I had tackled “Torn.” I had gotten tackled by the St. Elmo’s Fire theme. And I had tonsil-humped the shit out of Electric Light Orchestra’s “Livin’ Thing,” reaching into my voice box for some strange magic that would take me higher and higher, baby. “I’m taking a diiiive!” I had yelled, to the canned cellos on the backing track, with two of my friends clapping in time on the couch. “I am taking a diiiiive! Because I can’t stop the sliiide!” Yes, truly, I had sung myself some “Livin’ Thing.” And every song I remembered singing just reminded me of a dozen others I wanted to sing right now.
It had been a long night. It had been a crazy night. When could I do it again? Where was I going to look for it? Who was going to stop me? Where are all the people singing, and how can I get there? This night has opened my eyes, and I will never sleep again.
One night of song had kicked open a few doors for me emotionally—I could tell that already—clueless as I felt about what was hiding on the other side. It was one of those and suddenlys that shove you into the final ten minutes of the Lifetime movie, the part where the heroine makes a bold move to escape out the passenger-side window or hit back with the shoe. It wasn’t the end of a story, just a twist, one of the transitions I dread in advance and resent after they arrive. Except this time there was no resentment whatsoever. Only anticipation.
This was my first time, and other times soon followed. Once I got a taste of what karaoke was, I wanted more, and I began looking into places where this sort of thing happened. Staying out late reminded me how much I loved staying out late. There were still a lot of movies on TV; I just wasn’t home watching them as often. Obviously, singing Natalie Imbruglia songs wasn’t any kind of cure for the blues. It was just a sign of life. Whatever lay outside my room, it was time to go looking for it. I’d kept myself locked up too long.
I felt like Keri Russell in The Babysitter’s Seduction, the one where she’s a high school diving champion who gives up her athletic career to have an affair with the dad from My So-Called Life, except she doesn’t realize until the last ten minutes that he’s not just a regular Lifetime dad-skank, he’s a psycho killer bastard maniac and he is in fact chasing her through the house with a knife and like, right now so she runs up to the roof where she blinks and gets an and suddenly where she remembers that she knows how to dive. So she dives. Off the roof, into the swimming pool, out of danger. She always knew how to dive—it just took a while for her to remember.
Once I remembered how to stay out late, I did it every chance I could. I guess I never forgot how to stay out late; I just hadn’t noticed I needed to. There are things we know how to do when we’re on a roof. There are times when we have to remember what they are. If we get lucky, something reminds us to move.
SIX
8:59 p.m.:
Livin’ on a Prayer
Let’s get a couple things out of the way right now. One of these things is called “Livin’ on a Prayer,” and the other is “Don’t Stop Believin’.”
These are easily the two most popular karaoke songs. Indeed, as far as many of my fellow revelers are concerned, they seem to be the only two karaoke songs. Once, spending a night at Sing Sing with my friend Dave, who works as a wedding videographer, he got stressed by all the believin’ and livin’ we heard through the walls. “These same two songs all night,” he said, shaking his head. “This is like being at work.”
But that’s because these two songs express the karaoke worldview at its most extreme. The idea of a lost and lonely solitary voice, fading into a massive communal chorus, lifted up by all these other streetlight people. We’re all just strangers wandering through the night, with nothing except the song to bring us together. But we’ve got each other, and that’s a lot.
Bon Jovi really nailed this karaoke ethos in their video for “Livin’ on a Prayer”—the first verse is the band in rehearsal, and the film is in black-and-white. Then, just in time for the second chorus, the audience arrives, and boom—it goes from black-and-white to color. That’s the essence of Bon Jovi right there, and it’s also the essence of karaoke. Any of us can sing by ourselves any time we want to, alone in our rooms. We go to karaoke for something more. It’s the crowd that brings the color.
Going out to sing means you have to adopt a staunch pro-believin’ stance. But it also means you have to suspend your rational doubts. “Don’t Stop Believin’” isn’t about actually believing in anything, just as nobody in “Livin’ on a Prayer” prays for anything in particular. The belief is in belief itself; the prayer is just for more prayers; the song is just an excuse for people to make noise. Samuel Beckett could have invented karaoke for one of his existential dramas, except if he had done so, Waiting for Godot would have ended with Didi and Gogo linking arms to sing “You Give Love a Bad Name.”
