a day ago
The 30 greatest karaoke songs of all time
'Hold my pint, I'm going up!' mumbled my colleague, Adam, at a dreaded team bonding karaoke night back in the 1990s.
The painfully shy IT student with whom I shared weekend shifts at the Covent Garden branch of a fashion chain store had barely spoken to other staff members over the previous year. When he buried his head in the karaoke bar's 'menu' of songs, I'd assumed he was just avoiding conversation. So I was shocked to see him clutching the mic and assuming a cocky stance and Cockney accent to launch into a barnstorming version of Blur 's 1994 spoken-word hit Parklife.
Such transformations make the best karaoke moments. Sure, it's always nice to see an angel-voiced extrovert nail every glass-shattering note of a Mariah Carey ballad and harmonise perfectly through retro boy-band classics.
But the most memorable nights open new windows into the souls of people you thought you knew. Great Aunt Doris casting aside her cardigan and swinging her hips to the brass of Big Spender; Gary from the rugby club closing his eyes for the duration of an achingly fragile rendition of Somewhere over the Rainbow or the head of the PTA headbanging her way through Rage Against the Machine's expletive-laden Killing in the Name.
For these reasons, it is perhaps never quite possible for a stranger to identify the perfect song for a karaoke night, even if that stranger is someone who has been writing about music for the Telegraph, as I have, for decades. But that's not going to stop me from having a go. Take the below list as your starting point – and let me know what I've missed in the comments.
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Party starters
I Will Survive – Gloria Gaynor (1978)
As country star Billie Jo Spears discovered when covering this disco classic in 1979, 'This song is very difficult to sing… there are so many words in it and they come so fast'. But if Gloria Gaynor recorded the original in a back brace (while recovering from spinal surgery) then anyone can summon the guts to get the party started. Go on now, go…!
Difficulty rating: 5/5
