Jazz singer Renee Marie can forget about getting another high profile gig in Colorado anytime soon. She'd better not count on an invitation to sing at Barack Obama's inauguration, either.

The Denver-based singer burned a few bridges with her version of "The Star Spangled Banner" last week.

It wasn't that Ms. Marie purposely butchered it ala Roseanne at a baseball game 18 years ago. She didn't reinterpret it in a slow and bluesy way like Jose Feliciano did during 1968 World Series, either.

Singing a cappella, Ms. Marie never drifted off-key. She's too fine a singer to miss a note. That's why Denver's progressive, scooter- riding Democratic mayor, John Hickenlooper, invited her to sing the National Anthem as a prelude to his 2008 state of the city address.

It should have gone without a hitch. Because hardly anyone knows the words to Francis Scott Key's song beyond the first stanza, Ms. Marie could have safely "improvised" after she got the more familiar "Oh, say can you see by the dawn's early light" section out of the way.

Instead, the singer faithfully adhered to the original tune, but jettisoned Francis Scott Key's opaque lyrics, replacing them with the first stanza of James Weldon Johnson's "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing."

Originally nicknamed "the Negro National Anthem," the song was first performed on Feb. 12, 1900, by 500 children at the school where James Weldon Johnson was principal. It was part of the school's celebration of Abraham Lincoln's birthday.

The funniest thing about watching Ms. Marie's performance on the videos on the Internet are the expressions on the faces around her.

When Ms. Marie sings, "Lift every voice and sing, till earth and Heaven ring / Ring with the harmonies of liberty," you can literally see eyes blinking confusion as city officials try to access the dusty corridors of their memories for a corresponding match.

"Let our rejoicing rise, high as the listening skies / Let it resound loud as the rolling sea / Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us / Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us / Facing the rising sun of our new day begun / Let us march on till victory is won."

The black official standing to Ms. Marie's immediate left keeps a poker face, but seems to be hip to what's going on. He keeps his hands crossed in front of him and stares vacantly as if to say: "Oh, snap! This is going to be played on YouTube, like, forever. I better not look like I'm enjoying this too much."

It goes without saying that Mayor Hickenlooper wasn't enjoying the rendition and the controversy it was bound to generate.

After working hard to lure the 2008 Democratic convention to Denver and succeeding spectacularly, he wasn't in the mood to have it tainted by movement conservatives eager to fight the Culture Wars in his back yard.

"We all respect artistic license and support freedom of expression," the young mayor said. "But in a tradition-laden ceremony, making a personal substitution for the national anthem was not an option. We asked for 'The Star-Spangled Banner' and that's what we expected."

For her part, Ms. Marie was unrepentant. "I am an artist," she said on her blog. "If I wait until I am asked to express myself artistically, or if I must ask permission to do it, it would never get done. I knew that if I asked to do my version of the national anthem, the answer would be 'no.'"

She attributed her stunt in part to her excitement about Barack Obama, adding that she stopped singing Francis Scott Key's version of the national anthem "months ago."

Already terrified of being thought unpatriotic, the Democratic nominee needed Ms. Marie's endorsement like he needed a hole in the head. He lost no time in distancing himself from the protest.

"We only have one national anthem," Mr. Obama said, adjusting his flag pin. "And so, if she was asked to sing the national anthem, she should have sung that. 'Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing' is a beautiful song, but we only have one national anthem."

Of course, rumors that an Obama administration will replace the national anthem with something more "soulful" are bound to spread.

Though no one knows what 'spangled' in "The Star Spangled Banner" means, most Americans couldn't imagine adopting an anthem we'd have to learn to carry a tune to sing competently, anyway.