“She said, ‘You know, Marvin Gaye did it at the [1983 NBA] All-Star Game, and I really loved how he was able to take his time. Can we do something like that, where we let the words kind of linger?'” Rickey Minor, Houston’s longtime musical director, told the New York Post. “So we added a beat to each bar. That alone was sacrilegious to change the national anthem!”
Read Rickey Minor’s chat about Whitney’s iconic national anthem performance: https://nypost.com/article/how-whitney-houston-set-national-anthem-standard/