Brandi Carlile America the Beautiful opened ABC's 24-hour America250 broadcast from Liberty Island, placing an 11-time Grammy winner at the center of a national commemoration. The performance paired Carlile with SistaStrings and gave the broadcast a formal start under the Statue of Liberty's red, white and blue glow.
ABC used the performance to launch its semiquincentennial coverage with a song that Carlile has described as a petition, not a victory lap. That framing fit the setting: Liberty Island, the Statue of Liberty and a broadcast built around 250 years of national memory rather than a simple holiday special.
Liberty Lights at Liberty Island
The broadcast opened as the Statue of Liberty glowed in red, white and blue during the Liberty Lights projection display. The display was described as a first-of-its-kind illumination produced in partnership with the Consulate General of France, and it turned the monument itself into the visual anchor for ABC's live event.
John R. Green said the team kept returning to the Statue of Liberty as the natural anchor for the broadcast and as a symbol of "250 years of hope and dreams." That choice made Carlile's performance less like a standalone musical number and more like the opening statement for the entire America250 celebration.
Carlile's 2026 framing
In February, Carlile had already sung "America the Beautiful" before Super Bowl LX with SistaStrings, which gave ABC a performer with recent national-broadcast experience in the same song. She also said the lyrics express "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."
She added that "total celebration is not in order; that our prayers are still in order." That line lands harder inside a 24-hour commemorative broadcast than it would in a concert setting, because it treats the song as reflection rather than decoration.
America250's sharper edge
The America250 celebration had drawn criticism over funding disputes and partisan event sponsorships even as ABC positioned Carlile's performance as the emotional centerpiece of its broadcast. That clash gave the opening minute real weight: the network was selling unity, while the event itself still carried public friction around how the celebration was financed and presented.
Carlile, named one of TIME's 2026 Women of the Year, said, "I believe in my ability and responsibility to do this." She also said, "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."
ABC has already used Carlile once in February and again at Liberty Island, which signals a clear booking logic: she can carry a national anthem-adjacent standard without turning it into a pageant. The open question is whether America250's organizers can match that clarity in the rest of the 24-hour broadcast, or whether the event's funding and sponsorship fights keep leaking into the story the music is trying to tell.
