The poem was set to a tune called “The Anacreontic Song,” which was composed in the late 1700s by a man named John Stafford Smith. The song was linked to the Anacreontic Society, which was an ...

Key set his lyrics to the then popular tune of the “Anacreontic Song,” the song of an 18th-century gentlemen’s club in London. The song, initially called “Defence of Fort McHenry ...