Motown Icon’s National Anthem Performance Goes Terribly Wrong

A Motown icon did her best to keep a performance of the national anthem on the rails, despite horribly mismatched background singers.

Indeed, the Women’s Professional Baseball League’s inaugural weekend didn’t quite kick off as intended. Motown singer Martha Reeves took to the field just before the Aug. 1 game between New York Heights and the Los Angeles Queens at Robin Roberts Stadium in Springfield, Illinois, to perform “The Star-Spangled Banner”. The 85-year-old, formerly of the Motown girl group Martha and the Vandellas, was joined by two seemingly random ladies wearing patriotic attire as backup singers.

What followed was a lesson in a veteran singer deciding to sidestep whatever the hell anyone else was trying to do.

Reeves seems to notice almost immediately that her backup singers have no business holding a microphone, let alone singing in public. Early in the footage, she turns to the struggling crooners, who perhaps won a contest to be there, and seemingly sings in a key as far removed from the duo as humanly possible.

The camera caught bewildered baseball fans in the bleachers, as well as a player or two doing their best not to guffaw.

The comments section in the above YouTube post is full of brutal jeers from onlookers.

“I admire her ability to pick a key and just ignore it,” one top comment reads. “All three of my dogs just left the room in complete confusion and total annoyance,” another onlooker joked.

“Nothing could have prepared me for what I just heard,” yet another onlooker wrote.

Motown Icon Seemed to Know National Anthem Performance Would Go Off the Rails

Meanwhile, behind-the-scenes footage provided by TMZ illuminates that Reeves had an idea the National Anthem performance might go off the deep end.

In the footage, the “Dancing in the Street” legend doesn’t exactly mince words about her assigned backup singers.

“That’s out of tune,” Reeves, sitting in the stands, advised about the vocally challenged duo. “Now, you’re singing with me. Who’s singing the same note I’m singing? Why?” she adds later in the footage, glancing at the singers.

😅 EXCLUSIVE: Martha Reeves critiques backup singers before viral WPBL anthem performance. pic.twitter.com/z7jCUYpbsF

— TMZ (@TMZ) August 4, 2026

“Backup singers. I don’t think I need them,” Reeves later says directly into her microphone, almost as though she’s warning the audience as they find their seats before the game.

“You’re talking to the whole stadium,” what seems to be a technician tells the singer.

For what it’s worth, Reeves later took the high road in a statement published by outlets like PEOPLE over the incident.

“Without stage monitors, I wasn’t able to hear myself as I normally would,” the singer explained. “While it wasn’t the performance I had hoped for, I’m grateful to have been there in support of these remarkable athletes and this groundbreaking league.”