This year’s Sugar Bowl will be filled with emotion that goes beyond the stakes involved on the field when No. 2 seed Georgia and No. 7 seed Notre Dame meet in a College Football Playoff quarterfinal game Thursday afternoon at Caesars Superdome in New Orleans.
Kickoff will be occurring about 36 hours after an armed man drove a pickup truck through Bourbon Street in New Orleans, killing at least 14 people and injuring more than 30 in what the FBI is investigating an act or terrorism. The incident led to the postponement of this year’s Sugar Bowl, which was originally scheduled to take place Wednesday night.
But the game will go on beginning at 4 p.m. ET, and the pregame performance of the National Anthem is certain to hit different in light of the horrible tragedy New Orleans endured this week. Bowl officials announced last week that New Orleans native Samyra, a rising star in the music industry, will sing ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’
Here’s what else you should know about Samyra before she performs at the 2025 Sugar Bowl featuring Georgia and Notre Dame:
How old is Samyra?
Samyra Miller is 26 years old, according to the Sugar Bowl media release announcing her National Anthem performance at the 2025 game.
Where did Samyra go to college?
Samyra Miller’s emergence as a musician and content creator can be traced back to her days as a student at Harvard. She told BET last year that she served as the music director of the ‘Harvard LowKeys’ a capella group. The 2021 graduate also had a popular Instagram account with students there. The Harvard Gazette described it as the ‘go-to source for all things Harvard in 2020 around the time students left campus due to the COVID-19 pandemic.’
Samyra’s star rose through TikTok
Samyra’s musical career really took off once she became a popular TikTok content creator and body positivity influencer after college. Today, she has more than 2.2 million followers on the social media platform (and an additional 459,000 followers on Instagram). Her first performance to break through, a cover of ‘Supermodel’ from the movie, ‘Clueless,’ landed her on ‘The Jennifer Hudson Show’ in February 2023.
It then culminated over the past year when she self-released her most popular song yet, ‘Plus-Size Freestyle,’ that combined her musical fusion of R&B, rap and pop with a message built around body positivity.
Samyra credits New Orleans for musical roots
Born in New Orleans, Samyra credits the turmoil created by Hurricane Katrina when she was a child for her embrace of music. Her family was displaced to Texas in the aftermath of the storm’s damage and she performed in her new school’s talent show upon arriving there. She initially trained as a classical singer.
“I always say that New Orleans raised me to feel like I can do and be whoever I want to be because the city has a free spirit about it. That allowed people to exist without shame,” Samyra said in an interview with BET last May. ”Even if you walk down the French Quarter, you’ll see people tap dancing and drumming on buckets. People are always doing things to express themselves and their joy. I think that is the most beautiful thing about my city.”
Samyra is from a football family
Samyra’s father, Bobby Miller, played football at LSU, and Samyra played defensive tackle on her high school team. She and her older sister would regularly sing the National Anthem at Lusher High School (New Orleans) games, and ‘the cool party trick was I would sing the anthem, then come out of the booth with my shoulder pads and helmet and go right onto the field for the game,’ Samyra told Sugar Bowl officials.