Karaoke kid

Some thoughts about singing pop songs with your colleagues at academic conferences

Tomorrow, I’ll be in Chicago for the Society of Cinema and Media Studies’ annual conference. I’m moderating a roundtable about needle drops on Friday night and doing a bunch of fun stuff while I’m in town. If you’re around, say hi! I’ve been attending SCMS since I was a graduate student and now, as a mid-career scholar, it’s a way to keep track of many of the smarties in my life. Last year, I posted my conference hacks on Bluesky. You’re welcome to use them if you’d like. However, I will focus this post on my metric for a good conference: karaoke.

Karaoke’s not for everybody, but it’s definitely for me. I did karaoke for the first time at a sports bar in West Palm Beach the summer before I started fifth grade. I was visiting my dad and felt compelled to perform Tina Turner’s “What’s Love Got to Do with It” before a room full of strangers. It was there, while staring at the TV monitor at the foot of the stage, that I learned that the song had lyrics beyond its chorus. Remarkably, this incident didn’t result in me developing debilitating stage fright. I wanted to do it again. I wanted to nail the words next time. I wanted to use my voice to live inside a pop song. I wanted to use a pop song to snag the spotlight.

This spirit moved me to audition for choir in seventh grade. I put disc two of the Forrest Gump soundtrack into the director’s portable CD player, cued up Scott McKenzie’s “San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair),” and tried to get through the chorus without scratching the edge of my lower register. A year later, I found musical theater. Some people hate the sound of their voice, but singing helped me embrace and shape mine. It also helped me get out of my head and connect with others. Choir was as close as I ever got to a team sport. I sang my way through high school. I learned how to harmonize to the radio and with friends on bus rides to competition. I also funneled my obsessive tendencies into rehearsal, which is probably why my teachers always gave me patter songs and breathless monologues to perform. Senior year, I performed Company’s “Getting Married Today” for my choir’s annual fundraising dinner. You know you’re a theater kid if staging a panic attack in your high school cafeteria left you giddy.

I lived in Austin for most of my 20s, which was a halcyon time for karaoke. Seemingly every weekend from 2006-2011, I was huddled up in a room at Austin Karaoke for someone’s birthday. When I wasn’t there, I was at Knomad Bar for Karaoke Underground, a college radio alternative to bar karaoke hosted by my friends Hannah and Kaleb. I knew grad school in Madison was gonna be okay when I realized that Vilas Hall was two blocks away from a bar called the Karaoke Kid (RIP). Sometimes, the KU crew would host nights at Mickey’s Tavern during Midwestern family visits. I’ve still got the music in me. Tuscaloosa has a honkytonk bar called Jackie’s Lounge that hosts karaoke nights twice a week, but my home is Druid City Brewing Company. I’ll be missing this month’s DCBC karaoke night for SCMS, so I gotta make it count.

I think my first SCMS karaoke was the 2016 conference in Atlanta. I forget the name of the bar, but I remember doing Nu Shooz’s “I Can’t Wait” because I had just watched Doll & Em. When the Pop Conference was still in Seattle, there was a karaoke night at The Rendezvous. I remember feeling so nervous about looking uncool in that room before I found out that Chris Molanphy and Karen Tongson are karaoke nerds too. This post’s picture is from Pop Con’s last Seattle rendezvous in 2019. I sang “That’s Not My Name” by The Ting Tings because sometimes people get my name wrong at conferences (first name: A-L-Y-X, last name: rhymes with “breezy”). My favorite memory was the sojourn to SouthHouse for IASPM’s 2024 conference in Philadelphia. I remember looking around our table and realizing I was with my crew. I didn’t realize at the time that it would be my last night hanging out with Christine Capetola, but at least we got to sing Janet Jackson’s “Together Again” at the top of our lungs before they passed on.

Since karaoke brings out a lot of people’s anxieties, I don’t want to end this post with a bunch of rules. So consider this my personal karaoke credo.

1. I don’t worry about being cool or good at singing. “Karaoke” means “empty orchestra” in Japanese, which means there’s no wrong way for me to flesh out a guide melody.

2. That said, I run through the song beforehand to make sure I know the words, that the melody is within my range, and whether there are any extended instrumental passages.

3. If I’m in a room with a bunch of people I don’t know, I try to sing to a friend. However, based on pictures, I tend to sing with my eyes closed.

4. I like to explore the space by dancing and pacing around the stage. It gets me into my body and out of my head. One time, a colleague did Kate Bush’s dance routine during a performance of “Wuthering Heights.” I found that really inspiring, because it made her performance more interactive for the crowd. I aspire to that level of confidence.

5. I prefer tight, punchy songs I can belt or talk my way through without a lot of down time. However, you can make instrumental passages fun by singing them (see: Neil Taylor and Roland Orzabal’s guitar solos on “Everybody Wants to Rule the World”).'

6. I get my song requests in early so I’m covered for the night. That said, I’m happy to sing backup if it gets my friends on stage. Duets are a great way to work through stage fright.

7. I like to support the folks on stage by singing with them as part of the crowd. However, I protect my voice by lip synching if a song is too loud or too high.

8. I try to keep an open mind. Like Rob Sheffield, I prefer 80s synth pop and power ballads—except Madonna’s “Like a Prayer,” Prince’s “Purple Rain,” or Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart (Turn Around).” But I’m happy to be proven wrong by hearing a song I wouldn’t choose to sing with new ears. In Philly, Christine made me reconsider Puddle of Mudd’s “Blurry” for a moment. That same night, a stranger turned The Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Under the Bridge” into a torch song.

9. Like Allison McCracken, I love a new wave crooner. But I try to broaden my repertoire by switching it up instead of having a go-to karaoke song. This week, I’d like to try out a new wave anthem about commodification, an alt-pop power ballad from 2015 that sounds like it’s from 1987, and a synth-pop power ballad from 1987 if I can find a duet partner willing to jump off a cliff with me. If not, I’ve got a binder full of songs in my brain.

10. Regardless of what I sang or with whom, I try to finish big. In my house, we call this “the full Wanya” because in our 20s we usually closed out room karaoke with a group singalong to Boyz II Men’s “I’ll Make Love To You.” However you hit it, you wanna end on a high note in a wall of sound. Because you know you’re a karaoke kid if you’re hoarse the next morning.