So when my friend Yedi told me she was the Karaoke Queen, having karaoked almost every night in high school, I thought it was my chance to rectify the debacle that was my 21st birthday. My friends took me to Second on Second, where I sipped a very strong Long Island Iced Tea and took the stage to sing Ricky Martin's "Living la vida loca." It was quick, it was nerve-racking, and the moment I was done, I bolted towards the door. This time had to be different. Three years had past. I had to be braver, right? I mean, I went to a foreign country and fended for myself for 4 months, why couldn't I get up in front of a few of Yedi's friends in a private room and sing a little ditty?
It wasn't until I got to Karaoke One 7 (29 West 17th Street) that Yedi told me that we were going to sit in the small section of the entrance and monopolize the bar. So basically we were going to sing in public. We would be the first thing people heard when they walked in. Greeeatttt! What was I supposed to say? I'm going to shit myself?
Luckily, my friend Morayo was visiting from Miami and she's always game for everything. I said I would sing if she sang with me. It took me a quarter of a Mai Tai (I never finish drinks) and an hour so I could get up the nerve to nauseously mumble through Madonna's "Holiday" with the microphone a bit too far from my mouth. As I was singing, I slowly realized I never really knew the words to the song. Actually, I was surprised by the unfamiliar lyrics running across the flat screens and the amount of rhythm changes in all four songs that I sang. Singing is hard. lol
I think being a singer is the coolest job. I have no aspirations to be one, but I think it would be one of the most incredible highs I could ever experience…especially if I knew the words. After it was over, I was glad to hand the mic to the next brave soul. Morayo and I agreed that we couldn't really hear ourselves. At first we thought it was just a result of being nervous or audio feedback, but it turns out you have to put the mic right near your lips and cup it to isolate the sound.
Knowing that, Morayo eagerly looked through the "By Artist" binder and stopped on The Fugees' "Killing me softly." When she said the title, I was immediately transported back to 4th grade, when me and my bff of the time Erica wrote all the words out in our school notebook and proceeded to master all the pitch changes by repeatedly singing it for weeks. I blurted out, "I wanna sing that!!!" Just in time too because one of Yedi's other friends had intended to sing it as well. Fortunately she was gracious enough to leave the wailing to me and Morayo. I was genuinely excited to see if my voice would crack and to see if I knew all the words still, Plus, my stomach wasn't churning as much as before and I had the mic etiquette down.
Once it was our turn again and that familiar melody began, I choked that mic like I was holding on for dear life. I guess I hit the high note. I couldn't really tell. But Morayo said I didn't sound bad, which to me meant I was amazing. lol We didn't crack. That's all I cared about.
It was getting late and the bar was getting packed. More and more people were starting to sign up for songs and the wait time was getting longer. So we agreed that we'd all get one last song in before it hit 11pm cause we were starving—we'd been there since 7pm. Yedi was dying to do Justin Bieber's "Baby" so she could rap the Ludacris part and Morayo and I settled on doing Michael Jackson's "Bad," so I handed the bartender $4 for two song slips and jotted down the code numbers.
Okay so while I was way less nervous and just eager to get out of there and grab some food since I hadn't eaten in 9 hours, I was a little all over the place. Bieber's song is actually a lot faster than I thought it was. lol There was no way in hell I was going to pull off Ludacris's mid-verse Speedy Gonzalez rhythm, so I handed the mic to Yedi's friend Adrienne who was the only one willing to do any rap songs. As soon as the song was over, I rushed over to Morayo to sing "Who's Bad?" only to discover that there are A LOT of words in that song. lol I seriously just resorted to screaming "WHO'S BAD?," cause that night, we were.
Fear = Dominated!
Photo by myuibe
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