Malea Emma's National Anthem Performance

About

Malea Emma's National Anthem Performance refers to a widely praised rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner" by seven-year old Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja before a Major League Soccer game in Los Angeles between the Los Angeles Galaxy and the Seattle Sounders.

Origin

On September 19th, 2018, the Los Angeles Galaxy announced that seven-year old Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja won a social media contest to perform "The Star Spangled Banner" at an upcoming game at their stadium. They posted a video of the child learning the news (shown below).

On September 23rd, Tjandrawidjaja performed the anthem before a game between the Galaxy and Seattle Sounders (shown below).

Spread

Tjandrawidjaja's performance was widely praised, particularly because of her young age. Galaxy player and global soccer superstar Zlatan Ibrahimovic "MVP of the game!" after the performance, gaining over 9,800 retweets and 56,000 likes (shown below, left). Indiana Eleven player Brad Ring tweeted he hoped Tjandrawidjaja would perform at one of his team's home games (shown below, right).

After the performance, Tjandrawidjaja received media attention from several major publications, including ABC,^[1] NPR,^[2] Slate,^[3] and others. She told ABC, "I was thinking that I cannot do anything wrong because it's a really special song to America." Tjandrawidjaja also tweeted a video in which she said she hoped she hoped she could perform with Christina Aguilera, gaining over 510 retweets and 1,400 likes (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References