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MyFoxColorado DENVER  | Jazz singer Rene Marie stirred up controversy when she changed the national anthem during a performance prior to the Denver Mayor's State of the City address. July 1, 2008
It was a shocker at the annual State of the City address.
Denver's mayor delivered the speech, but it's what happened before he spoke that received all of the attention and has everyone talking Wednesday. The city asked local jazz singer Rene Marie to sing the Star Spangled Banner before Tuesday’s speech. But she performed a different version of the national anthem. She took the music from the Star Spangled Banner and sang lyrics from the Black National Anthem instead. "If anyone has a right to be angry it is probably me,” says Mayor John Hickenlooper. “I guess what I feel most is deeply disappointed." Hickenlooper says she apologized to him. "What she said was that she was very sorry, she did not mean any disrespect, that she was trying to make a creative expression for her love of the country."
Nevertheless many people, including city councilman Charlie Brown, were really upset. "Is this a long introduction into the real song?” Brown says he wondered. “And then I kept listening and thought, what the heck is going on here? This is not the national anthem I’ve been singing for 50 years."
The mayor says no one knew what Rene Marie had planned. "She said there was only herself, her husband, and her musical mentor were the only three people in that room that knew she was going to do this hybrid of two songs together."
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