Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
INTERVIEWER: Hi.
I'm here today with Rob Sheffield.
Rob is a music critic, an author.
He's written three books at this point, "Love is a Mix
Tape," "Talking With Girls About Duran Duran," and "Turn
Around Bright Eyes," which just was issued.
ROB SHEFFIELD: Yeah.
INTERVIEWER: Ostensibly, the book's about karaoke.
But it also kind of looks at how and why we love and how we
kind of process and absorb loss, and specifically the
loss of your wife.
And as well, it also kind of looks at how we rebuild.
And it tracks the blossoming of your relationship with your
current wife.
And it does all this through the lens of karaoke.
ROB SHEFFIELD: Karaoke explains
everything in my worldview.
INTERVIEWER: So for most of us, karaoke is something we do
maybe after a few drinks at a bar.
And it's fun, but that's kind of the significance it has.
But obviously, it plays a greater role in your life.
And you use the book to track that.
But how could you sum that up for the audience here, in
terms of the importance of karaoke?
ROB SHEFFIELD: Karaoke, it's a beautiful thing because it
lets anybody participate in music, even those of us with
no skill whatsoever.
Are there actual musicians here?
Musicians?
Someone?
All right.
Some musical talent is represented in the room.
That is not where I come in.
I have none at all.
Always wanted to sing.
Always dreamed of it.
Always been someone who loves music.
Grew up obsessive about it.
My parents, they were like '50s rock and rollers, and I
grew up in the '70s, '80s.
I was always obsessed with music, and yet all my attempts
to sing or play an instrument were just disastrous because I
just do not have that thing that is required.
I still have a guitar next to my desk that I've had there
for 20 years that I always think, this is going to be the
year that I learn to play guitar.
I'm going to finally learn some chords.
The closest I ever got was the summer of '86, I learned the
chords to "Wild Thing." And I made a tape because I knew
that it was going to wear off after a few hours.
And I still have this tape of me playing "Wild
Thing" for 20 minutes.
And even the chord changes, so it's like [HUMMING], and I
never got any better than that.
That was my peak as a musician.
I'm glad I documented it.
So karaoke actually allows me to
participate in making music.
As far as I'm concerned, miraculous.
Greatest thing ever.
INTERVIEWER: I was trying to track whether you were talking
about the old-school "Wild Thing" or the Tone Loc one.
ROB SHEFFIELD: Yes.
That one I can rap.
That one's a lot easier.
But it's fun because karaoke is something that, once it
arrived in this country, people started
to realize it existed.
And people instantly wanted more of it.
It's amazing how fast it spread, and that 20 years ago,
it was pretty much unknown in the US.
But that it's just this amazing way of sharing music
and way of participating in music that lets anybody in.
All the barbarians at the musical
gates are welcome inside.
INTERVIEWER: And this book, as well as your first one, is
almost structured like a mix tape, where you use certain
songs as points of departure.
How do you pick these songs?
ROB SHEFFIELD: I guess for the things that I wanted to write
about, sometimes the songs suggested themselves.
Like I have a chapter about my dad.
And my dad really likes to sing Elvis songs.
And my dad, his voice is every bit as bad as mine.
And as a little kid, hearing my dad sing along with the
radio, I always thought, wow.
I hope I inherit all the awesome things about my dad,
but not the voice.
Yeah, yeah.
That, of course, I got, as well as, fortunately, many of
his other wonderful qualities.
But so that chapter, the song that set me off, and the song
I listened to while writing it, was
"Heartbreak Hotel," by Elvis.
Because that song has like three notes in it.
My dad can't even do that one.
[SINGING]
Since my baby left me, I found a new place to dwell.
And it's not a hard song to sing.
That's why it was the song that Bill Clinton played on
saxophone on "The Arsenio Hall Show." Super easy song.
But for me, I don't really talk about Elvis
or the song so much.
Just that song is a way into the topic of my dad and my
life as his son.
Because all the different sort of emotional relationships in
my life, because for me, music is just the way that I
translate all the other aspects of my life.
So read about all these different relationships, my
life as a son, my life as a brother, my life as a husband,
my life as a friend.
And yet music is always the tool that I think is going to
unlock these mysteries for me.
INTERVIEWER: Sure.
I guess for people such as yourself, it provides a
certain sort of structure by which to view life.
So it kind of makes sense that the book would unfold by that.
You mentioned earlier that neither you nor your father is
a particularly talented singer, per se.
And yet you're a karaoke fanatic.
