Canadian pop singer Alessia Cara forgot the words to her own country’s national anthem while performing it in French before a soccer match between Canada and Peru in Montreal on Saturday.
Cara had been chosen to sing “O Canada” ahead of the game. Video of the performance shows her losing track of the lyrics partway through the song, with players on the field appearing confused as she struggled to continue. She eventually stopped singing and was heard giggling as the crowd responded with boos. An instrumental version of the anthem then played over the stadium speakers.
The moment spread quickly on social media. One commenter wrote, “A true Canadian sings those words from their heart not their mind and the heart knows all the words,” while another said simply, “She’s fired.” A third called the performance “painful, pathetic and a disgrace.”
It was not the first time Cara had sung a national anthem at a major sporting event. She performed the English version of “O Canada” at a World Series game in 2025 without any apparent trouble.
A song with a long history
“O Canada” was first performed in 1880 and formally adopted as Canada’s national anthem in 1980, according to the Government of Canada. The music was written by Calixa Lavallée, with French lyrics by Adolphe-Basile Routhier. The English lyrics adopted in 1980 were based on a 1908 version written by Robert Stanley Weir.
Those English lyrics were changed again in 2018, when legislation altered the line “True patriot love in all thy sons command” to “True patriot love in all of us command” to make the wording gender neutral.
