On a gloomy Wednesday evening, my best friend and I decided we wanted to scratch our singing itch. We searched for a pub that was hosting karaoke but couldn’t find anything in our area. So we headed to the local branch of a well-known private-booth karaoke bar instead. But it wasn’t just the astounding £18 per hour (per person!) charge or the poor sound quality that made the whole experience so profoundly sad.
Private karaoke booths are sticky little cubicles for people who like singing but don’t want to be seen. They’re places where you pay a premium to avoid rubbing shoulders with strangers or making new connections. The whole point is to avoid exposure to the real world, which fundamentally misunderstands the power of karaoke.
I grew up in a former steel town. Twice a week, my mum hosted karaoke at a local pub, and because we couldn’t afford a babysitter, my sister and I went with her. When Mum’s caring responsibilities for my dad increased, she passed on the mantle to me, aged 17, to earn a bit of cash and keep the family business alive. Sitting with strangers across generations, hearing the stories behind their song choices, sharing rounds of drinks and political opinions, I felt like a sponge, soaking up different walks of life.
This is why when I talk about karaoke I’m not picturing these private, pay-by-the-hour cells. I’m thinking about the working-class pubs and clubs of Britain, where coming face to face with your community was more than half the point.
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Pub karaoke is social cohesion in action. The root of socialism is to be supportive of your fellow man, to uphold them and work collectively. While traditional performance art is often expensive, formal and ringfenced by wealth, private education and elite tastes, karaoke was always for the people.
The death of these spaces alongside the rise in private-hire karaoke booths is denying us this cohesion. Unionism was born in the pub – collective thinking comes from being with people, exchanging ideas and belting out the classics. When you hear a plumber from Kettering sing Careless Whisper by George Michael, an angel gains its wings. When an audience comes together to support a person they don’t know, the seeds of collectivism are sown.
We all crave connection, and this can’t be achieved in the cramped confinement of a beer-drenched booth in front of a tiny, curated audience of people we already know. Don’t succumb to the isolationism these corporations are foisting on us – instead, let’s get back to the pub, hand in hand, singing Sweet Caroline and hyping up our fellow strangers.
