The Statue of Liberty has hosted countless national ceremonies, but ABC’s America250 celebration asked a narrower question: who do you trust with “America the Beautiful” on a night built entirely around national symbolism? The network chose Brandi Carlile — and the choice made sense the moment you remembered she’d already done this once in 2026.

The 11-time Grammy winner performed alongside string duo SistaStrings at Liberty Island, as the monument glowed in red, white, and blue during the “Liberty Lights” projection display — a first-of-its-kind illumination produced in partnership with the Consulate General of France. The performance opened ABC’s 24-hour semiquincentennial broadcast, framed from the start as the emotional keystone of the evening.

The casting wasn’t accidental. Back in February, Carlile sang “America the Beautiful” before Super Bowl LX — backed by the same SistaStrings duo — placing the melody at the upper ceiling of her range. That performance attracted widespread attention not just for the vocals but for the interpretive frame she put around the song in a Variety interview the day before: she described the lyrics, written by social activist Katharine Lee Bates over 125 years ago, as expressing “this fragile hope, love and belief in where it could be, and acknowledging where it’s been, and acknowledging that we’re not there yet.” Her conclusion: “total celebration is not in order; that our prayers are still in order.”

That reading — the song as petition rather than triumph — is what distinguishes her renditions from the more straightforwardly celebratory versions that have populated Super Bowls and inaugurations for decades. By the time Liberty Island came around, she and SistaStrings had logged the song’s emotional architecture together more than once. ABC News executive producer John R. Green described the Statue of Liberty as the natural anchor for the broadcast, saying the team kept returning to it as a symbol of “250 years of hope and dreams.” Carlile’s interpretation of the song mapped directly onto that framing.

The broader context adds weight to the choice. The America250 celebration has drawn criticism over funding disputes and partisan event sponsorships, making Carlile’s reflective reading of the song feel especially pointed on a night devoted to national commemoration. She was also named one of TIME’s 2026 Women of the Year — a year, in other words, where her public profile has expanded well beyond music into something closer to cultural representation.

At the Super Bowl, Carlile stated her case plainly: “I believe in my ability and responsibility to do this. And the throughline to being queer and being a representative of a marginalized community and being put on the largest stage in America to acknowledge the fraught and tender hope that this country is based on — it’s something you don’t say no to.” The Statue of Liberty offered an even larger canvas for the same argument.

What ABC broadcast into American homes on the country’s 250th birthday was a version of “America the Beautiful” that accepted the song’s full weight rather than smoothing it into pageantry. Carlile delivered a performance built on the idea that love of country and honest reckoning with it are not opposites. What the country does with the next 250 years is a longer project than any broadcast can resolve — but she gave it the right opening note.