Most stand for the anthem and quite a few sing".
Returning to the stage at the age of 70, she triumphed in the 2001 Broadway revival of Stephen Sondheim's Follies as Carlotta, singing from the heart "I'm Still Here", the defiant anthem for all female stars with Bergen's staying power.
This time, their reflection on music feels more like a plea: "I want an anthem," reels No Anthems.
Blank Space is her bunny-boiler anthem where she doesn't entirely convince us she's driven insane by lust into courting a series of players – and its minimalist verses make for a rather tempered, non-bombastic opener.
Thanks to the cameras, it was possible to glimpse all sorts of revealingly human moments: the sweat on the brow of a pallbearer after piloting the coffin up the steps of St Paul's; the sudden, muttered aside of the Queen to the Duke of Edinburgh as the coffin itself passed by; the concentration on the face of a boy-treble as the choir sang the anthem from the Fauré Requiem.
Next it's the Doctor and Zan, but for now we've got Fatboy Slim's unexpected comeback anthem Eat, Sleep, Rave, Repeat – his first entry in the Hottest 100 since Weapon of Choice got to 21 in 2001.
Later in the evening, the crowd sang We Shall Overcome, an anthem of the civil rights movement, outside the National Portrait Gallery as the rally wound down.
Edge: Cleveland, by light-years Ian Hunter's Cleveland Rocks, later covered by The Presidents of the United States of America as the opening theme for The Drew Carey Show, has become a de facto anthem within city limits.
In that respect, it's difficult to see Allen's anthem as little more than same old same old, and it's probably why I ultimately feel she misses the mark.
