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Authors: Rob Sheffield
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bringing our different and unequal talents, and then we start even. I think that’s why actual rock stars love karaoke. It’s one thing for nonsingers to revel in a chance to sing, but it seems to be a whole different trip for actual singers, slumming it in the trenches with the rest of us. Robert Plant told a funny story once in Rolling Stone about doing karaoke at a bar in China, where nobody recognized him. “In China it’s a big deal, so I said, ‘Let me do “It’s Now or Never,” by Elvis, so I can really bring the house down!’ But this guy from Taiwan was better than me. He did ‘Tie a Yellow Ribbon,’ by Tony Orlando and Dawn. When he was done I thought, ‘Fuck me! I was outdone by a Taiwanese guy singing Tony Orlando!’”
When I got to meet Simon Le Bon and Nick Rhodes of Duran Duran, after some gracious comments about my previous book, they asked what I was working on next. As soon as I mentioned my karaoke book, they started telling stories about the first time they sang karaoke. “It was Malaysia in 1988,” Nick Rhodes said. “Everyone was singing Elvis songs—’Are You Ronesome Tonight?’” Simon Le Bon sang Madonna’s “Material Girl,” while Elton John’s manager danced around doing a striptease.
As they’re telling me these stories, I’m astounded, because these are actual rock stars . They’ve had their own spotlights, on their own stages, for thirty years now. They’ve played their own songs for millions of people around the world. Why do they even remember a night of karaoke? Why did this experience make an impression on them, out of all the countless nights they’ve spent making music? Simon Le Bon never needs to sing anyone else’s songs to get applause. So why does he cherish fond memories of his night as a material girl?
MY FRIEND TANYA, WHO GREW up in Sri Lanka during the civil war, remembers going to sing karaoke all the time with her grandmother. All the old ladies would gather in the basement of the Kalumbo Hilton to sing “Tie a Yellow Ribbon” (the same Tony Orlando song that foiled Robert Plant). They never did Sri Lankan songs—only American pop chestnuts. Tanya’s song was Elvis Presley’s “In the Ghetto.” “Karaoke only got big when the war started,” she told me. “Karaoke and casinos. It wasn’t safe to go out on the streets anymore, so those were places to go after curfew time. It was a way of expressing joy, when people really needed one.”
What a picture: a little kid in a war zone, with all these old ladies holed up in a hotel basement karaoke lounge, singing “In the Ghetto” to tune out the gunfire outside.
That same power translates everywhere, all around the world, because nothing expresses joy like singing together. That’s why it inspired such fervor in America as soon as it arrived. To enter into that karaoke mind-set, you have to leave behind all your notions of good or bad, right or wrong, in tune or out of tune. The kara in the word karaoke is the same as the one in karate , which means “empty hand.” They’re both “empty” arts because you have no weapons and no musical instruments to hide behind—only your courage, your heart, and your will to inflict pain.
In any age, there are social practices that seem acceptable at the time, until future generations decide they’re barbaric. Watch any old movie with a hospital scene and you’ll see doctors chain-smoke in the OR. Even in The Hunger , the David Bowie horror movie from the eighties, you can see Susan Sarandon lighting up in her white medical coat. (She’s having hot vampire sex with Bowie and Catherine Deneuve, so smoking may be the least dangerous thing she’ll do all day.) It looks bizarre to us, but are we really so different? Have we evolved? Or have we just changed our blind spots?
In our time, there are many equivalents to the “smoking in hospitals” fad, such as “jogging on the sidewalk,” “texting at rock shows,” or “ruining a perfectly
When I got to meet Simon Le Bon and Nick Rhodes of Duran Duran, after some gracious comments about my previous book, they asked what I was working on next. As soon as I mentioned my karaoke book, they started telling stories about the first time they sang karaoke. “It was Malaysia in 1988,” Nick Rhodes said. “Everyone was singing Elvis songs—’Are You Ronesome Tonight?’” Simon Le Bon sang Madonna’s “Material Girl,” while Elton John’s manager danced around doing a striptease.
As they’re telling me these stories, I’m astounded, because these are actual rock stars . They’ve had their own spotlights, on their own stages, for thirty years now. They’ve played their own songs for millions of people around the world. Why do they even remember a night of karaoke? Why did this experience make an impression on them, out of all the countless nights they’ve spent making music? Simon Le Bon never needs to sing anyone else’s songs to get applause. So why does he cherish fond memories of his night as a material girl?
MY FRIEND TANYA, WHO GREW up in Sri Lanka during the civil war, remembers going to sing karaoke all the time with her grandmother. All the old ladies would gather in the basement of the Kalumbo Hilton to sing “Tie a Yellow Ribbon” (the same Tony Orlando song that foiled Robert Plant). They never did Sri Lankan songs—only American pop chestnuts. Tanya’s song was Elvis Presley’s “In the Ghetto.” “Karaoke only got big when the war started,” she told me. “Karaoke and casinos. It wasn’t safe to go out on the streets anymore, so those were places to go after curfew time. It was a way of expressing joy, when people really needed one.”
What a picture: a little kid in a war zone, with all these old ladies holed up in a hotel basement karaoke lounge, singing “In the Ghetto” to tune out the gunfire outside.
That same power translates everywhere, all around the world, because nothing expresses joy like singing together. That’s why it inspired such fervor in America as soon as it arrived. To enter into that karaoke mind-set, you have to leave behind all your notions of good or bad, right or wrong, in tune or out of tune. The kara in the word karaoke is the same as the one in karate , which means “empty hand.” They’re both “empty” arts because you have no weapons and no musical instruments to hide behind—only your courage, your heart, and your will to inflict pain.
In any age, there are social practices that seem acceptable at the time, until future generations decide they’re barbaric. Watch any old movie with a hospital scene and you’ll see doctors chain-smoke in the OR. Even in The Hunger , the David Bowie horror movie from the eighties, you can see Susan Sarandon lighting up in her white medical coat. (She’s having hot vampire sex with Bowie and Catherine Deneuve, so smoking may be the least dangerous thing she’ll do all day.) It looks bizarre to us, but are we really so different? Have we evolved? Or have we just changed our blind spots?
In our time, there are many equivalents to the “smoking in hospitals” fad, such as “jogging on the sidewalk,” “texting at rock shows,” or “ruining a perfectly
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