TORONTO -- Belting out O Canada at a public event is supposed to be a proud moment for musicians -- but their glowing hearts can quickly ignite a fiery scandal if the performance goes awry.
All it takes is a flubbed line or an off-key note for a singer with the best of intentions to be shamed on social media.
On Tuesday, the Tenors proved that sneaking a controversial political statement into the anthem can prompt an even stronger backlash.
The pressure of doing O Canada justice is enough to evoke stage fright in even the most experienced musicians. And that's one reason why Ottawa-founded rock band Hollerado has sworn off singing Canada's national anthem in public.
"We've said no every time we've been asked," says lead singer Menno Versteeg.
"If you screw it up you're going to get made fun of publicly -- at least on the local news if not on the entire Internet."
Versteeg was one of many Canadians who cringed at the Tenors' rendition of O Canada at the Major League Baseball all-star game in San Diego.
Three of the Victoria opera singers appeared caught off guard when the group's fourth member, Remigio Pereira, changed some of the anthem's lyrics to make the political statement "all lives matter." He also pulled out a sign with the same statement and held it up for the cameras.
The incident gave Versteeg pause to question why in other less-controversial instances, Canadians get so riled up when singers under-deliver in their performance.
"Everyone who lives in Canada who has a brain knows they're so lucky to live in one of the greatest places in the entire world," he adds.
"Do you think that (a singer) screwing up the national anthem means (they) don't love our country? No."
It's been a tumultuous year so far for anthem singers attempting O Canada at sporting events.
Pop singer Nelly Furtado hit a wrong note at February's NBA all-star game when her sleepy rendition was dismissed as tone deaf and unacceptably different from the original.
Several months later, a scattershot rendition by Jack Donahue of Worcester, Mass., at a Toronto Blue Jays and Boston Red Sox baseball game left the singer facing boos from the crowd.
Guitarist Chan Kinchla, a Hamilton-born performer in Blues Traveler, carries the responsibility of singing the American Star-Spangled Banner with pride.
Blues Traveler has performed the U.S. national anthem at least four times in front of a large audience, he says, and the band's frontman John Popper has done it at least another 20 times.
"It's tricky," Kinchla admits. "A lot of times John will play it on harmonica (which gives him) a little more room to mess around."
Blues Traveler takes a different approach when they perform as a whole. Sometimes they'll drive home the patriotic elements with crash symbols and other times they'll play a stripped-back version.
But Kinchla says each performance sticks to one unalterable rule: never change the lyrics.
"You've got to stick with exactly what the vocals are," he says.
"That's the magic of music, it plays in between the lines. Words are not open for interpretation."
American national anthem singer Jill Shackner learned the hard way about the importance of getting the words right.
She faced the scorn of social media three years ago when, singing O Canada, she accidentally replaced "We stand on guard for thee" with "God sheds his grace on thee" -- a line from "America the Beautiful."
The moment was televised during a Winnipeg Jets and New York Islanders game and immediately sparked a backlash against the performer, who had been singing national anthems as a professional for about 13 years.
Shackner fielded angry messages from strangers on Facebook who called her a disgrace and one person set up a fake Twitter account to mock her bungled performance.
Reflecting on the uproar she understands why so many Canadians were furious about her lyrical mishap with the national anthem.
"It's more common than a standard nursery rhyme and it transcends boundaries of genre," she says.
"What it means is so much more than any other song."
Fury began to subside after Shackner issued an apology and ran through "O Canada" without incident while being interviewed on Canadian radio.
The gaffe also pushed her to reconsider how she performs.
"When I sing a national anthem now, I don't just think about the words," she says.
"I paint a picture in my head of what each word signifies."
