'The Star-Spangled Banner" is a tricky song, but we love it anyway. We stand up when we hear it. We put our hands on our hearts. Sometimes we even get a little teary-eyed.

We have a strong, emotional attachment to this song that is riddled with awkward lyrics, bristling with horrific imagery, and so hard to sing that no one ever, ever makes it through all four stanzas. Are you kidding? One stanza is quite enough.

I was thinking of this the other day as I read an item on the Internet that says the technology now exists to create the world's first perfect song.

Yes, by using computer tools and digital effects, scientists and technicians wearing lab coats now can mechanically enhance a song to the point where it is without blemish. Just upload it, push the "vocal tuning" button and the "pitch correction" button and lots of other buttons, and presto! Perfect!

This is terrible news.

For one thing, perfection is a real party pooper. If a perfect song comes along, it will pretty much wreck it for us as far as appreciating other songs. After all, who's going to settle for lousy, imperfect songs, once we've heard our first perfect song? We won't even love our old favorites anymore. How can we? They're not perfect.

Another problem with perfection is that it's a real trouble maker. Overreaching is a dangerous business. Remember the story of Adam and Eve, who could have lived happily ever after in the Garden of Eden, running around

(Moral: Don't make important decisions while running around naked.)

Another problem with perfection is that it's a complete mystery to us humans. We can't deal with it. We don't even know what it is.

We call things perfect that really aren't.

Continued here:

Oh, say can you sing all four stanzas?