[MavKikiNYC]

Originally Posted by Drbio

I felt a movement when I heard it too.....then I went took a shit and got rid of it. The writer of this song today called the national anthem a drinking game song. Pretty respectful there huh?

Uhm...that's corrrect.

The music to The Star Spangled Banner was originally an English drinking song.

To Anacreon in Heaven

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"To Anacreon in Heaven" was the official song of the Anacreontic Society, a club of amateur musicians in London who gathered regularly to perform concerts. These barristers, doctors, and other professional men named their club after the Greek court poet Anacreon (6th century BC), whose poems, "anacreontics", were used to entertain patrons in Teos and Athens. His songs often celebrated women, wine, and entertaining, and today can be considered eroticism.
The connection with Anacreon, along with the "drinking" nature of the lyrics, have caused many people to label "To Anacreon in Heaven" as a drinking song. In all probability some drinking did occur at Society meetings, but the primary purpose of the Society (and its song) was to promote an interest in music.
The tune was probably composed (there is only one known firsthand account, by Society member John Samuel Stevens) by a member of the Society, John Stafford Smith, to lyrics by the Society's president, Ralph Tomlinson. Smith wrote the tune in the mid-1760s, while still a teenager. It was first published by Longman & Broderip in London in 1778/1779.
The song, through its bawdy and imbibing lyrics, gained popularity in London and elsewhere beyond the Anacreontic Society, and new lyrics were also fashioned for it, including, in the United States, under such patriotic titles as "Adams and Liberty" and "Jefferson and Liberty."
The melody, if not the original lyrics, became well-known after Francis Scott Key, an attorney, wrote In Defense of Fort McHenry while detained on a British ship during the night of September 13, 1814 as the British forces bombarded the American fort. Key most likely wrote the poem with Stafford's tune in mind. He had written an earlier poem to the same meter scheme. Later retitled The Star-Spangled Banner, Key's words with Stafford's music became a well-known and recognized patriotic song throughout the United States and was officially designated as the U.S. national anthem in 1931. The same melody, albeit sung off-key, was used as a Betelgeusean death anthem in the BBC production of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.