Nobody Likes Getting Played

There are a couple of reasons why Shakira and Beyoncé's "Beautiful Liar" is primed to be the biggest karaoke song of the summer: 1) It's peaking right about now, meaning that it will be widely available in most clubs by May, which is prime karaoke time; 2) it's a duet in which the vocals are split 50/50, which certainly helped "Promiscuous Girl"; 3) it actually includes the lyrics "Shakira/Shakira" and "Beyoncé/Beyoncé," which is awesome; 4) most importantly, everything about the production is minimal—the fake horns, the timid acoustic guitars—and frankly, kinda cheap-sounding. It's sounds less like a major-label hit single, and more like a tinny karaoke backing track that just happens to be performed by two professional singers.

YOUTUBE: "Beautiful Liar"

Calling All Crooners

From a 3/29/07 post on Craigslist:

MTV is bringing back one of their most popular shows: "Say What ? Karaoke!" for TWO one hour specials taped live in MTV's Time Square Studios.

"Say What-Karaoke" was THE ORIGINAL national / in studio singing competition!

Now SWK is coming back better than ever - with a brand new look - AMAZING prizes ... fun - new show elements .... Celebrity judges .... audience / viewer interaction. Now all we need is YOU!

Details:
Are you a great singer? Have amazing style/ look and attitude?
Love to sing / perform in front of an audience?
Are You between the ages of 18-25?
Live in the greater NYC area?

Yes, yes and yes! And, well, no. But then: Yes! Those hoping to audition need to inform the producers about their desired style of music ("choose between Rock/ Pop and R&B/Hip Hop") and must prepare "an ACCAPELLA verse and chorus of TWO songs." And, because this is MTV, they also want a JPEG and maybe a MySpace or YouTube link. It could be worth the effort: According to IMDB, alumni of the first installment of Say What? include Ashlee Simpson, Shia LaBeouf and Jerry Springer.

Chinafrown

Don't look for any mentions of Haunted Karaoke in your highfalutin' new English-language Cahiers du cinéma: With no jolts, no jokes, and very little actual singing, this 1997 import is possibly the worst Hong Kong karaoke-horror-comedy ever made. Set one year after a devastating karaoke-club blaze, Haunted follows two dimwitted cops who are tormented by the ghosts of the victims. But the physical comedy is painfully strained (the actors look as though their only directorial note was "keep bungling!"), and the special effects are just slightly better than Freddy's Nightmares; the only real highlight is the scene in which a singer is attacked by multiple karaoke microphones. By the time the movie gets to the not-at-all-dated Tamagotchi reference, you're about ready to throw your region-free DVD player to the curb for bulk-trash day.

Still: Much, much better than Duets.

Rocking 'Til The Sun Goes Down

Mike has Flickrd a bunch of pictures from the 3/7/07 Punk Rock/Heavy Metal Karaoke show at Southpaw in Brooklyn. At one point, the gentleman on the right knocked out a version of "I Believe In A Thing Called Love" so spot-on, it could have made the remaining Darkness members second-guess their recent career change. But the highlight was a guy who showed up toward the end, dressed exactly like circa-1991 Johnny Depp; when he refused to turn around and face the crowd during his performance, it was like being serenaded by a boho-honky Miles Davis.

The Motherload

Thanks to the wonders of Craigslist, I now have a crate of more than fifty out-of-print karaoke laserdiscs; it's a collection that was being sold off by a party DJ who had moved on to easier-to-carry compact discs. The discs come from a variety of manufacturers (Pioneer, MegaStar, Digital Freedom), and it looks as though more than half of them feature original karaoke videos, which are nearly impossible to find these days. It will take me weeks—not to mention a laserdisc player—to sort through all of these, but it's truly a score, and $225 well spent. Just take a look at one picked-at-random tracklisting:


The best part is that even the so-so holiday songs come with videos, meaning I have approximatley 200 hours of karaoke-video viewing in my future. I'm especially excited for LaserKaraoke—The Professional Series Volume 4: R&B, which features both Jody Watley's "Real Love" and Prince's "Delirious." It's like the screening room of heaven!

Maybe He Should Have Gone With "Red Headed Stranger"

- Wilmer Valderaama tried to woo back Lindsay Lohan with a karaoke dedication Sunday night in New York City. Unfortunately, he did this with a Matchbox Twenty song, and she left un-wooed.
- Of Montreal will perform an indie-rock karaoke set in Brooklyn on April 14th.
- Electronic Arts has purchased online karaoke company SingShot.
- Former American Idol star Justin Guarini is going to guest-host something called WebcamKaraokeTV.