So what does go into a good karaoke performance, if it's
not the technical singing ability?
ROB SHEFFIELD: It just comes down to just enthusiasm and
passion and courage, if courage is required.
Something that blows my mind, it's kind of like when I was a
teenager in Boston, I was going to punk rock shows.
There'd be the Saturday afternoon hardcore matinee
shows, which were the all-ages shows, with just a crummy
local band, *** kids my age just
plugging in their guitars.
Not any more talented than I was, but they were getting up
and doing it.
And I used to love to go to those all-ages hardcore shows
and always totally get my *** kicked.
But that was part of the fun was that these guys, they
weren't waiting for anybody to tell them they were good
enough to play music.
They just got up there and did it.
And karaoke has that same kind of punk rock spirit where, if
you're willing to get up and do it,
that's all that's required.
You just have to put yourself up there and be willing to
risk a certain amount of ridicule.
INTERVIEWER: Was there stage fright the first time you
tried this out?
ROB SHEFFIELD: Yeah, terrifying.
I still remember the first time so well because it was
something that I dreamed of all my life.
have Everybody does the thing in the bathroom mirror, with
the hair dryer as the guitar and the hair brush as the
microphone.
But I never got any further than the mirror in terms of
that fantasy.
I was out to dinner with some friends.
And they're total karaoke fiends.
And they were like, yeah, we're going to sing.
And I was like, yeah, I'll sit.
I'll enjoy.
I'll listen to my friends.
I'll clap.
I'll soak up the vibe.
And that'll be that.
And seeing them do it, but also seeing just the way
everybody had so much fun with it, kind of lured me in.
And I sang a song by ELO, this unbelievably great rock
classics of the '70s, where "Telephone Line," everybody
remembers that ELO song.
I was like, yeah, let's go up-tempo on this one that
everybody can sing "Doo *** dooby dooby ***." I forgot
that before you get to that chorus, you go through some of
the most depressing, desolate, lonely, desperate verses,
where they guy's on the phone.
He's like, hello.
How are you?
Have you been--
he's just talking to her ringing phone because
answering machine's weren't even invented yet.
So he's just talking to the ringing phone.
And I was like, OK, if I can just get to the chorus with
the "Doo *** dooby dooby ***," it's going to be OK.
And it was.
And I was obsessed instantly.
INTERVIEWER: I know you talk some in the book, I believe,
about certain songs that have been detached from their
meaning, like "One," U2's, for example, which is not a love
song, per se, but people kind of interpret it as such.
What sort of feedback have you gotten from actual musicians
about how they feel about people doing
karaoke for their tracks?
ROB SHEFFIELD: Something that blows my mind is how much
actual musicians love karaoke.
It's really funny how much real rock stars, who actually
have their own songs and their own audiences and their own
concert halls--
I remember the first time I was talking to Simon Le Bon of
Duran Duran, Nick Rhodes, two of my all-time rock idols.
And I'd just written a book
name-checking them in the title.
And I was interviewing them for "Rolling Stone."
And they said, well, what's your next book about?
And I said, well, I have this idea that I want to write
about karaoke.
And they were like, oh, karaoke!
And Simon Le Bon told me that the first time he ever sang
karaoke was in the '80s in Malaysia.
And they'd never heard of karaoke before.
And they saw it in a karaoke bar.
And he got up and sang "Material Girl," and Elton
John's manager just got up there and started doing a
strip tease.
And the way he talked about it, like he remembered-- and I
was like, dude.
You're an actual rock star.
You don't have to sing "Material
Girl" to get an audience.
You've been singing your own songs in front of your own
crowds for 30 years.
But he still remembers that night.
And that kind of blows my mind.
A friend of mine interviewed Robert Plant for "Rolling
Stone." Robert Plant just had the most amazing story about
doing karaoke in China, where nobody recognized him, nobody
had heard of him.
And he was like, I'm going to bring the house down, because
there was a karaoke contest at the end of the night.
And he did Elvis, "It's Now or Never."
And he said, but I came in second.
I was beaten by a guy from Taiwan doing Tony Orlando and
Dawn, "Tie a Yellow Ribbon 'Round the Old Oak Tree." And
Robert Plant was like, wait.
How did I get beaten by this dude singing
"Tie a Yellow Ribbon"?
And I think that's what rock stars love about karaoke is
that fantasy that, if they didn't have the name and the
reputation and the myth to fall back on, that they could
still start over from scratch and just
earn it all over again.
And that karaoke sort of lets them slum it in the trenches
with the rest of us.
