Man versus microphone

Rolling Stone’ writer Rob Sheffield takes a personal journey through the karaoke joints of America.

Nick Hornby has a lot to answer for, mostly for writing High Fidelity, which is the go-to guide for male musical obsessions. Hornby pulled it off, because he was funny, and most guys could relate to categorizing their records under certain emotions, or remembering what songs they fell in love to, or lost their virginity to, or making obnoxious musical lists that nobody cares about.

Thanks to Hornby, we have Chuck Klosterman, and a generation of Spin and Rolling Stone writers who embrace their musical fixations like they’re precious little baby chicks that need to be fussed over at every opportunity. We get long essays where song lyrics are inserted in clever ways, or Bowie tunes are parsed for their scientific validity.

Rob Sheffield is one of those writers, and while his best-seller Talking to Girls About Duran Duran left me a little cold (possibly because I think most ‘80s music is overrated), he has constructed a memoir from a subject near and dear to Filipinos: karaoke. Turn Around Bright Eyes (even the title is brilliant, referencing the No. 1 karaoke song in the universe, the one by Bonnie Tyler that totally eclipses all others) follows Sheffield along his personal journey through the karaoke joints of America. He rambles from New York to Florida, California to Nevada. He does mention the Philippines at one point, but only in reference to Journey, which was the first major band to pick its replacement singer via a YouTube video of singer Arnel Pineda — who, it goes without saying, is Filipino and can imitate Steve Perry with his vocal cords tied behind his back.

Actually, I was hoping he really would stick to his journey through karaoke joints of America, contrasting what karaoke night is like in, say, Austin, Texas with, say, Bangor, Maine. But he doesn’t exactly. This is a memoir with a sad story at its core: Sheffield lost his wife to a pulmonary embolism in 1997. They were both in their 20s and when she passed away, the Rolling Stone writer had to figure out how to move on with his adult life. So it becomes a brighter, happier story. He moved to Brooklyn, wrote books (like his other best-seller, Love is a Mix Tape), and eventually met and married an astronomer named Ally. Their love was, I suppose, written in the stars. But what makes her an important character in Turn Around Bright Eyes is her devotion — equal to Sheffield’s — to singing other people’s songs in public places. It’s a romance that’s fueled by the vulnerability and intimacy of dark bars and night clubs where microphones and songbooks are passed around.

That intimacy is what makes it such an addictive vice. With karaoke, you’re really putting yourself out there. People are going to watch you and stare. But the whole culture around karaoke creates a temporary environment of total acceptance. When we do karaoke, we sing along with songs we hate. We cheer for the weirdos across the room. We high-five strangers. You dim the lights, crank the volume, and you can get away with anything.

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That’s kind of true. Except the stuff about “environment of total acceptance.” Mr. Sheffield obviously has never been to the karaoke joints of Malate, such as the dreaded Beppin-San KTV, where the bar girls heckle you when they disapprove. It is true that you end up singing along with songs you hate, but we can chalk that up to the magical effects of alcohol. And irony.

Sheffield does something else in this book. He grows up. He makes us care about a subject that could be painfully self-involved: a grown man’s compulsion to imitate singers in public bars. He does this through self-effacement, which works for him: he admits to being a “rock bottom” singer.

Listen to my ‘turn around’s’ There are three notes in the words ‘turn around,’ and I am blowing five of them. There are also three notes in the words ‘sing your life’ and I don’t even want to tally the damages. It doesn’t matter. This is my voice. They say you have to invest ten thousand hours into something to achieve greatness. I have put in my ten thousand hours into singing badly, so I guess by now I might even be a virtuoso at singing badly.

His devotion to karaoke has something to do with his background: his mom and dad are Irish folk who love Irish songs, particularly Irish drinking songs. For some reason, the Irish singing gene skipped over Rob. But that doesn’t stop him. He’s good at describing the rituals — scoping out the songbook early to pinpoint the night’s songs, so you don’t have to compete with a herd of other warblers; pitchers of beer, and the many characters who populate America’s dens of singing. 

Naturally, he has a lot of chapters to fill, so perusing karaoke joints isn’t the sum of his scope. He dwells on 9/11, and how he lived almost next door to the World Trade Center when it happened (he used to peruse its underground mall and the Sam Goody CD store for bargains). He’s good when recalling the atmosphere of gloom that pervaded Lower Manhattan, and how music — and karaoke — brought it back to life. Like the risky singer who chose to do Nena’s 99 Luftballoons one karaoke night. A song about bombs destroying a German city shortly after 9/11? Decidedly risky, but the crowd was soon behind her, singing along to the English version. Call it catharsis.

Sheffield does a good chapter on why two songs are universally popular at karaoke — Livin’ on a Prayer and Don’t Stop Believin’ — and what this says about America (that Americans are basically optimistic); one chapter covers karaoke scenes in all the movies from the ‘90s until now (somebody had to do it); and he does a surprisingly warm appraisal of Rod Stewart’s long and wandering career, from folkie troubadour to Faces rocker to sellout spandex-wearing Hollywood celebrity, back to his current incarnation as standards crooner. He claims all males go through three stages in life: 1) they think Rod Stewart is cool; 2) they don’t think Rod Stewart is cool; and 3) they become Rod Stewart. His thesis has to do with Rod the Mod coming to terms with his own patent ridiculousness, because that’s what we all, as adults, must do to experience life. And yeah, possibly he’s right. And he does a fine assessment of the Beatles’ basic positivity (“Yeah, yeah, yeah”) and what it has to do with teaching generations of young males to treat women in appropriate ways. Amen to that.

What Sheffield comes to grip with in Turn Around Bright Eyes is the messy business of growing up, finding real, adult love, and facing your fears — not only the real, external ones, but the ones inside that stop us from growing and living. As Morrissey sums it up in his song Sing Your Life, “if it seems scary to open up and step to the microphone, that’s because it should be scary.” Any fool can go up and take the piss, clown around, desecrate a song on purpose. It takes guts — maybe even a little life experience — to go up there and treat the song with the respect it deserves.

And in the Philippines, land of the “My Way” Killings, that advice could even save your life.