In a certain part of X, the social media network formerly known as Twitter, there is a running joke that Jennifer Lopez – pop star, actor, source code for Google Images – has been doing something like karaoke all along. Lopez’s I’m Real (remix) and Ain’t It Funny (remix) rank among the most indelible radio hits of the 2000s, but the supple, seductive vocals you hear are by Ashanti, whose demo recordings were mysteriously left intact on the final tracks. “The Little Mermaid is really based on how Jennifer Lopez stole Ashanti’s voice,” joked one fan.
When it comes to the real thing, the real thing being karaoke, Lopez can hold her own. This past weekend, a video emerged of Lopez smashing I Will Survive at a restaurant in Capri, Italy, belting out the lyrics like a diva raised on the gospel of Sylvester and Donna Summer. She also performed a favourite from her own catalogue, proving that, if Let’s Get Loud belongs at the 2021 presidential inauguration, then it certainly also has a place at the Taverna Anema e Core. In the clips posted online, Lopez sounds better than she has in ages, almost as if she would like to remind everyone that her recent box office duds never happened and she possesses a good voice in fine shape. Incidentally, Lopez’s new album is due this fall.
Karaoke is an equal-opportunity sport, open to anyone regardless of the octaves in their range or ability to hit a note. That might even be the point. Carrie Underwood, who is karaoke mad, once remarked: “Karaoke is not meant for people who can sing!” Even so, there’s been a recent uptick of karaoke videos from artists like Lopez, Demi Lovato and Ed Sheeran, who embrace its unstudied sense of fun while also sounding markedly better than anyone doing karaoke has a right to. Intentionally or not, the trend also lines up with the unstudied intimacy that has come to define the music and images of young chart juggernauts like Billie Eilish, Olivia Rodrigo and SZA, whose lyrics sound like your group chat, and who shitpost just like you. For glamorous stars like Lopez or Lovato, spontaneous-feeling clips are a way of seeming relatable – at least, as relatable as you can from an exclusive island in the middle of the Mediterranean – as well as a casual flex, reminding us that we know their names for a reason.
It’s also a bankable way of going viral for the right reasons and ensuring the kind of positive press that isn’t always a given in the post-DeuxMoi world of celebrity gossip. Victoria Beckham recently posted a clip singing to Say You’ll Be There, scratching a nostalgic itch as well as, perhaps, winking at rumours of a Spice Girls reunion. In July, Ed Sheeran stopped off at a holiday-themed bar named Santas to play bartender and sing the Backstreet Boys’ I Want It That Way with fans fueled by one-dollar PBRs. Everyman cosplay, perhaps, but it looks like a great time.
Even in the SingStar era of the mid-2000s, karaoke never felt like something that blue-chip pop stars would want to get involved with. The tide seemed to turn around 2015 with the launch of James Corden’s Carpool Karaoke, which grew out of a 2011 skit that Cordon filmed with George Michael for the UK’s Comic Relief fundraiser. It was fun to see pop stars like Lady Gaga, Celine Dion et al goofing around, but the show’s best moments came when it surrendered to the chaotic absurdity of an actual karaoke night, like when Adele delivered a word-perfect rendition of Nicki Minaj’s Monster verse, pow pow-ing with gun fingers and bragging she’s in the Tonka, color of Willy Wonka.
Without that sense of unpredictability, karaoke falls flat. Post-Carpool Karaoke, which ended this April, staged singalong shows are two a penny, but rarely capture the mischief of the real thing. Jimmy Fallon’s groan-inducing That’s My Jam is a spin-off of a bit from The Tonight Show that should have stayed as a segment, Netflix’s Sing On feels oddly po-faced, and Hulu’s revival of Don’t Forget the Lyrics ignores the fact that flubbing the words is part and parcel of a raucous karaoke session. It’s efficient, neatly packaged TV to fold laundry to, occasionally enlivened by ebullient hosts. But the clean efficiency of these shows misses that the point of karaoke is to down seven Jägerbombs and belt out heartfelt, wholly unserious renditions of songs you love to your best mates, new friends or the stranger you just pulled on stage to sing Shallow.
A genuine reverence for the material has made Kelly Clarkson’s Kellyoke a phenomenon. Since The Kelly Clarkson Show’s debut in 2019, she has opened the show with a live rendition of a classic song or a recent hit, and sings them like she’s having the best time in the world. Clarkson is a vocal powerhouse – it’s a given that she will kill at an Aretha or Whitney classic – but inspired, kooky song choices from artists like Pixies, Radiohead or Post Malone have made Kellyoke appointment TV, or at least worth turning YouTube notifications on for. It paid off when Clarkson leaned into the label on her 2022 Kellyoke EP; that release’s storming cover of Billie Eilish’s Happier Than Ever has more than double the streams of any track from her recent studio album Chemistry.
Meanwhile, Miley Cyrus’s occasional Backyard Sessions series drew the focus away from pearl-clutching headlines and back to her soaring, lightly rasping voice, which rang out in a sun-dappled grove for a storming cover of Jolene. And while it would be a reach to call Cyrus’s 2015 cover of Don’t Dream It’s Over with Ariana Grande truly karaoke – the professional microphones and four-piece band say otherwise – the performance captures its spontaneous feel, down to the pair’s sweet off-the-cuff ad libs and animal onesies.
Pop star karaoke is at its best when it embraces the pastime’s innate silliness without irony or a sense that it’s beneath them. That’s what made Lopez’s disco moment so fun to watch. As pop’s unofficial patron saint of karaoke, Clarkson is naturally a master at this. This June, she jumped on the mic with two fans to sing Since U Been Gone at a party in a Manhattan piano bar. With a drink in one hand and mic in the other, she belted out runs, chattered over the music and jumped on the balls of her feet as the chorus hit. Were it not for the megawatt voice, she could have been any pop fan in any karaoke room, happy to be singing along.
