The last time I sang karaoke was on my birthday in 2008. I’d just gotten home from vacation and my friends took me out to the Shanghai restaurant for karaoke night. Shanghai karaoke was a staple of Ottawa life for years. Hosted by local drag queen China Doll, it was always a goofy and cosy event. I took my husband there on our first date, figuring if he was down with drag queen karaoke, he was probably an okay dude.
On that birthday night in 2008, I was bold and decided to sing ‘Eternal Flame’ by the Bangles. I know. Ambitious. I love the Bangles so much and if I was the kind of person who didn’t care that I was a bad singer, it would have been a lot of fun to sing the song. But I am not that kind of person.
It’s vanity, sure, but also I have always thought that it was somewhat of an unfair bummer that I love music so much, and yet can’t sing well. I can carry a tune under very specific ideal conditions, but never would I be able to down two cocktails and competently sing a Bangles hit in front of a roomful of mostly strangers. And that’s what I deeply wanted to do. My ideal karaoke scenario is the cheesy one where someone who is a ringer, a true talent, shyly gets up on stage and belts out a rendition of a popular song that puts the original to shame. There’s a scene in my forthcoming novel where the main character does just that. In a Brooklyn dive bar on Halloween, she sings ‘Alone’ by Heart with such power and skill that everyone falls silent and stares at her, amazed. Writing that scene brought me as close to my fantasy karaoke situation as I’ll ever be.
But just because I am psychologically unable to have fun while performing karaoke, doesn’t mean that I don’t have a good time watching other people do it. My closest friend Megan does the coolest version of ‘Paul Revere’ by the Beastie Boys. She’s found her perfect karaoke niche. Punk rock karaoke is always a trip, I’ve seen friends do blistering renditions of Bikini Kill songs that I will never forget. And when I did a lot of stand up comedy, sometimes a whole gaggle of comedians would end up at Shanghai on a Friday night, after we’d all performed sets in different places. Comedians are notoriously shameless and I had so much fun watching various friends take the stage. I have great memories of my friend Mike singing ‘Mr. Brightside’ in a way that inspired the whole room to join in and howl along to the chorus. Trevor belting out ‘Love Shack’ in his shouty/gravelly stage voice. Tavis arguing with a drunk lady about whose turn it was to sing ‘I Touch Myself’. Those were good nights. In the lonely depths of pandemic lockdown I found myself often longing to be there again, in a dark room singing and laughing and drinking while people I cared about sang ridiculous songs.
I was thinking about karaoke recently when I attended my older son’s music class recital at the studio where he takes singing lessons. The recitals, thank goodness, are fun and fast, with students getting up to perform songs of their choosing on a small stage lit by dramatic, multi-coloured disco lights. My son is sometimes the only boy. The little girls who sing range in age from 5-15, and they sing a lot of Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo, and Katy Perry. I am down. It is 100% kid-karaoke and they are sometimes nervous but mostly just having a ball. The school’s teachers focus largely on confidence and on the mechanics of successfully learning and performing a song. They are not getting these kids ready for an American Idol audition. They are getting them ready to have fun with music as they grow up.
At one of the recitals I watched a six year old girl sing Katy Perry’s ‘Firework"‘ and miss pretty much every single note. Like many of the performers she still had that little kid speech pattern that meant she was singing “Baby, yo a firewook.” She was having a damn good time. She had a cool dress with a huge skirt and her face was covered in glitter. She was just as fun to watch as any adult having a good time at karaoke. Someday she might pick a hard-ass song to sing on her birthday in a dark bar. She’ll probably love it, no matter how many notes she fucks up. That, after all, is the dream.
Songs - April 2023
Paul Revere - Beastie Boys - Megan is the best at it.
Alone - Heart - Seriously, don’t you wish you could belt this out expertly?
Who’s Bed Have Your Boots Been Under? - Shania Twain- In my book, this is on the male main character’s list of karaoke songs that he “crushes”. When the female main character is dubious he says, “What? You don’t think I can sing in Canadian?”
I polled a few comedian friends who I remember being present at those karaoke nights and they mentioned these other memorable tracks:
“I remember doing One Way or Another or Call Me or something and I guess I hadn't heard that song in a long time because I totally forgot about the bridge and just couldn't figure it out so I abandoned it and left the stage and Tavis was genuinely mad at me and said, “You never abandon the song before it's done,” and it's a shame I still feel today.”
“My main three are Search and Destroy by the Stooges, When I Come Around by Green Day, and Man on the Moon by REM.”
“Classic drunk songs are: Tequila (I hate when people do that one), Garth Brooks for some reason, diva girls love doing Adele and stupid stuff. Comedians tend to do silly stuff.”
Feelings - April 2023
A little bit of intrigue this month, which is a departure from my usual romance reads. I’m not a huge mystery reader, but when I worked at The Spaniel’s Tale Bookstore here in Ottawa over the holidays, the Richard Osman books were wildly popular. I initially dismissed them, saying they sounded good but that I didn’t read mysteries. I should know better. The Thursday Murder Club was an absolute delight. Not scary, not gory, just well-plotted and hilarious, with surprises in every chapter. I laughed out loud repeatedly and had the unique sensation of wanting to race through it (to find out who did it) and at the same time not wanting it to be over. It was also surprisingly moving in so many parts. I cried at the end listening to the final chapter of the audiobook as I shopped for groceries, sniffling as I pushed my cart through the crowds. My favourite quote came when the character Ibrahim was thinking about the retirement community where the characters live, “Anytime you wanted to be alone, you would simply close your front door, and anytime you wanted to be with people, you would open it up again. If there was a better recipe for happiness than that, then Ibrahim was yet to hear it.”
The Fake by Zoe Whittall has a great deal of suspense and criminal activity in it as well. A pretty solid departure from her previous novel The Spectacular, at least plot-wise, this book tells the story of a liar/con-artist from the perspective of the two people she sets her sights on in one particular period of time. It was uncomfortable to read in a completely engaging way, the reader goes in knowing that this character is lying, but we don’t know about what and how much and to whom. This is the kind of story that you would beg a friend to re-tell and every party you ever attend together because it is believable but also absolutely bananas and just creepy enough to suck you in hard. Definitely recommend this one.
(If you’d like to hear my actual voice talking about the books I recommended in the March newsletter, I was a guest book panelist on our local CBC drive-home show All in Day this month. I had a great time and hope they ask me back!)
Thanks for reading! See you next month.
J.W.
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My debut romance novel, MAKE ME A MIXTAPE is coming from Doubleday in 2024.