So it's funny that actual musicians, however they might
fear the way I butcher their songs in the karaoke bar--
I wouldn't want them to hear me do it-- but funny how
actual, actual rockers, there's something in it that
responds to them.
INTERVIEWER: I assume this was all done in
the pre-YouTube era.
ROB SHEFFIELD: Yes.
OK, the combination of karaoke and video is absolutely crazy.
I was singing karaoke, a couple months ago.
This is how I find out that Vine was invented, a very
traumatic way to discover that Vine was invented.
I was singing with a sort of mixed crowd generationally.
There were some of us who were born before 1990, who, for
lack of a better collective noun, I
will call normal people.
And then there are people who are after 1990, who are like--
and the next day, everybody was emailing, like, yeah,
look, I put up this Vine thing on Twitter.
And I was like, Vine.
I wonder what that is.
Oh, it's seven seconds of me singing Britney Spears's
"Toxic" in a very toxic site--
And I was like, wow.
This exists now.
Great.
I was like, the karaoke humiliation boundaries have
been expanded.
Thank you, Vine, for kicking down that door.
INTERVIEWER: That touches on an interesting aspect about
karaoke, the multi-generational appeal.
I think you mention this in the book.
But that is-- it's not an exclusively American
experience, but it's a kind of uniquely American experience,
in that I think you call it maybe a democratic
environment, if I'm quoting you correctly.
ROB SHEFFIELD: Yeah.
There's definitely nothing quite like it in American
culture, the way America uses karaoke, the way it brings
people from different age groups, different tastes in
music, different cultural backgrounds, different
personality types, all mixing it up and performing for each
other and listening to each other and
applauding each other.
The most mind-blowing thing of karaoke for me is that people
go there to enjoy listening to other people sing badly.
If you want to listen to yourself sing badly, you can
sing in the shower or in the car.
We all do that.
We sing to our plants, our cats, like the mirror.
But you go to karaoke, and it's almost like we go there
to make each other stars.
And you see ordinary people with maybe even less talent
than yourself--
I've never had that experience--
but where they're going up there, and you cheer for them.
And just seeing strangers cheering for each other and
high-fiving each other, that's a really mind-blowing aspect
of karaoke for me.
INTERVIEWER: Well, I know you've been a music critic
since you've been an editor for "Stone" since '97.
ROB SHEFFIELD: Yeah, '97.
INTERVIEWER: And it seems like engaging with music via
criticism and engaging it via karaoke are almost two
entirely different things.
One's very solitary and very critical, and the other's very
social and very celebratory.
Do you get that at all?
ROB SHEFFIELD: Yeah.
It's a weird kind of clash between different parts of my
soul as a music fan.
Just because when you're a music critic, you're kind of
kidding yourself that I have the theory of how music works.
I figure out how this stuff operates, how it functions in
our lives, what music should be like.
There's all this kind of arrogance of will to knowledge
that you can kid yourself about.
Then you go to the karaoke room, and you're like, wow, I
don't understand anything.
Music is so much weirder than I could ever imagine.
I was singing with a bunch of friends a couple weeks ago,
and somebody did a song that I have hated, hated, hated,
hated, hated since the '90s.
Does anybody remember the Verve Pipe?
OK.
They had a song.
OK, that song had not crossed my mind in well over 10 years.
And this dude, who was another one of those awesome
22-year-olds, he gets up, and he starts doing "The
Freshmen" the Verve.
And I was like, OK.
This is really weirding me out.
I never thought I was ever going to hear this song again.
The song, it's about 20 minutes long.
There's a plot.
I can't figure out quite what the plot is, but it involves
[SINGING]
oh, I am not responsible.
And I was like, wow, I hated this song then.
I never expected to hear it again in my life.
But this is kind of awesome.
I'm really enjoying this.
And of course, I was like, OK, if we're going to the '90s
one-hit wonders, I'll see your Verve Pipe, and I'll raise you
a Primitive Radio Gods.
But there's that thing of, you think you have this idea of
how music works and what the boundaries are and what the
confines are, and karaoke is a place I always realize that
music is so much weirder than is even comprehensible to me.
INTERVIEWER: Is there any song you've run into that's
completely karaoke-proof,
instrumentals aside, of course.
But anything that can't be done in a reasonable manner?
ROB SHEFFIELD: It's weird.
Different--
it depends so much on the vibe of the crowd.
I used to go to this place where they said, we
only have two rules.
No "Stairway to Heaven," and no "American Pie." And they're
like, they're both great songs, but they're too long,
and they're too sad.
