Lauren Daigle Super Bowl Performance Feels Like 'Vindication' After Attack by New Orleans Mayor

Louisiana native Lauren Daigle is celebrating what she sees as “vindication” as she prepares to perform at the pregame show for the Super Bowl.

The 33-year-old Christian recording artist is slated to join jazz musician Trombone Shorty on Sunday for a rendition of “America the Beautiful” at the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans.

Daigle’s participation in the major sporting event is an about-face from her experience five years ago, when the “You Say” singer-songwriter was scrubbed from Dick Clark Productions’ annual New Year’s Rockin’ Eve celebration because New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell, a Democrat, wanted the artist to face retribution for performing at an outdoor worship event in 2020, violating a public health guidance.

The event was organized and led by California worship leader and activist Sean Feucht.

At the time, Cantrell said, “[Daigle] harmed our people, she risked the lives of our residents, and she strained our first responders in a way that is unconscionable — in the midst of a public health crisis. This is not who we are, and she cannot be allowed to represent New Orleans or the people she willfully endangered.”

But now, five years later, Daigle is feeling liberated as she prepares to perform on one of the world’s biggest stages in her home state.

Appearing on Fox News contributor Raymond Arroyo’s podcast, “Arroyo Grande,” Daigle said she is feeling vindicated from the way she was treated by Cantrell.

Listen to the latest episode of “Quick Start”

“To get this moment years later, I would say for anybody watching that has had their reputations smeared in any sort of way and they are just waiting for the moment of vindication, sometimes it only takes five years,” she told Arroyo.

It should be noted Daigle’s participation in Feucht’s “Let Us Worship” event, a protest of COVID-19 restrictions, was unplanned. She recalled riding her bike when she saw Feucht, a personal friend, and decided to stop by the worship event. At that point, Feucht asked her to sing.

In her statement at the time, Daigle said she was “disappointed that my spontaneous participation has become part of the political discourse, and I’m saddened by the divisive agendas of these times.”

The Christian entertainer also noted she was never formally invited to participate in the New Year’s broadcast but said she would have been “honored” had the invitation ever materialized.

Of Cantrell’s letter, Daigle told Arroyo, “I went home to Lafayette, and I got in my parents’ bed and I pulled the covers over my head as an adult. I was like, ‘Gosh, here we are again.’ Because now there’s no amount of public ridicule that is fun.”

“What I learned is that when people need an element of hope, coming together is one of the most beautiful things,” she continued. “It is one of the most incredible rights that we have in this country. It is. And I think to take that away from people is so disheartening, especially in a time like that.”

Daigle also talked to Arroyo about using the song as a way to minister to and share God with people.

“How can I use this song?” she asked rhetorically. “[T]he line — and I’m not trying to sound cliché at all because I know, ‘Hello, Christian,’ whatever — [w]hen it says, ’God shed His grace on me,’ that line, it just really gripped me to the core in a way.”

“I’ve sang songs over talking about God, right?” the singer-songwriter continued. “But when you see a song that is meant for something else, and it still includes the power of God in it … it’s meant to honor our nation and show the beauty of our nation. Right? But they also know God has done something for this nation. There’s something unique about this. To be able to sing that song with a true conviction versus just, ‘Yeah, I’m just going to jump up on stage and have this opportunity.'”