Despite Having The Flu, Pink Will Sing At The Super Bowl

Pink may sound a little different at this year's Super Bowl; blame it on the flu. Pink will perform the National Anthem at Super Bowl 52, but it's going to take a little bit of willpower and a whole lot of TheraFlu. As Pink explained on Instagram, she's "trying to practice the flu away" in the remaining hours before she takes the field in Minneapolis, where it's currently 16 degrees.

Of course, Pink is up to the challenge since singing "The Star-Spangled Banner" at the Super Bowl has been one of her dreams since she saw Whitney Houston "own" that song in 1991. It's just unfortunate, she says, that it comes when she has "two small Petri dish kids who literally cough INTO MY MOUTH and rub their snot on my cheek." Oh, the miracle of being a mom.

Not that the mother to six-year-old Willow and baby Jameson is complaining about "one of the biggest honors of my life, singing this song in front of my family, my military family, my dad and brother and step mama and family and the world. And the EAGLES!?!?!" However, she's the first to admit that her dream has kind of turned into a nightmare.

Nonetheless, the show must go on, and Pink's wants to make sure it's the best possible one — even if it's phlegm-filled. "I promise I will do my best, as I always do," she wrote. "As far as the gremlins that got me into this mess, you can cough at me for the rest of your lives. If it’s a contest, babies, you win." Her final words on this Super Bowl flu came in the form of hashtags: #spreadthelove, #spreadthegerms, #pleasegivememyvoiceback, #ificansingimgonnakillit.

Whether Pink has the full capacity of her voice (or not) when the big game rolls around, it's clear she plans on singing live. This might be related to the pushback another artist once got for lip-syncing the anthem. The Super Bowl's longtime sound engineer Patrick Baltzell told Verge that his first game in 1998 Jewel decided the morning of the Super Bowl that she couldn't sing the anthem live. "She was brand-new then," he said. "She got so nervous because she was a kid and she’d just been nominated for a Grammy."

Artists pre-record their vocals for these events for what Baltzell called a "protection track," but when the track started for Jewel she missed her cue and ended up missing the first word of the anthem. Of course, it was all people could talk about.

"We took a ton of heat," Baltzell said. "The only other time in my 20 years something happened with the national anthem was when Christina Aguilera forgot the words. She sang the first verse twice and the same thing, that’s all [the press] talked about." It sure was.

Hopefully, on Monday morning the press will be leaving Pink alone, she certainly deserves a sick day.