Denver residents assembled to hear Mayor John Hickenlooper’s annual State of the City address last night got a surprise during the meeting’s opening ceremonies.

Local jazz singer Rene Marie had been invited to sing the National Anthem—the “Star Spangled Banner”—at the meeting.

She sang, all right—“Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing”—also known as the Black National Anthem.

As MyFoxColorado.com reports, the mayor said he was “deeply disappointed.” City Councilman Charlie Brown said he wondered whether Marie’s version was “a long introduction into the real song.

“And then I kept listening and thought, what the heck is going on here? This is not the national anthem I’ve been singing for 50 years.”

“I was mad,” he said. “I almost walked off the stage.”

Hickenlooper said Marie apologized to him after the event.

“What she said was that she was very sorry, she did not mean any disrespect, that she was trying to make a creative expression for her love of the country,” he said.

Only one problem with that: Marie didn’t bother to share her plans to be “creative” with anyone at the city who had asked her to perform the standard National Anthem.

The mayor says no one knew what Rene Marie had planned. “She said there was only herself, her husband, and her musical mentor were the only three people in that room that knew she was going to do this hybrid of two songs together.”

This is so annoying to me.

First of all, I didn’t realize there was a Black National Anthem. Did you? “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing” was written by James Weldon Johnson, an artist of the Harlem Renaissance and an influential figure within the NAACP in the early 20th Century. Apparently, the song came to be known as the “Black National Anthem” some time after he wrote it.

Secondly, the whole idea of having a “national anthem” is to have a song that everyone in the country can rally around. The “Star Spangled Banner” is our National Anthem; it serves as a common thread among the many peoples of many backgrounds who make up this country. Some have been here for generations, some not even a generation. For others, America is their native land. But whatever our backgrounds, we share the same song.

Or, at least, I thought we did.

How many other groups out there have their own “national anthems?” And doesn’t the fact that they are distinctive to one group actually keep them from being “national” at all?

Finally, although the lyrics to “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing” seem innocuous enough (read them here), the song ends with this phrase: “May we forever stand/True to our God/True to our native land.”

“Native land?”

I sure hope Marie means the United States, because the “national anthem” is supposed to be about your country. Presumably, the “national anthem” sung at a City Council meeting in the United States of America should reflect reverence for and commitment to the United States of America.

Not surprisingly, comments are pouring in at MyFoxColorado.com.

Happy early Fourth of July.