Contest Makes Shawnee Girl YouTube Sensation

By Gan Matthews, NEWS 9

SHAWNEE, Oklahoma -- Millions of people have sung the Star Spangled Banner, but few can top the version now circulating on YouTube performed by a 5-year-old girl from Shawnee for a National Anthem contest.

Sahara Rain Brown looks and acts like any other five year old at Pleasant Grove School. But, Sahara is a semi-finalist in a national singing contest sponsored by the Smithsonian Institute, and the only one from Oklahoma. How did she learn to sing like that?

See the other semi-finalists and learn more about the contest.

"I sing all the time in the car, and so later on she started chiming in with us and singing. I noticed she was on-key and on pitch. She was doing great," said Sahara's father Scott Brown.

Sahara knows a lot of songs, but she truly loves the national anthem. She said she loves signing it because she loves "the United States, the soldiers and the president."

Sahara will learn on May 19th if she's the winner. Big things await Sahara if she wins the contest.

"She will get to go to Washington, D.C., on June 14 for Flag Day. And she'll get to sing at the Smithsonian and she also gets to sing the same day at a Baltimore Orioles' Game," said Sahara's mother Tina Brown. "So they send us to Washington, D.C. and really her goal is to sing for the president."

All this sudden celebrity hasn't gone to her head.

"She knows that she's on T.V., and she's aware of it, but at the same time she doesn't brag about it and talk about it to the other students," said Sahara's teacher Jessie Newell.

And Sahara already knows her destiny.

"To be a rock star," Sahara said.