Chris Stapleton Reveals Wife’s Intimidation Tactic That Ensured a Perfect National Anthem Performance at the Super Bowl

While Reba McEntire may be performing this year’s Super Bowl’s national anthem, that duty fell to Chris Stapleton last year. The artist was understandably nervous about singing “The Star Spangled Banner” and his wife Morgane certainly didn’t help matters.

In a recent interview on Audacy’s Rob + Holly podcast, Stapleton explained that he had the pre-show jitters. While Stapleton is certainly no stranger to the stage or playing before large crowds, performing the national anthem was different. There’s a higher level of scrutiny when it comes to the song and making sure you get the lyrics right.

“Learning the words. I mean, I knew the words, but making sure – that’s the one unforgivable thing,” Stapleton said. The last thing he wanted to do was make a national blunder. So how did his wife help with the nerves?

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She sent him videos of people messing up the anthem, of course. Morgane was having a bit of fun at her husband’s expense, but Stapleton finally asked her to stop sending the videos.

“My wife was messing with me. There’s all these ideas of people messing up so she would find the people messing up the most and she would send me those,” he said. “I was like, ‘Please don’t send me this because I’m going to get that in my head.’”

Chris Stapleton Had Nothing to Worry About

Of course, the reason Morgane sent Stapleton fail videos was because she had all the confidence in the world in him. And of course, Stapleton ended up pulling off the performance in spades. Stapleton said his wife, who he married in 2007, is a major well of strength for him.

“When you have nights when you don’t feel like you’ve got it in you vocally, you kind of look to [Morgane] and lean on her and it pulls something out in that,” Stapleton said of his wife (via The Country Daily). “She’s strength in a lot of ways. You know?”

Having Morgane as a partner helps Stapleton when he picks up the guitar and sings.

“She knows all my tricks—that’s what I tell people—onstage and off,” Stapleton said. “It’s a cool thing. I don’t think I know anybody else who gets that level of, you know, being married, but also working and interacting, and sometimes that’s a hard thing to walk around ’cause we’re married, but also, how cool, you know? And, we take the kids out and we’ve got just a traveling family road show. It’s fantastic.”

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[Photo by Michael Loccisano/WireImage]