Sometimes people, they feel like doing a long, sad song,
like that damn Verve Pipe song.
And yet, if somebody brings that requisite enthusiasm and
passion to it, you can listen to a song that you've hated
for years and think, like, OK, I get what this person hears
of themselves in this song.
And I'm hearing, even reluctantly, some of
myself in this song.
INTERVIEWER: It seems like as a music critic, you have the
ability to kind of break songs down in terms of their
technical, mechanical component parts, like the
bigger chorus, bridge at a certain place.
Do you find yourself doing that in terms of karaoke
songs, saying that--
listening to this, and this would the perfect template for
a karaoke jam?
ROB SHEFFIELD: Yeah.
It's wild how, just getting into the sort of karaoke
mindset, but also having the critical mindset to realize
how some people, when you realize how they write songs
for their voice--
Neil Diamond is a great example.
I grew up in America, so I love Neil Diamond.
Always heard those songs.
My parents always had them on the radio.
And I thought I knew those songs, and I thought I
appreciated the Neil Diamond cosmology.
And yet you sing them in a karaoke bar,
and it's like, wow.
This guy, he really knows how his voice works, what his
limitations are.
He has lots of breathing spaces in his songs.
So I like them a lot.
He likes to sing one line and then wait about 30 seconds.
You have [SINGING]
love on the rocks.
Ain't no big surprise.
And that man is pure confidence,
pure superhuman bravado.
And you hope a little that's going to rub off on you when
you sing him.
INTERVIEWER: So I know you titled the book "Turn Around
Bright Eyes." It could have just as easily been "Seeing My
Life" or any of the other numerous chapters you have.
Why did you single out that one particular song?
ROB SHEFFIELD: Well, "Total Eclipse of the Heart" is one
of those karaoke things.
You're always going to hear it in a karaoke bar.
It's like that and "Livin' on a Prayer," "Don't Stop
Believin'." There are some songs that you hear
them all the time.
Once, I went to karaoke with a friend of mine who's a
wedding video guy.
And he was getting really stressed out.
He was like, just hearing "Don't Stop Believin'" and
"Livin' on a Prayer" all night, he's like, this is like
being at work.
Because those songs are just requisite.
For me, "Total Eclipse of the Heart" is really personal
because that's the first song that I sang as a karaoke duet
with my wife.
Which was just when we first met.
It was 10 years ago.
I brought her to a party in New York, in Chinatown.
A friend of mine had a loft party.
In all candor, it was a fairly druggy party, and it was kind
of a strange sort of vibe.
And of course, karaoke was part of that.
They had a couple karaoke hosts.
And I said to Ally, I was like, let's do a duet.
And she was like, yeah.
And we picked out "Total Eclipse of the Heart."
And she just instinctively did the hard part, the [SINGING]
"Every now and then I get a little--" But there's one part
of the song that has like 600 words, and it's really
complicated.
And there's one where it's easy because it's just,
[SINGING]
"Turn around." And I was just doing the [SINGING]
"Turn around" and turning around.
And I was watching her.
And she doesn't know anybody in this room.
These are my friends.
And I was like, wow, this chick is fearless.
And I was like, wow.
I feel like just singing this song with her, I feel like I'm
learning all this stuff about her.
And so it's funny that that song, I just associate with
that moment.
Because really, falling in love with someone and karaoke,
they require the same kind of courage, the same kind of
delusion, on some level.
What the downside could be, and yet you're like, OK, I'll
take a chance on this anyway.
And so for me, getting obsessed with karaoke around
the same time that I was starting my relationship with
her, for me, that song, "Total Eclipse of the Heart," they
were very, very woven in with that sort of emotional change.
INTERVIEWER: Would you two begin to practice karaoke at
home before going out to karaoke?
ROB SHEFFIELD: No, I feel like practicing karaoke
is kind of-- yeah.
It's kind of like--
like remember when Trivial Pursuit was new?
And my parents had a friend that they would play Trivial
Pursuit with that they would to try to learn.
They would study the questions so they could--
and I was like, that takes the whole point out of it.
That makes it not a game anymore.
Like they had a very uptight couple friend who would quiz
each other on the yellows and the browns, and they'd study
the cards so they could remember.
I was like, that's not the way the game is supposed to be--
and I feel like karaoke, it's the same thing.
I feel like if you're actually rehearsing--
although part of the thing is that some people, what they
bring to it, they love to rehearse.
It makes them better singers.