It makes all the sense in the world that in the 2000s, Journey became the first band ever to hire their new lead singer after hearing him do Journey karaoke. The guitarist Neal Schon went on YouTube, looking for people singing his songs, and found one from the Philippines who did a perfect Steve Perry imitation. Does anybody care who is officially singing “Don’t Stop Believin’” or “Livin’ on a Prayer”? The singer can’t own them. The whole point of them is that they’re our songs.
It also makes sense that the karaoke state of mind is so perfectly encapsulated in these twin apostrophe-abusin’ anthems from the eighties, pop’s most extroverted and bombastic decade. That’s when songs got big, cheesy, overstated, with long fade-outs and shamelessly contrived group sing-alongs. In other words, songs perfect for a room full of hoarse, rowdy strangers who can scream “Whoa-ho!” on cue. It seems so strange, in retrospect, that karaoke didn’t factor into how Americans heard music back then. We didn’t even know it was coming. But the karaoke train was on its way—a midnight train, going anywhere.
A brief timeline of the dawn of karaoke:
1981: Journey release the album Escape. I buy the tape as a Christmas present for my sister Tracey, at the Strawberries record store in Boston’s Downtown Crossing. Then I walk a couple of blocks to the underground head shop Stairway to Heaven and purchase two spiffy new buttons for my jacket, endorsing the Pretenders and the Psychedelic Furs. That’s a good day of commerce.
1986: David Byrne directs the Talking Heads’ “Wild Wild Life” video. Always ahead of the game, the Heads set their latest video in a Japanese karaoke club, where various oddball characters step to the mike to sing a line or two. It’s the first appearance of karaoke in American pop culture, as far as I can tell, and it’s also a great song. I see this video several hundred times while waiting for the next Whitney or Madonna clip. At no point do I ever think, “Hmmmm, that looks like fun.” Instead, I think, “Wow, what a strange and exotic phenomenon. But where are you, Madonna? Open your heart already! Ritorna, Madonna! Abbiamo ancora bisogno di te!”
1986: A music industry news item from Billboard, dated April 6. Headline: JAPAN EXPECTED TO APPROVE SINGALONG CLUB LICENSE FEE. The article explains to U.S. music-biz insiders that there’s this new fad happening in Japan—“public establishments with ‘karaoke,’ or sing-along equipment.” Billboard estimates that “there are about 200,000 bars and halls equipped with karaoke hardware.” It also notes that “customers are charged from 55 cents to $1.10 for each song with karaoke accompaniment.”
(Note: I only found this news item because I was having an idiotic drunken argument over the real reason why the pop group Wham! broke up, and I wanted to prove I was right, so I went searching in the Billboard archives, where I happened to find this article on the same page. Lesson: Talking about George Michael makes you learn things!)
1987: Lip-synching becomes popular as an organized youth-group activity, with high schools holding contests in which kids dress up and act out. In rural Rhode Island, a girl I know wins top prize at her high school for dressing up as Sting, with a derby and umbrella, to lip-synch “Englishman in New York.”
1988: Bon Jovi release New Jersey. Everybody agre
es this album is nowhere near as good as Slippery When Wet, the 1986 smash that included “Livin’ on a Prayer.” But it contains my favorite Bon Jovi ballad, “I’ll Be There for You,” with the chorus, “I’ll be there for you / These five words I swear to you.” It becomes the big Dial MTV hit for the summer of 1989. I talk a couple of friends into joining me when Bon Jovi come to town in June with Skid Row opening up, and this is the song that gets all the lighters out. These days nobody seems to remember “I’ll Be There for You.” I always want to sing it at karaoke, and nobody even pretends to like it. Sample crowd-sourced review: “These five words I swear to you: This song sucks my balls.”
Someday, history will vindicate me. Until then, everybody likes “Livin’ on a Prayer” better, and that’s fine with me.
1990: I get my first look at karaoke in real life. It’s a family reunion with my in-laws, at a theme park in South Carolina called Carowinds. Since it’s the summer of 1990, The Simpsons is new, and the park is full of tourists wearing bootleg Black Bart T-shirts. The mayor of Washington, D.C., Marion Barry, just got busted smoking crack on camera in a hotel room, so lots of people sport the summer’s other big T-shirt: “The Bitch Set Barry Up.”
