Country singer Ingrid Andress is getting panned after reportedly butchering the national anthem with a jagged rendition that had players struggling to keep their composure.
The four-time Grammy nominee’s ear-clutching tones veered from sounding strangled as she attempted to hit high notes with feeling, to completely missing those notes, her voice landing resoundingly off-key.
It was the opener to Major League Baseball’s 2024 Home Run Derby before thousands of fans at Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas.
Some players looked confused, and at least one, Philadelphia Phillies third baseman Alec Bohm, could be seen barely able to keep it together.
The internet roasting was immediate.
“My ears are bleeding. One of the worst national anthem renditions ever,” sports journalist and media personality Michael Schwab wrote on X. “Fergie thanks her for taking the prize.”
The performance drew immediate comparisons to the 2018 national anthem belted out by the Black Eyed Peas singer at the NBA All-Star game, which had until now been deemed the worst performance of the song ever. Many agreed that Andress had taken the thorny crown.
“Made Fergie’s NBA performance sound like a choir of angels,” wrote Crossing Broad columnist Kevin Kinkead. “Made Carl Lewis sound like Luther Vandross.”
Andress joined the annals of anthems gone horribly wrong alongside the likes of Roseanne Barr, who famously shrieked her way through it at a San Diego Padres game against the Cincinnati Reds in 1990 before grabbing her crotch and hurling a hearty hawk tuah at the grass.
Lewis was another anthem flub, when the track star was tasked with singing it at a 1993 NBA game between the Chicago Bulls and New Jersey Nets — and by all accounts failed miserably.
Off the baseball field, the 32-year-old Andress is known for her breakthrough 2019 single “More Hearts Than Mine” and studio albums including “Lady Like” and “Good Person.”