I don't do it that way.
But everybody brings their own karaoke mojo to it.
INTERVIEWER: I know in the book, you also mention you and
Ally's shared respect and admiration for the music
critic Greil Marcus, who wrote many, many books.
Have you seen him karaoke?
Does he have a go-to karaoke jam, do you think?
ROB SHEFFIELD: He told me he has never karaoked.
This is Greil Marcus, one of my all-time writer heroes.
So he's written about music.
And he actually had a band of other authors that he played
in, the Rock Bottom Remainders with Dave Barry and Stephen
King and Dave Marsh, and a bunch of other flat-out
no-talents who were just writers who enjoyed having
this garage band together.
And he said, I could even do that.
But the idea of karaokeing, he was just like, no way.
Never.
Not in this life.
But it's funny that for music critics and for those of us
who adopt a kind of--
who aspire to a certain studious expertise about
music, it's weird how much of that you have to let go of in
the karaoke room because all your theories that you bring
in can be completely invalidated by one dude
singing the Verve Pipe.
It's really great.
INTERVIEWER: I like Greil Marcus and his book,
"Invisible Republic." He positioned this Bob Dylan
song, "I'm Not There," as a canonical Bob Dylan track,
which maybe, when he wrote that book,
1,000 people have heard.
Do you have a similar sort of holy grail of
karaoke that you--
ROB SHEFFIELD: You know, there are some songs that I like to
sing at karaoke because I kind of think that these are songs
the world has forgotten, that maybe one karaoke bar at a
time, we could sort of revive them.
Because there's definitely the phenomenon of songs that are
hits, then they disappear, and then they kind of come back in
public consciousness, only because of karaoke.
"Total Eclipse of the Heart" is a good example.
That's one that karaoke made that song.
That's a song that was a hit.
Then the radio was not playing it anymore.
But because people love to sing in karaoke bars.
Another great example is Ginuwine, "Pony," which was a
huge summer hit, summer of '96.
I was living in the South back then.
You heard that song everywhere.
The most filthy song, the most perfect song, and that's a
song that has come back, and it's become famous again
strictly because people love to karaoke it.
And it brings out something super bold in
people, super brazen.
And so there are some songs that I kind of always think,
maybe karaoke could perform the same sort of
miracle for this song.
Like Frankie Goes to Hollywood, OK, they had a
sensitive love ballad called "The Power of Love." It was
their third hit.
Oh my god, I can't believe you remember that song.
Nobody know that song.
I'm kind of shocked.
Everybody remembers Frankie say relax.
"Relax" is a great song.
Everybody can probably sing that one.
That's a great karaoke song.
"Two Tribes," which was their second hit, which was their
angry, serious, political song.
And then they had their third with "The Power of Love,"
which is their sensitive ballad.
And I adore that song.
But you know, it's like, [SINGING]
"The power of love, a force from above, a skyscraping
dove." It's really sort of wiggity wack, as the late,
great Kriss Kross would say.
And I saw that song in a karaoke book once, and I
almost had this feeling of--
I was spiritually obligated to sing it.
I was like, it's possible that this song has been in this
karaoke book for years, and not a single person
has ever sung it.
I just wanted it on the book, somewhere in the karaoke
database, somewhere that somebody,
somewhere sang this song.
And it was almost like I felt an urgent need to do it.
And I warned my friends before I did it.
I was like, you might not like this one so much.
And I was actually right.
A lot of people were casually taking their bathroom breaks
during that song.
But there are always obscurities, and sometimes you
discover them in the karaoke bar, and you try to share them
in the karaoke bar.
That's part of what it's for.
INTERVIEWER: Do each kind of karaoke bars have their own
nuance in terms of catalog and playlists that
you can look for?
ROB SHEFFIELD: Yeah.
Every one of them is different.
Some of them are--
it's really funny.
Every karaoke bar has its own vibe.
Some of them are super-***.
They're dark.
They're almost like in old movies, where you see the
*** dens.
It's like that kind of thing.
Like people come there because they need a fix of the singing
experience, and nobody wants to be recognized.
And there are other places that are bright and festive.
And there are some places that are family friendly.
And there are some places that are vaguely sinister.
And the song books are always different.
There's this one place that I love to go to in New York, in
Koreatown, called Music Story, that has all these Yngwie
Malmsteen songs in the book, Yngwie Malmsteen, the Swedish
death metal guitarist.
I was like, I didn't know his songs even had words.
Nobody is a Malmsteen fan because they like to sing
those songs.
