Karaoke

This past weekend I went to a karaoke bar over in Chinatown. Don't get me wrong, it's a lot of fun, but it's surprising how few words people actually know to songs (and how fewer still they know when they aren't sober). After particularly bad versions of "Ice Ice Baby" and "Yellow Submarine" a thought struck me. People often talk about their "Go-to" karaoke songs but no one really ever has one. This needs to change. Everyone needs a song that they know all the words to and at least sort of know the melody. The song need not be indicative of your personality, but the song does have to fit you. My song of preference is "When You Were Young" by The Killers. It's not too long and I can easily get in the rock star mode with it, even if my version is terrible. It's serious, but not too serious and enough people know it to make it worth singing.

You should also try and keep in mind songs that work well for a group, last night for instance, "Hey Jude" and "Livin' On A Prayer" were the biggest hits, so it definitely wouldn't hurt to brush up on your classic rock anthems. Finally, we cannot forget the best karaoke song of all time "Don't Stop Believing." For some reason, the place I went did not have it, but there is literally no song better for karaoke than that. It works great either as an opener to get everybody warmed up or as a closer to bring the house down before everyone leaves.

In conclusion, karaoke is fun and bad singing is hilarious in this situation, but what isn't fun is when people just mumble the words on the screen because they don't know them or the tune. So pick your "Go-to" song and just rock out with it.