A Fortune In Feelings

A quick vacation stop in Chicago yielded only one karaoke jaunt, but it was a doozy: Carol's is a five-star dive bar, the kind of place where they order you another pitcher when you're only at the half-way point, and where at least a few patrons look as though they lit their first cigarettes off the flame-licks of the Great Chicago Fire. Foreigner's "Cold As Ice" was boldy re-interepted as a two-person state-of-the-relationship summit, while one renowned mystery scribe hit new lows (in a good way) with her vocal take on Cameo's "Word Up."

Stop The Madness

From today's Edmonton Sun:

It was deja vu at a southside strip mall this morning where a 23-year-old man was shot outside a karaoke bar that’s becoming notorious for gang violence. The victim suffering from one gunshot wound was transported from the scene to hospital after the 1 a.m. shooting at Laser Karaoke Express, 3432 99 St. He is now listed in stable condition...

It was less than a year ago, in June, that 19-year-old Shawn Yalowica was gunned down just inside the entryway of the same karaoke club. Police said Yalowica was not a gang member but was hanging out with people that night who had gang ties.

Laser Karaoke Express has long been a blight on the otherwise prosperous strip mall, said annoyed business owners who arrived to open their doors this morning only to find them behind police tape again.

How hopped-up does a strip-mall karaoke place have to be to become a hotbed of group-on-group violence? Can't somebody get this place a CD+G of "We're All In The Same Gang"?

EDMUNTON SUN: Man shot at notorious karaoke bar

Karaoke-Deprived Georgia Residents Will Not Go Quietly Into The Night

A quick follow-up to that post about Lilburn, GA., the town that tried to keep karaoke out of its bars:

More than 100 people packed a city council meeting to voice their opposition to a city law that bans karaoke, dancing, cards and trivia contests at restaurants that also serve alcohol.

Many in the crowd Monday night came to support the Sports Fan Bar & Grill, a local tavern where they go to sing and to play darts, trivia and pool.

Ray Pritchett, a Lilburn resident for 60 years, suggested banning song and games from places that sell alcohol was un-American.

“If they don’t bother our life, liberty or freedom – leave them alone,” Pritchett said to applause. “We need to be doing something to bring businesses into the city rather than running them out.”

And with that, Pritchett was raised on the shoulders of his fellow citizens—an Amstel Light in one hand, an Amstel regular in the other—as a tinny-sounding boombox blasted Neil Diamond's "America."

ASSOCIATED PRESS: Georgia residents oppose law that prohibits karaoke, trivia

Fallon, Gonged

I'm torn: One the one hand, I'm loathe to send even the most middling amount of traffic to bloglodyte celeb-news nightmare PerezHilton.com; on the other hand, I can't resist terrible a pun about Chinese meditative principles. So I'll split the difference and console myself with the knowledge that these pictures of Jimmy Fallon doing karaoke are at least relevant to the site.

On The Charts: Blunted On Reality

It's hardly an accurate depiction of karaoke-song sales, but this iTunes chart—taken from a March 12, 2007 search—yields a few discoveries: Clearly, songs that can be performed in groups tend to do very well ("Lean On Me," "Y.M.C.A.," "Bohemian Rhapsody"), as do tracks with a strong female-vocal lead ("Black Velvet," "Man! I Feel Like A Woman!"). There's also a James Blunt song, but these are the troubled times in which we live. The biggest surprise, though, is the top-10 inclusion of Jefferson Airplane's "Somebody To Love." Do people really enjoy this song enough to place it ahead of "Open Arms" and "Wannabe"? Or does The Cable Guy have a bigger cult following than anyone could have expected?

That Old Song They Used To Play

Don't want to extrapolate too much from this, but in their respective online obits of Brad Delp—the Boston frontman who died Friday—both Pitchfork and Rollingstone.com make a point of mentioning the karaokibility of the band's "More Than A Feeling." That’s probably not the sort of biographical detail that deserves to be near the top of an obit, but Delp's talents really did make "Feeling" a tough-going karaoke song: Not only does it require a high voice, but it also requires the stamina to keep that voice going every single time you see your Marianne walking away (those up to the task can try it out here).

