is fascinating in itself. (Bill Hader, one of the funniest people on earth, told me he can’t do it at all because of his circle of friends. He gets too intimidated by how good Will Arnett and Jason Sudeikis are. All I could think was “Amazing. You do the Stefon routine on TV in front of millions of people, but karaoke is where you get the bashfuls?”)
It’s a useful interview question, not because the subjects give me a quotable answer—it never makes it into the article, since my editors really don’t give a crap how much everybody loves the same Bon Jovi songs. But somehow it makes them relax, slaps them out of interview mode. It gets their enthusiasm flowing. It has nothing to do with their job, or with the project they’re promoting, but everything to do with why they started doing their job in the first place. It taps into the most innocent kind of enthusiasm. For some of these showbiz troupers, karaoke must be one of the few times they’re off the clock.
When I watch J.J. shill, I know he’s doing songs he’s done before; I know he planned all this; I know what he’s going to do in an hour or so; he has the tricks in his stash. I know I’m just a sucker. But it works because whether he’s in the mood or not, he convinces me he loves it. He makes me believe he’d do it for free. They say you have to fake it till you make it, but maybe you also have to make it to fake it. It’s like the old country song says—a lap dance is better when the stripper is crying. I feel certain the same must be true of karaoke.
SO WHAT MAKES A GOOD karaoke shill? Clearly, you have to have the performer thing. The showgirl thing. The frontman thing. The flair that separates a star from the rest of us. You have to be able to turn it on at will.
I’ve always been fascinated with people who have that, not to mention jealous—musicians, dancers, performers of any kind. A few years ago, I was at an after-party for a friend who was doing a one-man dance theater project in New York, at the Kitchen. I was making my goodbye rounds early—I had an article due the next day. He wasn’t buying my excuse. He said, “You just have to work tomorrow. I gotta be somebody!”
And that totally nails the difference between performers and the rest of us. We need them to be somebody. And occasionally, we need to be them so we can be somebody, too.
There’s a specific kind of personality, or maybe just some kind of genetic mutation, that these people have. People in bands call it LSD, or Lead Singer’s Disease. This pathology was perhaps best diagnosed by the noted British psychologist Dr. Frederick Mercury. An interviewer asked Freddie in 1977, “Why do you think people like David Bowie and Elvis Presley have been so successful?” Freddie replied, “Because they give their audiences champagne for breakfasts. ’Coz they’re what the people want. They want to see you rush off in the limousines. They get a buzz.”
That buzz separates performers from the rest of the human race. It’s a special mentality that requires you to give yourself to the audience, in a theatrically overstated way, despite the fact that they know it’s a performance. The mechanical manipulation has to be part of the charm. Even when you’re feeling the same emotions every night in the same order, hitting your marks and reciting your rehearsed patter, the glamour is real for you and the audience, converting artificial tricks into human tears and blood. I always envy performers who can do this; whether or not I like their music is secondary to my envy for the fact that they can actually do it.
For the rest of us, karaoke is as close as we get. We have much to learn from these people, even if we can be grateful we do not share whatever psychosexual quiddities drive them to crave this much attention. I wouldn’t want to be Beyoncé full-time. I couldn’t handle it. Even Beyoncé has her hands full trying to be Beyoncé full-time. I’m only Beyoncé for about
It’s a useful interview question, not because the subjects give me a quotable answer—it never makes it into the article, since my editors really don’t give a crap how much everybody loves the same Bon Jovi songs. But somehow it makes them relax, slaps them out of interview mode. It gets their enthusiasm flowing. It has nothing to do with their job, or with the project they’re promoting, but everything to do with why they started doing their job in the first place. It taps into the most innocent kind of enthusiasm. For some of these showbiz troupers, karaoke must be one of the few times they’re off the clock.
When I watch J.J. shill, I know he’s doing songs he’s done before; I know he planned all this; I know what he’s going to do in an hour or so; he has the tricks in his stash. I know I’m just a sucker. But it works because whether he’s in the mood or not, he convinces me he loves it. He makes me believe he’d do it for free. They say you have to fake it till you make it, but maybe you also have to make it to fake it. It’s like the old country song says—a lap dance is better when the stripper is crying. I feel certain the same must be true of karaoke.
SO WHAT MAKES A GOOD karaoke shill? Clearly, you have to have the performer thing. The showgirl thing. The frontman thing. The flair that separates a star from the rest of us. You have to be able to turn it on at will.
I’ve always been fascinated with people who have that, not to mention jealous—musicians, dancers, performers of any kind. A few years ago, I was at an after-party for a friend who was doing a one-man dance theater project in New York, at the Kitchen. I was making my goodbye rounds early—I had an article due the next day. He wasn’t buying my excuse. He said, “You just have to work tomorrow. I gotta be somebody!”
And that totally nails the difference between performers and the rest of us. We need them to be somebody. And occasionally, we need to be them so we can be somebody, too.
There’s a specific kind of personality, or maybe just some kind of genetic mutation, that these people have. People in bands call it LSD, or Lead Singer’s Disease. This pathology was perhaps best diagnosed by the noted British psychologist Dr. Frederick Mercury. An interviewer asked Freddie in 1977, “Why do you think people like David Bowie and Elvis Presley have been so successful?” Freddie replied, “Because they give their audiences champagne for breakfasts. ’Coz they’re what the people want. They want to see you rush off in the limousines. They get a buzz.”
That buzz separates performers from the rest of the human race. It’s a special mentality that requires you to give yourself to the audience, in a theatrically overstated way, despite the fact that they know it’s a performance. The mechanical manipulation has to be part of the charm. Even when you’re feeling the same emotions every night in the same order, hitting your marks and reciting your rehearsed patter, the glamour is real for you and the audience, converting artificial tricks into human tears and blood. I always envy performers who can do this; whether or not I like their music is secondary to my envy for the fact that they can actually do it.
For the rest of us, karaoke is as close as we get. We have much to learn from these people, even if we can be grateful we do not share whatever psychosexual quiddities drive them to crave this much attention. I wouldn’t want to be Beyoncé full-time. I couldn’t handle it. Even Beyoncé has her hands full trying to be Beyoncé full-time. I’m only Beyoncé for about
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