I wasn't even drunk

The alarming intimacy of singing in public

I had no intention of going to the karaoke bar. 

It’s not that I didn’t want to socialize with my colleagues - I was eager for it. This was our company’s first in-person all-employee conference since before I joined, and I was finally meeting people I’d been working with for more than two years. I definitely wanted the day’s conversations to continue - but did it have to be over karaoke? 

I don’t have any philosophical objections to karaoke. It can be fun! But I need to be very wary of context before participating, and this time around, the signs were not auspicious. 

First of all, karaoke is disruptive - it’s hard to engage in sophisticated banter when people are belting out power ballads. Secondly, I was tired - I was only in California for one full day, so I saw no need to disrupt my East Coast sleep schedule with after-hours shenanigans. 

But third, and most importantly - karaoke is so revealing. 

I feel very comfortable with my coworkers - more than at any other job I’ve had. But there’s still a big, muddy trench between the way I act at work and the way I act with my friends. It’s not easy to maintain a respectable sense of professional distance when you’re warbling along to a piece of your emotional history. Music is such a personal thing, and sharing it with others reveals a soft, squishy part of your psyche. This is why the teens of the’90s were so obsessed with making mix tapes - it was the closest we could get to soul-to-soul communion. 

At karaoke, your choice of song says SO much about you. Are you the sort of people-pleaser who picks a crowd-pleasing singalong? Or do you get off on being willfully obscure? Is it an ironic selection, or the conviction of your innermost heart? No matter what, it’s not something you have the luxury of hiding behind. For the 3-4 minutes you’re up there, you’ll own every note. 

And yes, there’s the performance itself. Your singing voice is as unique as your fingerprint, but way more open to judgment - there’s a very good chance you’ll come off as even weirder than you already are. And of course it’s very easy to get anxious about being off-key, flubbing your lines, etc. Look, if you genuinely don’t care, then no one else will either. The thing is, most of us care at least a little. 

So sure, karaoke in a private room with close friends is one thing. But do you really want to volunteer that level of exposure at your job? 

Singing has always always been fraught for me. I’ve never been very good at it, but there were times in my life when I was deeply invested in improving. I was a theater kid, and when you’re in high school, that means you do musicals. It didn’t matter how well I could act, the fact that I could barely carry a tune limited my opportunities. I spent years taking voice lessons, but there’s some acoustical alchemy that I just couldn’t grasp. My senior year, I was given the lead role of the old French guy in South Pacific, but on one condition: I had to speak my songs. 

So I resisted karaoke for many years. When I was finally dragged up on stage, during college, it was the best possible setting: the Perfect Score Cocktail Lounge at the local Bowl-o-Rama. A few of us practically had the place to ourselves, so we just went up and goofed around - and it was really fun! We did songs as dumb characters, intentionally messed around with the lyrics, indulged in brittle falsetto, and made all-around asses of ourselves. Over the course of “Bust a Move,” “Like a Rolling Stone,” and “It’s Not Unusual,” I realized that I didn’t really have to sing, so long as I made it a bit. And that’s more or less how I did karaoke for years to follow. 

So how much of that was I going to share with my colleagues? Humor, like music, can also be super personal. One false move and you can easily take a pratfall into disgrace. 

Despite my better judgment, when someone offered to give me a ride back to the hotel if I came out for just 30 minutes, I accepted. I figured I’d watch, cheer on my colleagues, and get home for an early night. 

The bar we went to was a pretty big place, and crowded for a Wednesday night. Soon after we arrived, we observed two clear contingents, country and R&B. Some of the folks were pretty good, others were average, but they were all playing it pretty straight. Then my co-workers started cropping up in the rotation. They mostly fell into the genuinely-don’t-care camp, running up in groups and having a blast. No one had much to prove. So it started to dawn on me: maybe I wanted to prove something. 

In the end, I was at the bar for two and a half hours. I only went up once, but I tried to make it count.

I went with my standard: “Brandy (You’re a Fine Girl),” the 1972 maritime classic by the Jersey Shore’s own one-hit wonders, Looking Glass. This had been my standard for years - a completely ridiculous AM-radio staple that can Trojan-horse a little bit of genuine heartache if you play your cards right. 

As I took the mic, I wondered, which would be more embarrassing: to play this for a total goof, or to actually try and sing? I hadn’t sung karaoke for at least five years, and I haven’t performed in front of a group of friends and strangers for at least twice that long. Without any idea how it would turn out, I marshaled all the excitement, anxiety, adrenaline, and exhaustion from the week and put it into the song. 

At first, I kept it to a soft croon, which serves the song well. (“There’s a port / on a western bay…”) It didn’t feel like garbage, but it wasn’t enough. As I wound into the second verse (“Brandy / wears a braided chain / made of finest silver, from the north of Spain…”) I felt myself winding up for something bigger. I gave a taste of it during the bridge (“Well Brandy used to watch his eyes / when he told his sailor’s stories / She could feel the ocean fall and rise / she saw its rage and glory”) and then dialed it way down for the final verse (“At night / when the bards close down / Brandy walks through a silent town…”). When the climactic chorus came, I surprised myself by taking the biggest vocal swing of my life. 

“And the sailors said ‘Brandy / you’re a fine girl / what a good wife you would be / but my life, my love and my lady / is the sea / yeah! / yeah yeah yeah yeah!’” 

Was it any good? I can’t imagine that kind of label applied. I have no idea what I sounded like, and I hope I never find out. My heart was beating so hard I couldn’t hear anything else. People cheered, which I guess is what I wanted, and gave plenty of back slaps and handshakes as I stumbled back into the crowd. Someone commented that they were surprised that I “went all hair metal” on it. I could hardly speak for the rest of the night, and I was still hoarse the next morning. But I guess, in the end, I showed my new friends who I really am. 

The moral of the story: Never believe me when I say I’m not interested in attention. The only person that’s ever fooled is me.