Is it time for America to adopt a new national anthem?

Only in America is the most influential songwriter a slave-owning trial lawyer with exactly one hit. Worse, Francis Scott Key stole the melody from a British pub hymn that had been lingering in the 19th-century equivalent of the public domain. The lyrics, all about him watching the Yankees and the Redcoats bomb the shit out of each other for a whole day in Baltimore, could have carried the 19th-century equivalent of a parental advisory, too.

It took a century and an act of Congress for the Star-Spangled Banner to become the American standard, which would seem proof of how catchy it isn’t. Without school drills or Whitney Houston or the constant drumbeat of patriotism, likely, the Banner reverts to scribbles on a page decades ago. It got Peter Nicks thinking: “If you could imagine an anthem for today, what would that be and how would you do it?” That’s the hand-on-heart question at the center of Anthem, a Hulu documentary from Nicks on the journey to make a fight song that reflects the country’s tortured soul.

Nicks, the pensive director behind a trilogy of docs exploring institutions in his Oakland home town, enlists the help of two expert ears: the jazz pianist Kris Bowers, who composed the scores for Bridgerton, Green Book and other screen gems; and DJ Dahi, the hip-hop producer behind Kendrick Lamar, Big Sean and more chart toppers.

In fact, Ryan Coogler, an executive producer on this film, was reminded of the sheer glut of pop anthems that speak to the American experience while premiering this 97-minute thought exercise at the Tribeca film festival. “It’s a trip how many songs just New York has,” the Black Panther director tells the Guardian over a Zoom call with his collaborators earlier this week. “We walked across the Brooklyn Bridge, and they had these like 360-degree photo booths. And they weren’t just playing the same song; they were playing the same 30-second loop of Empire State of Mind.”

“But the thing too, Ryan, is it was the same weekend as Puerto Rican independence,” says Dahi, noting the reggaeton beats echoing around the city as well.

When I ask Coogler if his famously exhaustive reference bible for the Black Panther franchise included an anthem for Wakanda, a cautious smile creases his face. “Um … I’m not gonna answer that,” he says, leaving the Zoom room in titters.

Instead, he shares a story about an experience with his uncle, a longshoreman who was a treasurer in the International Longshore and Warehouse Union and “very politically active”. Coogler remembers his uncle facilitating an exchange program and playing host to a group of student activists from South Africa. “I had dinner with them, marched with them, not knowing I was going to make a film with a good chunk of dialog in Xhosa, one of the languages of South Africa,” he says.

“I remember at one point them saying, ‘We’re gonna share some of our national songs with y’all,” and they did, like, 13 and knew ’em all by heart. Some of the songs had dances. Then it was like, ‘Your turn now.’ We had maybe one song? Lift Every Voice? I remember struggling for some of the words and feeling really embarrassed, you know?”

The anthem Bowers and Dahi ultimately arrive at, We Are America, hits all the right notes; it’s wistful, hopeful – you can just picture a ballpark crowd standing at attention and singing along. Nicks drops the curtain on Anthem with a studio arranged performance featuring everyone who contributed to the piece. And though it winds up resonating with exactly the sort of We Are the World treacliness that Bowers and Dahi had hoped to avoid, an earworm is an earworm – and this one will stay bored in your brain well after the closing credits roll.