Rachel Platten on National Anthem Fail: ‘Incredibly, Incredibly Embarrassing’

Rachel Platten is apologizing for her National Anthem fail, calling the incident “incredibly, incredibly embarrassing.”

Platten became the latest singer to join the ranks of stars who have botched the “Star-Spangled Banner” when her performance of the National Anthem at the NWSL soccer game between the Utah Royals and the Chicago Red Stars at Rio Tinto Stadium in Sandy, Utah got off to a rough start.

The 36-year-old singer started the anthem on the wrong foot, singing, “Oh say can you see, by the star’s early light” instead of “by the dawn’s early light.” She tried one more time, and still tripped up at the same spot. By the third time, the crowd at the Chicago Red Stars and Utah Royals began chiming in to help her out.

“I feel really embarrassed, honestly. I’m having a hard time forgiving myself, but I’m working on it. It was incredibly, incredibly embarrassing,” Platten told PEOPLE. “I’ve been trying to retrace steps of what happened…it has just been hanging over me.”

“I was so nervous going into it. The anthem is such a big deal; it’s probably the most important song for our country. I always get nervous because it means so much because it is so powerful. I always want to do it justice, do a good job and give people the exact version they expect and they want,” she said.

What made Platten’s performance even more embarrassing is the fact that she has performed it before without problem. She sang it at Game 1 of the 2016 World Series and at the 2016 MLB All Star Game. She also performed it before a Red Sox-Yankees game in October 2009.

“I have done it a bunch of times, but I stepped in front of the people and I felt the expectation. I was ready to open up and do it, and my mind just went blank. I was trying to explain it to my husband: It was like a test that you know all the material to, you study so much and you get in there, and your mind doesn’t cooperate,” she continued.

The third time proved to be a charm for Platten, though, who got through the National Anthem without issue.

“I was proud that I was able to finish..I actually can’t believe I didn’t forget more words and that I was able to complete the song. So I’m kind of shocked,” she said. “What I’m not going to do is run away. I really want to run out of the stadium right now, but I’m not going to do that. I’m going to finish this song.”

The “Fight Song” singer has been out promoting her second album, Waves, which came out in October 2017. It includes the single “Broken Glass.” In a recent interview with TIME Magazine, Platten said she is trying to prove she is more than just one big anthem.

“I think I was a lot braver. We broke a lot of rules,” she said of her new album. “My main collaborators and I felt like we were little kids in a playground with no adults around to tell us [what we] we can’t do. If Wildfire was my feelings from like 5 to 8 on the scale, this is like 1 to 10. All the way girl bop, feeling good, roll-your windows down to crying in the middle of the night, wondering what the point is.”

According to Billboard, Waves sold just 8,000 units in its first week, debuting at No. 73. By comparison, Wildfire, which included “Fight Song,” peaked at No. 5 in 2016.