Your Karaoke Fantasy and Mine, Plus Booze -The Toast

I’m a pretty decent singer? However, my background is literally Anglican plainchant, for which you are not meant to shine. I have decent pitch-matching and I blend into the sound of other people very nicely, which is very useful in choral music and completely useless for grabbing a microphone and causing people to REALLY UNDERSTAND Kate Bush. There are worse problems to have, but it would come very quickly to my mind if I encountered a wish-granting octopus.

My cousin, however, is an actual singer-songwriter, and has the pipes of a goddess. You’d think she would do karaoke 24/7, but she doesn’t! “It’s weird,” she says, “it’s weird when you’re actually a singer, and you want people to mostly say AH A SINGER IS IN OUR MIDST,” so as a result she only does jokey stuff at karaoke. She kills, every time, don’t take her seriously.

But if you’re more retiring and less talented, you may have a particular image in your mind. Mine goes back and forth, but it’s always a duet. I either want to be the chick in “Paradise By the Dashboard Lights” (STFU with your judgment) or, as discussed, Kirsty MacColl in “Fairytale of New York.” I’m sure that means something really significant about my psyche, that I want to be a sidekick and not a soloist, but there we are. It’s how I feel. But what is it, really, about karaoke, that reveals your true self? Are you a diva? A woo-woo girl? Do you harmonize, or do you take it to the next level? Do people clap for your part, or are you bulking out the ensemble?

I am open to hearing about what you actually sing at karaoke, and what you fantasize about singing at karaoke. Or what the best karaoke performance you’ve heard someone else give? I’ve always worried I spend too much time engaging in an elaborate inner fantasy life, but the return of Walter Mitty has been reassuring on that front.

If it seems like I’m rambling a little, it’s because I had a friend’s engagement party last night, and came home full of revelations. Here are two of them, and then a lot of music videos:

3 oz bourbon
2 oz Creme de Gingembre
1 oz Epsa Sour Cherry soda
1 Tbsp lemon juice
1 dash cherry bitters
1 tsp superfine turbinado sugar

Rolled over ice and strained into a martini glass

3 oz white rum
1.5 oz St. Germain
1 oz San Pellegrino orange
2 dashes peach bitters

Rolled over ice and strained into a martini glass

Got it? Make, serve, drink, click. Probably not at work, but this is the deadest week of the year for most people, no one would judge you.

The original music video for “Fairytale of New York”: