I have been anti-karaoke for as long as I can remember. The idea of sitting around listening to drunk people sing doesn’t scream “good time” to me, neither does the thought of me awkwardly singing in front of them – I have avoided being in this situation all of my life. Something changed this year though. My friend’s often go to karaoke, my husband loves it, and I think I was starting to feel like the odd one out. I tentativeley agreed to go along one night to join them, and then lockdown happened.
As with everything else, plans get postponed or cancelled, and we don’t know how long it will be until we’ll be able to karaoke together. So to fill the gap, I decided to give it a go at home, with just me and James – the best version of this whole karaoke situation. I discovered a channel called Sing King Karaoke which has hundreds of videos with backing tracks, and words on the screen, just like the real deal thing.
I made a karaoke playlist of songs we’d like to sing, hit shuffle and got started. We started singing sat on the sofa, but it became clear as soon as Since U Been Gone by Kelly Clarkson came on, we’d be spending the rest of our night on our feet.
We really had a lot of fun, dancing and singing along to some of our favourite songs. I could maybe see how this would be fun in a larger group, but I did become quite self-conscious when I went to sing on my own. Singing alone to just the backing track feels a bit vulnerable, especially when you can’t sing! Despite that, I still loved singing to my favourite sing-along-song Jessie’s Girl by Rick Springfield.
It got to a point where it was quite late, and we were a bit concerned our neighbours would be knocking on the door, so we called it a night. I was surprised to enjoy our current version of karaoke, I’ll be intrigued to see if I feel the same way after I try the real deal!
New Day, New Thing 