On Saturday night we all trek out to the Long Branch Saloon, a country bar down the road in Rock Hill. There’s a cover band onstage doing all the hits of the summer, as well as the regular crowd-pleasers. They play “A Country Boy Can Survive” and “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” and “Dumas Walker” three times apiece. It’s the kind of place where last call is 4 a.m., but they reopen the bar at 5 a.m., so they just make announcements that everybody needs to buy extra pitchers of beer for the hour when the bar is closed. To make sure nobody leaves, that’s when the saloon hosts its karaoke contest. People get up and sing, while the house band plays.
Aunt Caroline does the family proud with a tear-jerker from the sixties I’ve never heard before, “Don’t Touch Me” by Jeannie Seely. This is easily the best performance of the night. Most of the others are pure tone-deaf drunken bravado. One guy wheezes through Travis Tritt’s “Country Club,” while another does David Allan Coe’s “You Never Even Called Me by My Name.” A blond lassie in the Lucy Ewing/Tanya Tucker mold does “San Antonio Rose,” tossing her skirt ever higher to win over the crowd.
But the winner in terms of audience applause is the Elvis Guy. As I will later learn, every Southern karaoke place has the Elvis Guy. A couple of other contestants are doing Elvis songs, but only this man is the true bona fide takin’-care-of-business peanut-butter-and-bananas Elvis Guy. This guy has the shades and the ’burns; more than anything, he has the conviction. He does “American Trilogy,” which I’ve never heard before. He begins with “Dixie,” segues into “All My Trials,” then unites the nation with “The Battle-Hymn of the Republic.” Here is the entire Civil War in five minutes, ending with a pietà of the Elvis Guy holding President Lincoln’s body in one arm and Elvis Aron Presley’s body in the other, sobbing over both fallen kings, yet somehow rising above to proclaim, “Glory, glory, hallelujah. His truth . . . is . . . marching . . . ONNNN!”
At our table, nursing our nearly-sixty-minutes-old pitchers of Bud, we all still think Aunt Caroline deserves the trophy. But I’m not really surprised when the Elvis Guy wins.
1992: The Crying Game hits the Seminole Theater on Route 29 in Charlottesville, Virginia. It’s an Irish film about an IRA assassin who discovers his humanity—where else?—in a karaoke bar. He falls for the femme fatale, at the place where she sings “The Crying Game.”
The movie is surprisingly forgotten these days, especially considering how many other movies have copied the karaoke-as-exposition motif. But at the time, it’s a huge crossover hit. Boy George sings the theme song, doing for karaoke what Casablanca did for “La Marseillaise.” Karaoke is officially a “thing now,” in the nineties idiom of “that’s such a thing now.” Such establishments in the United States might still be scarce as hen’s teeth, but this movie plays in malls and multiplexes around the country.
My local Top 40 station in Charlottesville gives away a movie poster, autographed in a gold Sharpie by Boy George himself. I win by being the first listener to call into Z-95 when the morning DJ plays “Karma Chameleon.” The Crying Game poster hangs proudly in my bathroom for the rest of the nineties. Boy George’s handwriting is as fabulous as everything else about him.
1993: My town finally gets a karaoke joint, when Mingles opens on West Main Street, across from the Greyhound terminal and the statue of Lewis and Clark. At Mingles, the slogan on the napkin is WINKIN’, DRINKIN’ AND EATIN’! The napkin doesn’t mention “singin’,” but that’s the novelty that brings most of us in. It’s a mixed crowd, mostly happy-hour partiers straight from the office in suits and heels. Feisty paralegals hop on the tiny stage to sing “Bang a Gong,” while their tipsy bosses go for “Love on the Rocks.” Gongs get banged; drinks get spilled. The manager likes to get up and do mid-period Billy Joel songs such as “Tell Her About It.” And the Elvis Guy sits by himself at the bar, brooding, awaiting his turn at “American Trilogy.”
Do I ever get up the nerve to sing at Mingles? Not in my ungodliest nightmares. Do I have fun watching everybody else express themselves? Always. Mingles goes out of business within a year.
1997: Julia Roberts stars in My Best Friend’s Wedding. Straight male America’s long, slow, denial-ravaged march to the reluctant realization that Cameron Diaz is not going to appear naked in this movie is only partly ameliorated by Rupert Everett’s climactic rendition of “I Say a Little Prayer.”
