Melissa Etheridge on Lambeau Field: 'It’s the good, yummy center of football'

Melissa Etheridge has sung the national anthem at her share of prestigious sporting events, including a couple of World Series Game 7’s, but doing the honors at Lambeau Field for the San Francisco 49ers-Green Bay Packers game on Monday night was special.

“It was amazingly fun,” the Grammy Award-winning singer said Tuesday afternoon, just a few minutes before boarding her flight out of Green Bay. “Lambeau Field is historic. It’s the heart of football. It’s the good, yummy center of football, because it’s owned by your whole community, and you feel it. 

“I walk around here and I feel like, yeah, this whole place has a football team. It’s just something that’s not quite anywhere else. Any other athletic organization I’ve been involved with, they’re wonderful, but there’s something real special about the Green Bay Packers. ... It’s like family. It’s like total family."

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Etheridge, who also performed during halftime, said the experience was particularly thrilling, because her wife, Linda Wallem, a Madison native, is a diehard Packers fan. She came with Etheridge to Lambeau.

“She loves the Packers. I love her being happy,” said Etheridge, who is from Leavenworth, Kansas. “I’m a huge football fan and have great respect. In my heart, I’m a (Kansas City) Chiefs fan, but I married into a Packers family, and you know how that goes.”

Etheridge wasn’t so much nervous to perform in front of 81,000 people — more like “seriously excited” — but she was cold, as she noted in a couple of tweets.

“Man, you know, even some of your locals were saying it was a little cold for that early in October and, I said, ‘You know what, it just shows how dedicated I was to doing it,'” Etheridge said. “It was just an incredible opportunity. It’s a real honor to stand in the middle of Lambeau Field on the 50-yard line and sing to everybody.”

She and Wallem left with plenty of Packers gear to take back to sunny California.

“Oh, you have no idea — hats, scarves, glasses,” Etheridge said. “We’ve got everything.”