But I was like, this is kind of amazing that they're in the
karaoke book, which means somebody,
somewhere is singing them.
And that's part of the beautiful thing.
The same place that has 17 different songs in the book by
the Christian metal band Stryper.
And I was like, wow.
I thought I probably knew more about Stryper than a lot of my
friends, but I could not name 17 different Stryper songs.
That's part of the magic of every place we were.
INTERVIEWER: A Rhino comp of undiscovered
karaoke cuts or something.
But in the book, you kind of lay out a timeline of karaoke.
And I was surprised you didn't mention the Scarlett
Johansson, Bill Murray scene within "Lost in Translation."
But I think you circle back to it, and listed as kind of the
perfect karaoke tune, or a very ideal one.
Can you discuss that at all?
ROB SHEFFIELD: Yeah, it's [INAUDIBLE] because karaoke,
it's funny that it didn't take long in the noughties for
movies to start realizing that if you put a karaoke scene in
a movie, it's super effective and super easy.
It requires no imagination.
You just have characters just-- and this is their
awkward, ungainly way of bonding.
And that you can put it in any kind of move, a rom-com or a
crime thriller or a goofy comedy.
And the karaoke scene is always going to work.
There's this great one.
Really, this one always--
I was watching this recently because "Breaking Bad" just
started a new season.
And there's that great karaoke scene on
"Breaking Bad" where--
OK, total non-spoilerish, how do I put this?
There was a character who's no longer alive, and who had
vaguely criminal associations.
And the cops going through his stuff, they're like,
wow, look at this.
They find this karaoke video he made in a karaoke bar,
where he's singing Major Tom coming home, which is one of
my karaoke.
You know, [SINGING]
four, three, two, one, earth below.
And you see this video of this guy.
And it's just heartbreaking.
And you see him, and it's like you're seeing him at his most
vulnerable and intimate, just when he's singing this great,
old cheesy New Wave song from the '80s in the karaoke bar.
And it's amazing the way the karaoke story that movies and
TV shows keep finding a way to tell--
at this point, there's going to be karaoke
scenes in all movies.
INTERVIEWER: Wasn't there one in "Blue Velvet," or am I
remembering that correctly?
ROB SHEFFIELD: I guess "Blue Velvet," because it's sort of
pre-karaoke, so he's performing in the lounge.
INTERVIEWER: Maybe I was thinking of "My Own Private
Idaho."
ROB SHEFFIELD: The first time I saw a karaoke scene in a
movie was "The Crying Game" in '92, where the guy goes to the
karaoke bar.
I saw that in rural Virginia in the spring of '91.
And it really blew me away.
And I was like, wow.
That looks like fun.
It's set in London.
And there's a karaoke bar, where he's like, if you want
to find this person, she's always at this bar at this
time, and she always things the same song, "The Crying
Game." And movies like that started to circulate before
actual karaoke establishments did.
So I think a big watershed one was in '97, where there was
the Julia Roberts movie, "My Best Friend's Wedding," where
karaoke plays a huge role in that movie.
And this is '97.
Karaoke is still pretty rare in most parts of the country
at this point.
But that movie was in multiplexes
all over the country.
And everybody sees that movie.
And all our moms saw that movie and thought, holy cow,
that looks like fun.
So I karaoke with my mom now, down in her little senior
village in Florida.
And everybody loves karaoke as soon as they
find out about it.
INTERVIEWER: I know there was this one part in your book
where you mention that new music is not necessarily being
made for you, per se, as a demographic audience.
But it seems like karaoke is the one place where people,
those of us who were born before 1990 can still go and
supplement that rave or the hardcore concert experience.
ROB SHEFFIELD: Yeah.
It's amazing how karaoke, because of its nature, it's
not bound to generational ties, where it's like, oh, you
were born at this time, so you have to listen to this.
And of course, the way that music technology is changing
so much, those boundaries are less confining than ever.
Basically anybody can listen to anything now, which it's
wild to think of how it used to be and think you had to
actually have a physical copy of the record.
You had to go to the ends of the earth to find it.
I remember the first time I had a copy of Dusty
Springfield's "Dusty in Memphis" in my hands.
And I couldn't believe that I found this record that my
friends and I had all been searching for for years.
Now it's like something you just hear in Starbucks, and
you don't even think about it.
My nieces and nephews, who are little kids, they're really
into karaoke because it's on their little karaoke video
game console.
And it's funny.
It's kind of traumatic for my sisters because my nieces and
nephews, who are all toddlers, little kids, they love doing
these songs that my sisters thought that maybe they'd
heard the last of.