As a Hollywood rom-com, this gets much bigger exposure than The Crying Game. It’s safe to say that this movie is the real fountainhead of the Hollywood karaoke scene as we know it. From now on, what the “recognition scene” was to Shakespearean drama, the “awkward eye contact during oldies duet scene” is to the garden-variety worse-than-rubella romantic comedy. At this point, even normal people know what karaoke looks like.
(Postscript: A couple of years later I interview Rupert Everett and he is possibly the grumpiest brat I ever have to spend twenty minutes being polite to. But Christ, I have to admit he’s hot. I see why they say a little prayer for you, Rupert.)
2002: I learn about the existence of home karaoke machines. You mean, you can sing all night and not leave the house? Or even put your pants on? Apparently, that’s what they do in L.A. I hear this bombshell from Jimmy Kimmel when I interview him for Rolling Stone. “The friends all come over,” he tells me. “If I get drunk, I just pass out and somebody drags me upstairs. When I really mean business, I whip out the Neil Diamond. That’s when the clothes come off and everybody goes home. You can’t just sing those songs. You have to live those songs.”
2013: Somewhere in your town, tonight, right about now, there is a karaoke dump that stays open far too late. These two songs are getting sung. One of them is revving up right this minute; the other is just a few minutes away. Find that place. Breathe in the air. It’s where those songs belong, and it’s probably where you belong, too. Journey and the Jove, on repeat. They offer sanctuary to us all.
SEVEN
9:52 p.m.:
Crazy in Love
Dirty secret: I know a guy who sings karaoke for cash. He’s a pro, working out of a bar in a mobbed-up corner of Brooklyn. I wouldn’t believe him if I hadn’t seen him with my own eyes, but this guy is good. The bar he inhabits has a twice-weekly karaoke night, with a slightly posh clientele, the kind of folks who would rather be in an upscale wine haven. These patrons have rehearsed their pronunciation of “rioja.” Some night they need a little encouragement to stop chatting about Homeland and artisanal cheese and make it rain at two bucks per song. So the bar owners secretly hire my friend, let’s call him J.J., to help break the ice. He sits at the bar, looking like just another mild-mannered customer. But when the room gets quiet, that’s the cue for J.J. to go to work. He gets paid to do the wild thing.
I have watched him on the job many times, and I have
never seen him fail. He has two proven routines, both classics of eighties booty-hop: Salt-N-Pepa’s “Push It” and J. J. Fad’s “Supersonic.” But his knockout is Beyoncé’s “Crazy in Love.” This wiggly dude busts out his pom-pom moves, and you can see why his pockets got the mumps. Watching him work the mike makes you want to be part of the fun. He isn’t a great singer, but that’s how he reminds people there aren’t any quality standards when it comes to karaoke. He makes you think, “Hey, it’s easy.” Then he sits down. He’s good, which is why we’re all broke and he’s so paid.
How much do the owners pay him? Forty bucks cash, plus his bar tab, plus all the clams and french fries he can eat.
I am kind of obsessed with his hustle, since I had no idea there was any such thing as a k-pro. It requires covert-op skills, as well as a weapons-grade ability to demolish inhibitions. In fact, J.J. puts the “bitch” in “leave your inhibitions at the door.” Nobody would suspect he’s working undercover. When he lets me spy on him, I have to keep remembering not to high-five him.
Sometimes he makes me wonder, “Who else is a pro? How many people in this bar are secretly pros? Maybe I’m the only amateur here tonight, the only mark getting shilled? What if my whole life is an elaborately staged prank where I’m the only person I know who isn’t on the payroll of some secret Matrix-style karaoke conspiracy?”
But watching J.J. also makes me wonder about the amateur aesthetic in general. That’s the essence of karaoke if anything is: never for money, always for love. In the many years I’ve been interviewing performers for Rolling Stone, one of my go-to questions is “What’s your karaoke jam?” Nobody ever has to think about it. They name a song right away, or start singing it, or confess they get too shy—that seems to be surprisingly common for actors and comedians, which is fascinating in itself. (Bill Hader, one of the funniest people on earth, told me he can’t do it at all because of his circle of friends. He gets too intimidated by how good Will Arnett and Jason Sudeikis are. All I could think was “Amazing. You do the Stefon routine on TV in front of millions of people, but karaoke is where you get the bashfuls?”)
Turn Around Bright Eyes: The Rituals of Love and Karaoke Page 4
