When I learned that Shigeichi Negishi, creator of the karaoke machine, had died aged 100, I was unmoved by those who hailed him as a legend. Was his show-off box really worth celebrating? Maybe they were doing a bad cover version of grief.
When I sing, it sounds like someone in pain. I’ve always suspected karaoke is one of those supposedly liberating activities, proselytised by people who happen to be proficient. Like dancing, drawing or running. They want things they’re good at to be widespread, so their skill gains currency. To stay in the upper quartile, they need people below them – that’s where newbies come in. It’s impossible to be bad at karaoke! I can hear them laughing.
“Stop having imaginary arguments,” says Lina, “and come out to a karaoke bar.” An ex-girlfriend and forever friend, Lina still believes in me getting over my fears and living a fuller life. She’s also a trained singer. But we round up a few of our pop-loving friends on a Saturday night, and suddenly my nightmare is real.
“Can’t believe you’ve never done karaoke. Flabbergasted,” says Rebecca. (I’ve never heard anyone use that word.) She and I are close and she intuits that I’m dreading this. For me, music is private. I don’t like gigs, though everyone’s supposed to. I like walking around with noise-cancelling headphones, listening to punishingly sad songs. I have this thing where if I raise my voice, I start to cry. I can’t see how this will carry over to karaoke, unless I channel Connor from Succession, singing Leonard Cohen in front of a mortified crowd.
“Shakespears Sister is too long! Gaga is too fast! Don’t be cool!” Lina calls, as we troop into a profoundly purple room. At least it’s private. In a chill way, she has brought a prepared list of songs that work well, to save dithering. “Don’t try the Meatloaf!” I start vibrating with anxiety, and she draws me aside. Why not start with a suave speak-sing, she suggests, like Common People by Pulp?
But when some rogue agent puts on I Wanna Dance With Somebody I find myself grabbing for the mic. A rush of blood? Oppositional disorder? Note: this is not a tale of letting the caged bird free, discovering I had a golden instrument all along. The song starts on a note I cannot hit and builds from there. This is Mr Blobby attempting a triple Axel with untied skates. There are trills, melismas, held notes, yodels. At one point, I hear a dying sound and realise it’s me.
The thing is, it’s not just me. My friends are all wailing, too. I didn’t realise there’d be two microphones and we’d be packed around them. The caterwauling bounces off the walls, the ragged sound of uninhibited togetherness. Mostly, I can’t even hear myself and let go. When I tune into others struggling, it makes me smile. But it’s not schadenfreude, its something else. Lina leans over to tell me a secret: “It’s impossible to be good at karaoke.”
Steven Pinker, the Beethoven-looking rockstar Harvard psychologist, once made the painful assertion that music is an evolutionary by-product, inessential for reproduction or survival. If it disappeared from our species, we’d carry on fine. My survival, not to mention any reproductive activities, are intimately bound up with the stuff. Other thinkers argue social cohesion is an innate part of music and very necessary. I know which team I’m drawn to. Turns out I wanna sing with somebody, or some bodies, who love me.
Have you ever been in a karaoke booth with blood in your ears, singing Thong Song by Sisqo to your ex? How about Islands in the Stream? All That She Wants? The Boy is Mine? I duet with Rebecca on Macy Gray’s I Try, the sound of two alley cats fighting and making a baby, who also comes out fighting. When our other friends join in for Teenage Dirtbag, it feels ridiculous, overwrought and earnest, like being 17 again.
Lina’s right: no one wants you to be good at karaoke. It’s about the emotional resonance of a room and participation is at odds with perfection. Bangers only, please. And you really don’t know as many words as you think. I stare, stupefied, at the lyrics to the Brandy & Monica classic, which I have played half a million times and apparently never heard. I drop the mic 30 seconds into Friend Like Me from Aladdin, and skip the song. I’m not Robin Williams. No one blames me.
Bertolt Brecht praised the untrained singer, how a voice that cracks better conveys longing. Humans yearn to merge with art and art yearns to merge with something higher. I come out of the moment and see my group of friends, these separate organisms who choose to spend their finite time together. I grasp how beauty is borne of imperfection. We are fallible, our voices fail, but there is this useless, crucial love in us, and while we have breath we offer it up, wondering if we’ll be saved.
Karaoke translates as “The Empty Orchestra”. Isn’t that a wondrous phrase? Thanks guys, thanks Lina, and thanks, Shigeichi. As tributes go, my impugning the memory of Whitney Houston may not be impressive. But it is sincere, and that’s better.
