Brandi Carlile performed “America the Beautiful” during Super Bowl LX on Sunday, Feb. 8, 2026, describing the appearance in a Variety interview as a rare chance to bring queer representation to one of the country’s largest stages.
Super Bowl organizers selected singer-songwriter Brandi Carlile to perform “America the Beautiful” as part of the pregame program at Super Bowl LX on Sunday.
Carlile, an 11-time Grammy Award winner, told Variety she viewed the performance as a personal responsibility amid what she described as political tension and division in the United States.
“I have my own moral code, my own moral imperative, that I have to answer to at the end of the day, as a wife and mother, and I believe in my ability and responsibility to do this, and that’s why I’m here,” she said in the interview.
Carlile also connected the moment to her identity, adding: “And the throughline to being queer and being a representative of a marginalized community and being put on the largest stage in America to acknowledge the fraught and tender hope that this country is based on, it’s something you don’t say no to. You do it.”
She argued that the song’s message can serve as a reminder of common ground. “I think if we’re gonna save this country as a people, we have to be reminded on some level that deep down we love it,” she said.
“America the Beautiful” was written by poet Katharine Lee Bates in 1893. In the interview, Carlile discussed the lyric “God mend thine every flaw,” and continued by quoting: “Confirm thy soul in self-control / Thy liberty in law!” She added that she did not want to “put words” in Bates’s mouth, but said the song felt like an expression of “fragile hope” about what the country could be.
Carlile also said she was motivated by Bates’s life and by scholarly speculation about Bates’s sexuality, while acknowledging that no definitive proof has established that Bates was in a same-sex romantic relationship. In the Variety interview, Carlile described Bates as “very likely gay” and referenced Bates’s long domestic partnership with Wellesley economist Katharine Coman.
