How can people dislike karaoke? You’ve got to like the way karaoke enthusiasts contradict each other, if for no other reason. If you read one person’s list of 10 greatest karaoke tunes and another person’s list of the ten awful karaoke songs, you’ll see the same songs on both lists. Some songs are plainly irresistible and when you love accessing that machine karaoke it means you’ll sing that song until the cows come home. Examine the Rolling Stone “Twenty Most Annoying Songs” list and you will see a lot of karaoke standards on it.
Is that likely to end our song selections? No, we don’t do karaoke to convince the editors of Rolling Stone to approve of us. (The Rolling Stone editorial doesn’t injure my sensibilities since karaoke isn’t really their cup of tea, right?) How can you decide what is the best song to pick out of the immense songbook the KJ has? The right track for you depends on your voice and what you are acquainted with, but aside from that I can say that if you can stand to avoid these favorites you shouldn’t sing a track from this rundown.
That doesn’t make sense? When you pick a karaoke standard to perform, you should expect that not one person in the audience will be able to hear you because they will be singing their hearts out in their chairs. The standards are the tracks that the karaoke crowd knows. These are the tunes that most any karaoke audience loves. I could identify them as ”top” or “anthem” karaoke tracks. Picking a song from this countdown in a room loaded with karaoke performers is likely to result in overwhelming audience participation. If only the
karaoke DJ equipment owner would lead the audience in a chorus of these tracks at the start of the show. That might encourage performers to find a new “signature” song, at least.
The Ten Karaoke Standards:- The B-52’s “Love Shack”
- Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’”
- “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” by The Rolling Stones
- Bryan Adams’ “Summer of ‘69”
- The Police “Roxanne”
- Steppenwolf’s “Born to Be Wild”
- Simon and Garfunkel’s “Cecilia”
- “Sweet Caroline” by Neil Diamond
- John Lennon’s “Imagine”
- “American Pie” by Don McLean (but Madonna’s cover for brevity, please)
Take a minute and look at the massive songbook and think about how many times we ignore every song in there and perform these 10. It must be maddening to be the KJ and to gather hundreds of unique tracks while the audience chooses to request the same ten through that
VocoPro system night after night. No matter how fun the standards are, you will excite the crowd and relieve the KJ when you request something else.