It Was All A Dream

To mark the 10th anniversary of Notorious B.I.G.'s murder, SOHH.com sent a camera crew around New York City, asking fans to do an on-the-spot karaoke rendition of "Juicy" (despite the fact that most karaoke joints only seem to have "Hypnotize"). The kid without the lyric sheet, pictured above, is the one to watch, and he's probably still standing in front of that clothing store, throwing down the last verse to "Big Poppa."

SOHH FOCUSED Biggie Karaoke

Tara Reid's Total Eclipse Of The Art

Every year, Sundance hosts an unofficial celeb-only karaoke party, one that's rarely, if ever, witnessed by mere mortals. Thanks to camera-phone culture, though, we know have the pleasure of watching as actress (and part-time anthropologist) Tara Reid performs Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse Of The Heart." Thanks, internet! You've doomed us forever!

YOUTUBE: tara reid total eclipse of the heart

The Night The Lights Went Out In Georgia

Along with Kabul, Sadr City and large portions of Detroit, I can now add Lilburn, GA., to the list of places I never want to visit, as its mayor has banned karaoke from all drinking establishments:

Karaoke can bring more than bad voices, Lilburn Mayor Jack Bolton said. It can bring bars.

"Our intention was always to just have alcohol in restaurants," Bolton said. "We don't want to have dance clubs, party clubs or bars. If it means being made fun of because we don't allow karaoke, that's fine, too."

Lilburn permits liquor licenses only for establishments in which 50 percent of sales comes from food. Bolton suspects [area sports bar] Sports Fan might not meet that standard, but proving that would be difficult. It is much easier to ban activities common to bars: card games, pool, video games, trivia nights and, yes, karaoke.

Bolton's modern-day Rev. Moore routine may be noble, but it's not gonna work: Anyone who's been to one of our nation's vibrant, culturally astute sports bars knows that those guys will break into joyous song with little or no provocation.

THE ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION: Shut up and drink, Lilburn bar patrons told

A Few Things To Consider Before You Start Spitting Hot Fire

-New York magazine picks Manhattan's iBop as the city's "Best Cheap Private-Room Karaoke" in the new "Best Of New York" issue. Why hasn't anybody heard of this place? Oh yeah: "You’ll have to make a reservation two weeks before." Also: "W. 35th St."
- According to Japanese-news site Asahi.com, seventy percent of the country's karaoke rooms aren't properly fire-proofed.
- Taipei residents who sing after 11 p.m., be warned: The government thinks you're a menace II society.

Maxïmo Park Makes A Play For The Karaoke Crowd

It’s only tangentially related, but Our Earthly Pleasures—the forthcoming album by British guitar-rock outfit Maxïmo Park—leaked over the weekend, and it includes a track called "Karaoke Plays." Sample lyric: “Someone gets run down/karaoke plays/somewhere in the background/but there is no explanation.”

MAXIMO PARK: “Karaoke Plays”

Plus, It Could Give R. Kelly A Chance To Make A Video That Won't Get Him Arrested

It usually takes a few months for a hit song to be immortalized in karaoke form—Justin Timberlake's "My Love," for example, is still missing from several New York City karaoke joints, despite having reached the top of Billboard’s singles chart last November. So I can only hope that the powers that be rush-release a vocal-free version of the R. Kelly/T.I./T-Pain boast "I'm A Flirt," as it's an early contender for sing-along song of the year: Over just a few simple piano thumps, Kelly invents about a dozen different melody lines, and knocking them all out would require the voice of a seraph and the recall of a monologist. Throw in the assists from T.I. and T-Pain, and you’ve got a three-man jam not heard since these guys did it all for love.

Footballer Pays $155,000 For One Karaoke Song

No idea who Craig Bellamy is, but if this Daily Mirror story is true, the British athlete may want to cut down on his crooning:

CONTROVERSIAL Premiership star Craig Bellamy admitted last night that he had 'lost it' with John Arne Riise on Liverpool's night of chaos in Portugal...

Bellamy is reported to have been fined £80,000 for his behaviour, which included brandishing a golf club at Riise, after a club evening out at the Vale do Lobo resort.

"It started when we were all doing a bit of karaoke," Bellamy said. "I only sang one song and that was Red, Red Wine by UB40.

Bellamy doesn't fit the profile of most UB40 fans, who tend to be either hot-stone massage therapists or, more typically, actual members of UB40. But surely he must have known that performing the sub-par pseudo-rap that ends "Red, Red Wine" will prompt even the most mellow singer into a golf club-wielding fit of rage.

THE DAILY MIRROR: Bellamy: I just lost control