I am trying to write a review about a bar in chicago that is your typical white blooded american male karaoke place with sports on the tv, greasy burgers, a half assed attempt at an island theme and of course…nightly karaoke.
I’ve been thinking about how everytime I’ve ever been into one of these types of places, the same kind of people pick the same damn songs to sing for irony, kitsch or silliness. (think a man singing ‘i feel like a woman’)
In your opinion what are the most overdone karaoke songs? (this will help my article)
i’ll start with songs that if i hear done at karaoke again I’ll punch myself in the face:
-american pie
-goodbye earl
-sweet caroline
-sweet home alabama
-sweet home chicago
-i have friends in low places
-devil went down to georgia
-Another vote for I Will Survive. That song makes me want to put a bullet through my head.
-It’s Raining Men- has much the same effect
-Paradise BtDL- it had outlived its usefulness in the late 80’s
-Summer Lovin’
-Walk on the Wild Side
Another vote for I Will Survive. If I never hear that song again I will still have heard it way too much. Same for YMCA.
Sidestory - The karaoke bar I (occasionally) go to has a pretty comprehensive playlist. One night I was thumbing through it and came across Arlo Guthrie’s Alice’s Restaurant. For some reason, the idea of getting onstage and hogging the floor for 18 minutes of rambling storytelling while everyone in the crowd slowly starts to hate my guts makes me perversely giddy. Haven’t worked up the stones to try it though.
Definitely “I Will Survive”, especially when it is around three women up there trying to sing it at once, one is really into it and hogs the mike, one is so-o-o-o-o embarrassed to be up there and the third is singing about every fifth word and madly dancing.
A suburban white kid singing, “Baby Got Back” happens about every other time I am at karaoke.
Almost anything by Frank Sinatra.
ALso annoying, folks who don’t know the wrods deciding to sing in place of them, “I don’t know the words / So I am making it up / As IO go along” or something like that.
Also, the person who finds great humor in singing the words “Break”, “Guitar Solo” etc.
It’s not overdone, but it’s definitely annoying, because when somebody takes a crack at it, they almost always do it really, really badly:
“Bohemian Rhapsody.”
Cool song. Extraordinarily difficult to pull off in a karaoke setting.
And worst of all, it’s really, really long, so when it becomes immediately apparent that the singer(s) will suck, you still have several minutes to go.
“Karaoke bars combine two of the nation’s greatest evils: people who shouldn’t drink with people who shouldn’t sing.” – Tom Dreesen
Another vote for “Love Shack”, which will eventually be “performed” by any group of people containing at least one male and two or more females.
The karaoke bar I “frequent” (as in, it’s the only one I’ll go to, and rarely at that) is fortunate in that it has a really good batch of regulars who can actually sing well. This might be because it was the first karaoke bar in town. A lot of these people bring their own discs, because the place doesn’t update its catalog nearly often enough. The result is that you don’t hear exactly the same songs over and over and over.
Well, I can only speak for karaoke choices of the 90’s, but I imagine most of them still hold true. My grandparents owned a string of karaoke bars in Calgary at the time, and the once-a-night, guaranteed surefire song choice was Summer Nights. I’ve Got Friends in Low Places also pops up a lot. American Pie was the worst, because it’s so long. And there would usually be some guy, drunk and near tears, singing Sister Christian.
