Culture Slut: The Transformational Sanctity of the Karaoke Booth

Words: Misha MN

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Singing in a karaoke bar is a transcendent spiritual practice. The celebration of the voice is as ancient as humanity itself, it is one of the few things that still ties us to the other animals we crawled out of the primordial soup with. Lions roar in the sun-drenched Serengeti, birds twitter away in trees heavy with fruit, humans sing Islands In The Stream in poorly lit pubs with sticky carpets.

I absolutely love karaoke, I think it's great every single time, no matter how often I go; the quality of the performances, the prices of the bar or even the diversity of the song selection. Even as I write this I am nursing a small hangover from last night, which I spent at an old working-mens-club-turned-hipster-members-club dominating the karaoke stage whist a dreamy lesbian with a mullet manned the Karafun-machine, and it was an absolute dream.

Singing together is one of the oldest human traditions, from religious ritual to community building, our voices echo throughout history. Worker’s songs, sea shanties, lullabies, hymns, story ballads, comedy numbers, we have melodies for every aspect of human communication. Equally important to the act of joining in is the vital practice of listening, of receiving the song. Hearing the choir boy sing praises to an omniscient God who could smite you and your crops at any moment, hearing the histories of the great heroes who slew dragons and saved kingdoms, hearing your mother’s voice as your infant body lies against her chest, her song and the rumbling beneath her flesh carrying you off into sweet dreams and safe sleep. We flock to sacred spaces to hear singers of great or unusual skill, the long line of opera divas stretching back into the genesis of classical music, the holy-but-maimed Castrati, castrated choir boys whose voices would never be blighted by puberty, matinee idols in the Sondheim musicals lighting up the great white way, pop stars of goddess proportions filling up mega stadiums and the hearts of their fans - they all empower us by allowing us to listen.
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Karaoke bars are some of my favourite spaces because they help to democratise the power given to the singers we revere. On the surface level they allow us to partake in the pop star fantasy of being Beyonce, or Adele, or Elvis, a celebrity dream sold to us since the conception of the record industry and before that even - but I would argue that on a deeper level karaoke allows us to live the fantasy of being our inner selves. The song you choose to sing speaks volumes about you, about your tastes, your emotional state, your confidence, your persona, your ability. It lays bare all the things you’ve been taught to keep shrouded in the mystery of a generalised non-specific confidence. On stage you can speak about yourself. About your fears, your loves, your world. You sing songs that make you feel better about a break up that is still weighing on your mind, songs that highlight the friendships between you and your best girlfriends, songs that you remember seeing your uncles sing at their local pub in your childhood, songs that meant the world to you as a teenager that no one else has heard since their release, songs that you found by looking through your grandparents record collections, songs that resonate with your community, history, and family. Every community has bonded through music, from the most marginalised to the most privileged - sometimes in subversive ways, sometimes in the most mainstream arenas - but it has always been the most effective tool for bringing people together.

One early karaoke moment that I’ll always remember is being in the upstairs room of a bar that closed more than a decade ago, as a sixteen year old finally stepping into the light and living as myself. Vavoom in Brighton was famously an anything-goes dive bar near the seafront, with a very lax entry policy and in-house dealers at a corner table at the back. The bar itself was tiny, barely a corridor, but if you knew the right person you could get into the upstairs room where things got even looser. A karaoke machine was the easy entertainment and gave cover to those involved in more nefarious activities that would last well into the morning. I remember one of the first times I went out in a dress and make-up; I ended up in this den of delinquency, and soon I was admitted to the upper room. I knew one or two people there and I spent the night ecstatically cheering for every drunk homo that took to the tiny stage to sing their hearts out, until finally, it was my turn.

There was no choice of song, you just did whatever the unmanned machine chose to spit out, so I waited with baited breath, hoping for something I knew. When it came, it was better than I could have ever hoped for, Shirley Bassey’s Climb Ev’ry Mountain. My voice isn’t particularly strong, but I can command a stage and what I lack in tunefulness I more than make up for in volume. 

