ill-fated arrangement. Yet John Philip Sousa got away with his blatant Wagnerization of the anthem.
More: Tim Smith, of the Baltimore Sun, recalls that we have been down this road before, in the kerfuffle over Peter Breiner's arrangement of the anthem in 2004. Philip Kennicott wrote a thoughtful Washington Post piece on the subject.