Like my nieces and nephews, they love to do "Copa Cabana."
Remember that one?
They actually have this dance routine that they
choreographed, where one of them is Lola, and one of them
is Tony, and one of them is Rico.
Rico, he wore a diamond.
And they act out the whole plot of the song.
And my sister, I vividly--
I love the image of my sister watching this.
And she's like, I kind of thought that this already came
and went for me.
She's like, I did not envision an adulthood where I was
hearing this song 10 times a day.
And they love to do "Dust in the Wind" and "Sister
Christian" and all these other songs that my
sister can't stand.
But that's part of how karaoke is, just part of how
technology general is just opening music up to people.
INTERVIEWER: Music has changed drastically in these past 10
years, just in terms of the technology side.
Has there been any transition in karaoke, similar?
ROB SHEFFIELD: Well, because karaoke is so mobile now, I
actually did--
my wife was out of town last year.
And actually, we were like, hey, this would probably work.
I actually brought the laptop to the karaoke bar, and we did
Skype-aoke.
And it was like, that really worked.
It was not necessarily my proudest moment.
And I'm sure for people walking by and looking, they
were like, OK.
This dude has a really sad life.
He's in the karaoke room, by himself, singing to a screen.
But that was fun.
And just like a friend of mine in New York found this Korean
place in the east 30s that has spa-raoke.
Where she had a spa-raoke birthday party where it's a
spa where they have a karaoke machine.
And the birthday girl's getting a pedicure while she's
singing Stevie Nicks.
And it's like her two favorite things in the
world, spa and karaoke.
Now they can be combined.
The future is completely unbounded.
Like the idea that you can get your nails did and sing your
song at the same time is just mind-blowing.
INTERVIEWER: Absolutely.
I have a couple more questions, but I was wondering
if anyone in the audience had anything they'd like to ask
Rob at this point.
There's a microphone right there, by the way.
AUDIENCE: So my question is, I know that you spent time in
Charlottesville, based on--
ROB SHEFFIELD: Yeah.
You too?
AUDIENCE: Yeah, UVA.
ROB SHEFFIELD: All right.
All right.
Wow.
OK.
All right.
I spent the whole '90s in Charlottesville.
Love that place.
AUDIENCE: So my question for that is, and I haven't been
able to read this book, so you might cover it yet, but did
you notice a difference singing karaoke, say, in
Manhattan versus Charlottesville, Virginia?
And what were the differences there?
ROB SHEFFIELD: It's wild because
it's funny that karaoke--
it's so different from place to place that the boundaries--
when I go back to
Charlottesville, and I sing karaoke--
I still go back there all the time, still have lots of
friends and family there.
And it's wild that you hear a lot more country songs there.
But there's different--
because every place has its different vibe.
The first time I heard that country song, "Before He
Cheats," remember that?
That was a Carrie Underwood hit a few years ago.
The first time I heard that was in a karaoke bar.
And it was in Charlottesville.
And it was just someone that I didn't know just getting up to
the mic and singing this super scary song about how she's
going to destroy this guy's car and destroy his life.
And it actually mentions karaoke.
Like, that girl, she's probably singing some white
trash version of Shania karaoke.
And it's like, wow.
And I was like, hearing this song in a karaoke bar,
absolute best first way to hear it.
And I will always love that song because of my first
experience with it.
So it's a weird thing, going and singing karaoke all over
the country.
It's funny how every place has its different rituals, its
different etiquette and its different code.
And it's funny how it's different every place.
That's part of the fascination for me.
INTERVIEWER: Have you ever heard a song at a karaoke bar
that you really liked, then heard the original version and
been like, this is trash?
ROB SHEFFIELD: Boy, all the time.
It's funny, that happens to my wife all the time because she
doesn't listen to a lot of current top 40 pop.
So she will hear me destroy songs in the karaoke bar long
before she hears the original.
And I still remember a couple years ago, when the singer
Ke$ha, Ke$ha, was on the American Music Awards, doing
her hit "We R Who We R." And Ally was listening.
And she was like, wow, that's the first time I'm hearing
actually Ke$ha sing this song.
And she's like, wow.
She sounds just like you do when you're drunk at 2:00 in
the morning.
I was like, that's why it's the perfect karaoke song.
And it's funny how, yeah, sometimes that's the main
experience with the song.
AUDIENCE: I haven't been in a karaoke bar in a really long
time, and I have very limited experience.
