Don't Stop Believin': How Karaoke Conquered the World and Saved My Life

What some condemn as an aesthetic crime is actually “the most direct form of music appreciation that now exists,” contends this indulgent tribute to a dubious art form. Entertainment journalist and karaoke connoisseur Raftery celebrates the medium as both a democratization of our overprofessionalized entertainment culture and a kind of therapy that transforms shamed self-consciousness into brazen, talentless self-acceptance. He traces the industry's history from its early struggles to cajole club goers into making spectacles of themselves to its rise as mockery-proof nightlife mainstay. Delving into the stringent engineering of instrumental backup tapes, he explains why Bobby Brown's “On Our Own” (from Ghostbusters II ) is a greater karaoke song than Dylan's “Like a Rolling Stone.” Intertwined in his world tour of karaoke bars is a personal saga of singing badly for drunken audiences from Manhattan to Tokyo, a habit that eased the forming and breakup of relationships and prodded him into a blissful state of “not caring about how I look or sound.” Raftery vividly evokes the boozy, semimelodic pathos that makes karaoke a profound group-bonding rite, while acknowledging—nay, toasting—its tackiness. The result is an entertaining, exuberant homage that's anything but off-key. (Jan.)