If you happen to someone in a major metropolitan area this will be something you’ll no doubt get subjected to at some point. You may be sitting in front of a cheap laptop. You may be doing dishes. You may be doing any number of things when you get that call. The call to arms, the call to bring your voice out into the open, unleashed on an unsuspecting populace will happen. It is only a matter of time.
Oddly, your ability to sing is the least of your worries. Karaoke is not taken seriously in the United States, rather it is a way for people to bond and see how they act. Think of it how businessmen view golf. It doesn’t matter whether you win or lose, but your actions as the game is played. Can you keep cool if you make a bad pick? Do your songs reflect a hope to engage others in song, or are they more selfish choices? In case your singing is particularly awful, are you aware of this or woefully ignorant.
Nothing I say or do can fully prepare you for when this day comes. Keep in mind that this is a very interactive sort of activity so you may want to be attuned to some of those surrounding you. Since it is Karaoke, you usually have never been to the place before and you’ll only know half of the people there. My personal experience has varied between being a fun work-related gathering to a way to hook me up with other people’s friends. But whatever your circumstances, you might want to follow these basic guidelines:
1. The 80s – For whatever reason, 80 pop songs brings out the best in any group. Picking out a band like Wham!, New Order, The Human League, and various 80s pop hits strike a particular chord among people. Mostly this is due to people’s familiarity with the material, but also due to that decade’s insistence on fun and accessibility.
2. Avoid contemporary pop hits – I can’t stress this one enough. Just because you listen to the radio on your way to work doesn’t mean everybody does. In fact, most people don’t. That’s why the older the pop hit, the better. Older pop hits mean that the audience will know it, from when they didn’t have a choice and had to listen to the radio.
3. Bohemian Rhapsody – Everyone knows this. It is like in humanity’s DNA. Your group might consist of a Yak herder from Mongolia, an Amazonian tribesman who’s never had contact with those outside a 5 mile radius, and an Amish farmer, and they’d all be singing along with this. Don’t ask me why this works, I feel like Freddie Mercury might have engaged in some serious genetic testing in the 70s to come up with something that appeals to literally every living thing on Earth. When I told somebody that people just knew this, he stated “That’s nonsense”. When I saw him on Monday, he said the song kept on finding him on the radio and he was hooked. People just love this song.
4. Avoid too many Musical references – Let me explain. I like musicals but I do not love them. How I feel about them is generally most people’s opinions. What happens when a musical nerd gets hold of that remote and programs in a bunch of musicals no one knows, oh geez. Prepare yourself for a harsh, difficult night. One of these may be acceptable, but do multiple ones and people will get drunk off their ass to numb themselves.
5. Use Irony – Irony was made for Karaoke. People don’t pick their favorite songs for Karoke, they pick the corniest ones. I’m not a huge Doobie Brothers fan, but singing their contrived nonsense is great fun. Taking any popular AM hit and singing it works wonders. Plus, another approach is to take a song and have a ridiculous singing style to it. Do these only once, once is all that is needed for the joke to work, otherwise it gets stale.
6. Don’t do Karaoke in the Philippines – This one is the only real one I have on here. People take it very seriously there, like life and death serious. A New York Times article described how one could get killed for poorly singing a Frank Sinatra song. So yeah, you might want to sing in Malaysia or something. Getting beaten up for being a crappy singer seems like a poor evening indeed.
7. Inflection – Use it. Even the most monotone of us has some kind of inflection. By not using it properly, you might embarrass yourself. I have an example: one of my friends can’t sing to save his life. Rather than realize this, he continued to pick out songs that specifically required important inflection on key words. One song came on, the Rolling Stones’ “(I can’t get no) Satisfaction”. As he was singing the “noes” he inflected incorrectly and made it sound like he just had an orgasm. Seeing what happened after he did that, please make sure to use it, at least a little bit.
8. No Lady Gaga – Maybe this is a personal pet peeve, but whenever I’ve been out with friends and someone picks one of her songs, a few people decide that’s a good time to go to the bathroom. After enough time has passed, you can use her songs maybe. But right now, her music in particular is trashy without the fun needed to make it likable. I know I’ve stated “no contemporary” earlier, but this one is a definite buzz killer. Everybody does know her work, that’s not the problem. It is that it is still all around us and we have to deal with that garbage infecting our eardrums enough. So please, grant us an hour or two of salvation away from it.
9. Pay your share – Uh, this one is after the singing. Karaoke translates for some people into “Leave early and have the host pay $400”. Thankfully this has never personally happened to me, but I’ve seen it done to others. It ends up putting people in a tough situation, and makes you less likely to be as close of friends in the future. So be kind, please make sure to pay your full amount before you depart into the night.
10. Do this at night – I have no idea why this would be in the daytime. Apparently some people do that. That just looks like you’re currently unemployed or particularly bored. Wait until 5pm at the earliest. Just use the same cutoff time you have for alcohol.
Hopefully this will guide you on the path to pure Karaoke enlightenment. I’m not guaranteeing that you’ll find perfection with this, but you can avoid a lot of the pratfalls that worry so many others.