Most fun at the karaoke competition
Joy is a YouTube backing track
The basement was in the palm of our hands, or it was in our eyes. It was a risky one - a new song, checked we knew the lyrics at the table with the courage shot, gave each other a look to count in the key change. I am always amazed by her ease with it, she moves like no one’s watching or like they are and she knows it and she’s used to it. I try to follow that lead. We take turns on harmonies cause we don’t plan them, they just seem to come to us - we’re just that good at this.
That was ‘Like A Prayer’ and it won us a prize. “Most fun”. My mum said that’s the only prize a person should want to win and that’s the sort of wisdom that will stick with me. It was all an accident anyways, a poorly timed name on a list right when the amateur hour ticked into a serious contest, but only a loser watches karaoke and doesn’t participate. I vowed long ago to never date someone that won’t sing a song - come on.
What would you be so scared of? The only people judged at karaoke are the people that are too good and/or try too hard. The people that want to sing a slow, long, sad song. The people who want to sing Adele for some reason. There are plenty of bad karaoke songs but most you can carry off, except ballads that aren’t melodramatic enough. Even then, a good sport can make it work.
One time I saw a man get down on his knees during a rendition of ‘She’s A Lady’ and near enough propose to a stranger. It was so charming, I think she would’ve said yes. I love it when people sing the guitar solos too, something I implemented a few weeks back when I was embolded to do ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ all because that night had something special (mic stands and a stage) and it all went to our heads. That night in the basement, the real Most Fun winner should’ve have been the guy that sang ‘Love Shack’ so effectively that I made a mental note to go home, learn every words and one day, when the booze hits in the right god complex kind of way, to give it a go. It joins a long list of song waiting for the right night: ‘Head Over Heels’, ‘Young Hearts Run Free’. I’d really love to do ‘Gloria’ by Patti Smith but there’s never quite the right audience for it. You always have to consider that. Around the music journalists at the festival, because it always ends like this, Talking Heads are a safe bet, ‘Once In A Lifetime’ has never failed me there. But ‘Girlfriend’ did – in Oslo, the critics didn’t like Avril Lavigne. They cheered louder for Justin Bieber and I doubted the whole industry. I have learnt the lesson to not sing a Pulp song in the South, they don’t give it the energy it deserves. In certain countries, singing ‘My Way’ at karaoke is illegal as several people have been murdered in bar fights following awful renditions. Karaoke rage is a real thing, there are cases world wide – wrong song and you could be offed.
It's a difficult choice. It’s a revealing choice but a beautiful. Guy at the pub says the most common song is ‘Before He Cheats’ at the night he runs. He moans that it all gets less fun week on week, hour by hour, song by song - but I think it would always be beautiful. A front row seat to the best joy in us all, the easiest thing to reach in and grab it for a 3 minute burst of the undiluted stuff. Everybody is happy at karaoke but who am I to say, I don’t work there.
All I know is that at Sebright Arms on a Friday, I’ve never loved my friends more than when they’re holding those beaten up microphones, or when I hear one of them naturally do the little background ab lib bits, sprinkling in the details. It all reminds me of this Alexa Chung Vogue video I saw at 16 – the it girl up on stage in a denim dress singing ‘Blue Denim’, a Stevie Nicks deep cut, like it’s an anthem. They look like Charlotte, Lost In Translation, glowing and casually talented, like Summer up there singing ‘Sugar Land’, sometimes Tom, drunk and fumbling through, but that’s okay.
Maybe I’ve never loved anyone as much as I do when I see them sing a song. Or more than that, when I see their body loosen, their speaking voice surrender to something else, the excitement and nervousness fizz up onto their face with a giddy little smile, maybe a suave coolness, a performance to it all. Maybe I’ve never loved anyone as much as I do when I see them sing a song because maybe that’s the pinnacle, I can’t think of anything more gorgeous than joy, I can’t think of anything more joyful than this.
I have been in love with it for a long time as every person I’ve ever been in love with, so far, has been a musician of some sort in some degree. I have watched everyone I love up on stage and looked on with awe. Sometimes I get shy to look at them, flicking my eyes around but always coming back hungry for more and oddly breathless. I can never decide whether to look at their jaw, their lips or their eyes. I’ve watched boys I’ve loved under dancing stage lights, flickering across their face like flashes of feeling as if directed from my heartbeat; in time and fluttering and red washed, maybe blue. I’ve taken them home and kissed their cheeks as many times as they’ll allow, each one a thank you for letting me see it - that beautiful splinter between intimacy and outwardness, them and everybody else, the deepest inner laugh and how they’ll show it. It’s just the same at Sebright when my friend has a mic and the backing track is tinny and I can feel the love in my eyes and I buy them a drink after.
After I die, there will be a projector and two low quality microphones, a HDMI cable running to a laptop and YouTube open. My loved ones will get up at the wake and sing me a song, one they know I loved. Is that an egotistical final request? I won’t be there to care but I want everyone to sing, someone do a routine so good the room is in the palm of their hand, one of my friends still doing the harmonies, performing a playlist of songs in the voices I love best. I’ll put that in my will.