Sheryl Lee Ralph belts ‘Lift Every Voice and Sing’ to open the Super Bowl

Before Rihanna headlined the halftime show, the musical portion of Super Bowl LVII got started with three pregame performances, leading off with a showcase for Philadelphia actress and singer Sheryl Lee Ralph.

Ralph, the Emmy-winning Abbott Elementary star who was in the original Broadway musical production of Dreamgirls in the 1980s and released a Christmas album called Sleigh last year, sang “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” the hymn written as a poem by NAACP leader James Weldon Johnson in 1900 that became a rallying cry in the Civil Rights movement and has come to be known as “The Black National Anthem.”

Ralph took the stage on the field at State Farm Stadium after Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott was greeted by boos from Eagles fans when presented with the Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year Award for humanitarian acts.

She had a more welcoming reception. Dressed in a floor-length red gown, Ralph began the song with a solemn and stately cadence through the hymn’s opening lines: “Lift every voice and sing, till earth and heaven ring, with harmonies of Liberty.”

But as Ralph moved through the song’s opening verse, she transformed the song about the struggles of Black Americans into a triumphant march: “Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,” she sang. “Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us. … Let us march on till victory is won.

”After Ralph got the pregame music underway, she was followed by R&B songwriter-producer Kenny “Babyface” Edmonds, who sang “America the Beautiful.” It was a gentle, understated version, as Edmonds accompanied himself on a red-white-and-blue acoustic guitar and almost whispered the lyrics, before adding some bombast toward the end.

The Super Bowl LVII national anthem performance was by Chris Stapleton, the bearded, burly voiced baritone country singer last seen duetting with Stevie Wonder on “Higher Ground” on the Grammy Awards telecast earlier this month. In sunglasses and without his trademark cowboy hat, Stapleton followed Babyface’s lead in backing himself up on guitar in an almost bluesy take on “The Star-Spangled Banner.” growling Francis Scott Key’s lyrics in a low register. Not a performance for the ages, but not bad.