Back in college, I used to emcee at a karaoke bar. Though I only worked there for a month, I experienced more in that month than most 20 year-olds should experience in like, two months. During that time, I picked up some lessons along the way, including:
1. If at your job, the new, older security guard who looks like Channing Tatum asks you out upon meeting you, it really is too good to be true. It’s possible that he might smile and you’ll realize he has a missing tooth or maybe he’ll end up getting fired on his first day for calling your manager a bitch. Or both! Yes, surely both.
2. Just because one of your managers has a newborn and says he’s sickened by the men who harass you while you’re trying to work, doesn’t mean he won’t tell you that he thinks he never should have gotten married, and you’re the only one he’s told, and you’re so mature, and do you want to get a drink after work?
And lastly,
3. Everyone sings the same handful of songs.
So, using all of my professional expertise, here are the 10 karaoke songs everyone sings and what they say about you:
Shoop by Salt-N-Peppa or Man, I Feel Like a Woman by Shania Twain:
You have a delightful sense of humor and are something of a feminist, interested in uniting the women of the bar, if only for 3 minutes. While we all drunkenly shout through the chorus as one, we are singing for our oppressed sisters around the world who do not have the freedom to hold a GirlZ Night for themselves.
All These Things That I’ve Done by The Killers:
You’re a boy in your mid-twenties who has been forced to go to karaoke night for your girlfriend’s best friend’s birthday party. I will hand it to you though, everyone gets hyped for the “I’ve got soul but I’m not a soldier” part.
Fool in the Rain by Led Zeppelin:
You’re a man in your mid-forties who has been forced to go to karaoke night for your wife’s best friend’s birthday party. It’s a night out of the suburbs where every wife gets a Moscato and every husband gets a Jack and Coke!
I Will Always Love You by Whitney Houston:
You have no self-awareness.
Take Me or Leave Me from “RENT”:
You are a former or current musical theatre kid who will go up and sing no less than 3 times in one night, use all the vibrato you can muster, and then sit in a booth in the back while you complain about how sad it is that any person singing who isn’t you thinks they’re doing really well.
Don’t Stop Believing by Journey or Santeria by Sublime:
You have no creativity or imagination.
American Pie by Don McLean or Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin:
You have narcissistic personality disorder and have no regard for other people’s feelings or happiness. I always had the courage to save a room from a 10 minute Led Zeppelin hostage situation and pull the plug on the mic after a verse and a chorus, but not every karaoke emcee is as protective over their audience.
