It’s a song every American has heard countless times, but how much do you really know about our national anthem?

"The Star-Spangled Banner" is a notoriously difficult song to sing, though the problem most performers have is with the range of the song, not the words.

When they are asked to sing "The Star Spangled Banner," "suddenly they're presented with a song with an enormous melody," he explained.

Among the world’s best-known national anthems, “The Star-Spangled Banner” (1814) emerged out of a welter of patriotic musical activity during the decades following our victorious conclusion ...

The song was originally intended for a group of people to sing together. Today “The Star-Spangled Banner” has become a complete soloist affair, and the pace and general tempo is often much slower.

The Star-Spangled Banner, one of the best-known national anthems in the world, has roots far more rowdy than patriotic, writes Barrymore Laurence Scherer for The Wall Street Journal.

Summary " In September, 2014, Baltimore and the United States will mark the bicentennial of the event that inspired "The Star-Spangled Banner." But Francis Scott Key's poem, set to a British drinking ...