They say the toughest song for a vocalist to sing is the national anthem. It stands to reason. After all, it’s not your song, thousands have sung it before you, and there’s lots of words written in old-timey speak.

Worst of all, it’s simply all too easy to pillory someone for a lacklustre performance. There’s endless variables – they didn’t sound impassioned enough, their performance wasn’t as good as someone else who sung it last year, etc.

Even consummate performer Beyonce, who struts the stage in front of packed arenas night in night out didn’t want to deal with the stress and opted to lip sync the US national anthem during Barack Obama’s second presidential inauguration.

That said, we have to admit this performance of our very own national anthem by former Voice contestant Jackson Thomas is pretty chuckle-worthy, and we have a feeling it might have to do with the sheer anxiety of performing a national anthem.

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Thomas, who was a runner-up on the popular television singing contest last year, was invited to sing the anthem at the EJ Whitten Legends Game at Melbourne’s Etihad Stadium last night and the performance was promptly slaughtered online.

As NineMSN reports, Thomas started off well enough, lending the anthem his usual operating style, but things quickly awry. Thomas began to sing the lyrics from the second half of the second verse midway through the first, leading to confused looks from players and fans alike – check out the performance here.

After receiving less than stellar reviews on social media, Thomas took to Twitter to explain himself, writing, “I am truly sorry for my performance tonight. I lost my train of thought & started singing the second verse. Sorry I let everyone down.”

Don’t beat yourself up, mate, anyone would’ve cracked under that pressure and hey, at least you know the second verse.

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