ROB SHEFFIELD: Time to change that.
AUDIENCE: I know, I now.
So back whenever that was, hip hop, rap, basically was not
available in a karaoke.
It wasn't as big, obviously, culturally as it is now.
But it's a huge part of music.
It's a huge part of pop music.
So has that changed?
Is it changing?
Do you find rap options in karaoke bars more
than you used to?
It seems like as far as if karaoke is like a fantasy for
people, that there's a lot of fantasy in
rap music in lyrics.
It would make a lot of sense.
But it's not singing, necessarily.
ROB SHEFFIELD: Yeah.
But it's vocalizing and performing, and there's often
different singing involved.
Also, it's really hard if you don't have actual
hip-hop-worthy mic skills.
And so I will often begin a lot of hip hop songs.
And then I'll be like, wow.
This is hard.
I need to lie down with a cold towel over my head.
I will try like "Mo Money Mo Problems." And I was like, OK,
the Mase verse I can handle.
The Puffy verse is a little complicated for me.
The Biggie verse, I am not even worthy.
I'm not even going to step to that one.
But it's funny because with the hip hop and the hip hop
aesthetic keeps changing pop music, and pop music keeps
responding to that.
That's part of--
my karaoke fantasy for 2013, I can't wait until this song
arrives at the bar, is--
well, all the songs from the new Kanye West album,
"Yeezus," especially the last song, "Bound To," which is one
that samples Brenda Lee, singing like "uh-huh, honey."
And I cannot wait until that song comes to the karaoke bar.
In fact, I was out with a bunch of friends of mine last
week, and we were doing all these other Kanye West songs
in the book, just trying to do that song over the different--
so we did "Runaway," but we kept doing the "uh-huh, honey"
all the way through it.
It's funny because that "uh-huh, honey," that's from a
song that I learned as a kid because my parents had their
records from the '50s, and they had these '50s rock and
roll records.
And one of the songs I loved was Brenda Lee, "Sweet
Nothin's," from the '50s.
And just the way she would begin that song saying
"uh-huh, honey," and I just thought that was the filthiest
thing I'd ever heard.
I couldn't believe my parents had his record.
I was like, how was this allowed?
And now I hear that sound all the time of her saying that in
that Kanye West song.
And that somehow, he decided to just loop that Brenda Lee
"uh-huh, honey" all the way through the song, a truly
filthy song.
And it's mind-blowing for me, and it's just evidence of how
music keeps expanding, keep getting weirder, and keeps
crossing those boundaries.
It's really amazing.
AUDIENCE: So you are finding it out there.
I can go to a karaoke bar now and find hip hop as an option.
ROB SHEFFIELD: Yeah.
More and more--
and it's funny because some hip hop songs are more
karaoke-friendly than others.
And it's funny because of the skill sets required.
I think people in general, just watching people do hip
hop songs in karaoke bars, they tend to kind of
overestimate their mic skills.
Like you realize, there's a reason Jay-Z is Jay-Z, and
you're not Jay-Z, because you try to do--
Like I once tried to do H to the Izzo, V to the Izzay.
And I was like, wow.
The chorus I can handle.
But I was like, I felt like I owed Jay-Z an apology.
I was like, I didn't mean to do this to your song.
If I ever meet you, I will have to apologize for that.
AUDIENCE: But do you feel the same way if you don't hit a
note from a singer?
ROB SHEFFIELD: Yeah, the same way.
I'm OK with the fact that I'm not going to do
justice to the song.
I can't aspire to do justice to the song.
All I can do is just shine my own badly performed version of
it, just my way of saying thank you to the song and to
the artist.
INTERVIEWER: In short, do you think Chief Keef will be more
popular with karaoke bars than Kendrick Lamar in five years?
ROB SHEFFIELD: Yeah.
Well, part of it is that--
like Nicki Minaj, who has lots of songs that are impossible
to do with karaoke.
But she also has "Beez in the Trap," which I really think
she designed to be karaokeable, because that's a
song that if you want to do a Nicki Minaj song, but you
don't have Nicki Minaj skills, that one is really slowed down
to the point where I really think she was like, OK, I have
to do something for the really drunk *** who decide
they're going to try this at 2:00 in the morning.
And it's actually really great.
I always do the 2 Chainz part because my wife is kind of
obsessed with 2 Chainz.
INTERVIEWER: OK.
Well, Rob, thanks for coming out here, man.
ROB SHEFFIELD: Thank you for coming.
Oh my god, thank you everybody.
Thank you.