‘Complex Situation’: Brandi Carlile Turns ‘America the Beautiful’ Into a Super Bowl Prayer

On Feb. 8, 2026, Super Bowl LX will kick off at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, with the Seattle Seahawks facing the New England Patriots under a global spotlight. Before the ball is in the air, Brandi Carlile will step up to sing “America the Beautiful” on NBC and Peacock, in front of more than 100 million people.For Carlile, an 11-time Grammy winner and gay woman who has built a career around activism and storytelling, this is not just another prestige booking. She has already called the moment “a complex situation” and says the song feels like “a hope, a prayer, a belief than a celebration.” That is the energy she is bringing to the NFL’s biggest night.Carlile has sat with this song. She told The Globe and Mail that listening to Ray Charles and Whitney Houston sing it makes it feel forward-looking, not smug. “Listening to Ray Charles and Whitney Houston sing it, it sounds like a belief about where America’s going instead of a brag about where it is, or where it’s been.”Digging into the history shifted everything for her. The lyrics started as an 1895 poem by Katharine Lee Bates, a Wellesley College professor and feminist writer many scholars believe was gay. Carlile said, “When I learned the woman who wrote it was a lesbian, and why she wrote it, it started to feel more like a hope, a prayer, a belief than a celebration. I can’t lean into celebration right now, but I can lean into where we need to get to.”In a separate interview with The Seattle Times, she did not pretend the platform is simple. “Well, it’s a complex situation. This stage alone is a complex situation, if you’re paying attention.” At a time when the Constitution is being tested and even the halftime choice of Bad Bunny has become a culture-war talking point, Carlile is trying to pull attention back to the writer, the lesser-known verses, and the people the song has often ignored.“‘America the Beautiful’ is one of the finest pieces of music and lyrics … that this country has ever seen,” she said, adding that she feels proud the league asked a gay woman to sing it on that stage. “If we can draw as many people as possible to that original poem and the woman that wrote it, it’ll be a really interesting perspective on America. I’m really excited to get to sing that song on such an important stage as a person from a marginalized community.”Away from the Super Bowl machine, Carlile keeps her circle small and a little chaotic in the best way. In that same Globe and Mail Q&A, she talked about nights with Joni Mitchell that feel more like sleepovers than museum pieces. “She’s formidable, but she’s also light on her feet. She has this helium balloon laugh that could peel paint.”Carlile laughed about Mitchell clowning modern stars. “She does laugh at the way we dance, the way we dress, and she does not care who hears it.” In Vegas during the Grammys, Mitchell wanted to play blackjack but refused to bet more than $10, forcing the house to drop the table to $5. That is the energy in Carlile’s orbit: legends, but in sweatpants and inside jokes.At home in Washington with her wife Catherine and their two daughters, the conversations are about displaced people, refugees, and faith that is separate from the state. The kids see both versions of her. They prefer what she calls “pipe jig mom,” the one in a fun shirt and baseball cap, not Gucci on stage, because they do not have to share that version with an arena.When the tour is over, she will go right back to the border of British Columbia with a halibut rod in hand. She listed off copper jigs, treble hooks, a Shimano Ugly Stik, and one hard rule: “You cannot have bananas on a boat. It’s terrible luck.”On Sunday, all of that walks out with her: the fan who teases Joni Mitchell, the mom talking about migrants at the dinner table, the angler banning bananas, the gay woman trying to turn a patriotic standard into a prayer. The job is simple and impossible at once: make one minute and 40 seconds feel honest enough that people hear the song differently when the ball finally kicks off.