Technical skill doesn’t matter in karaoke, what makes it good is passion, effort and dedication. Mumblers and gigglers are the lowest rungs of the ladder in my book. I remember standing there, with the rising sun starting to peak out over the sea, with glitter, sweat and mascara smeared all over my face, howling my little heart out, and I thought to myself; this is it. This is the beginning of the rest of my life.

Karaoke can be used to celebrate anything, it's that versatile. I’ve been to karaoke bars after weddings, birthday parties, dates, work days, even funerals. Once I’ve even used it to patch things up with a friend. We had been a very fraught group holiday, everyone’s first holiday after lockdown, so a lot of underlying tensions and apprehension bubbled up to the surface. We had a lot of fun, but everyone also had their own arguments, which were quickly put aside the next day so we could all continue to enjoy the holiday. Except mine. My argument with a friend was on the very last day, the day we flew home, which meant that there was no impetus to put it behind us, we just were able to back away. After about a week of fretting about the possible end of this friendship, we finally managed to meet up in a bar and of course everything was sorted out in the first twenty minutes. This gave the rest of our night together a giddy feeling of excitement and we cemented our reconciliation by singing karaoke together. The performative act of presenting ourselves as a unit on stage erased any former distance and in fact brought us closer than before. Two voices singing as one, two bodies swaying together on a minuscule stage under a spotlight, two hearts entwined.

“Karaoke bars are some of my favourite spaces because they help to democratise the power given to the singers we revere. On the surface level they allow us to partake in the pop star fantasy of being Beyonce, or Adele, or Elvis.”

Last year, for the opening of DIVA at the Victoria & Albert Museum, I hosted a Diva Karaoke Power Hour in one of the upper galleries. In conjunction with their fabulous display of costumes and glamour, I made a curated selection of timeless diva songs, from Shirley Bassey to Aretha Franklin and attendees were invited to take to the stage and claim their own diva status. The set up for this was very different from what I was used to. Karaoke bars are usually dark and dingy with low ceilings, it’s either late at night or so badly lit that you think it is, with a giant sticky bar with the dregs of whatever beer and spirits is left over before the new delivery comes. Diva Karaoke was in a white gallery with a ceiling three storeys high, early on a summer evening with the sun blazing down through the glass roof, and the only bar was a few floors below. 

I wondered if the karaoke magic would work, if people would choose to bare their souls in this very bright room, with no drink to loosen their tongues, or darkness to hide their shame. It started off slowly, a few shy punters dithering around the edges, but after the first half hour it started to pick up. Girls came forward with their best friends to sing Respect, students from a drama school gave their best audition song, a mother sang with her daughter, not for the first time we suspected, because they had choreographed dance moves. Joy was in abundance, and then, the touch of pathos that truly makes any karaoke night sing: a tribute to Sinead O’Connor, who had died just days before, Nothing Compares 2 U, a shrieking chorus of beauty and love and remembrance, helmed by a soberly dressed young artist. I closed our show with the drag queen classic This Is My Life, ripping my wig off and falling to my knees before rising again for the powerful refrain. I thought about my life, and its circularity. Here I was, 16 years later at 32, with sweat and glitter and mascara smeared across my face, howling out another Shirley Bassey torch song to another audience that wanted only the best for me, and the sun just grazing the horizon, setting this time.

I thought about that long lost bar in Brighton, I thought about all the pubs, drag bars, karaoke bars, back rooms and house parties people have drunkenly sung songs in. I thought about all the theatres and opera houses and salons and churches and music halls that people have listened within. I thought about all the writers and composers and poets that have penned lines and lyrics that have meant more to wayward youths than parental advice ever could. I thought about the tears I’ve shed whilst singing, the emotions I’ve felt whilst listening, the connections I’ve made from performing, the love I’ve felt whilst being an audience member. I thought about the communities that have been strengthened through song, the friendships forged through shared music, the worlds created by ritual. I thought about the voices that echo through time itself, the caves shaped by soundwaves, the mountains that sing in the teeth of the wind. Voice is everything, sharing it is our greatest pleasure and our most ancient bond. Living is singing. Living is whistling in the dark. Don’t let shame or fear silence you, go out tonight and sing loud, sing long and sing love. Scream, holler, shout, howl, shriek, caterwaul, serenade. Just sing.