My Karaoke Faves
Hopefully this will be the first in a weekly series! We’ll see how it goes.
I’m often late to the party on popular things, mostly because I’m suspicious when something’s popular, and I don’t typically like being like everyone else. Also, if the way I’m already doing something works and I like it, I see no reason to change it (if it ain’t broke…). So the first time I ever used Spotify was in early 2012 when my sister sent me a new song I just had to hear (she was right and I definitely needed to hear it, it was Jason Mraz’s I Won’t Give Up), but I didn’t use it again until I was about to have my very own song available for streaming on it. Which was in 2023. Sooo that’s eleven years of not using Spotify, despite the fact that it is a music streaming giant. My elder daughter Miranda uses it pretty much constantly (in fact she’s taken over as DJ when she’s in the car with me), and while she usually enjoys the playlists created for her by the service, she absolutely loves making up her own.
Apparently this is a good practice career-wise for budding musicians, as well. Making and promoting playlists for your fans and followers can be quite good for gaining some momentum on the site, so I was advised to start doing so. And it turns out, I really enjoy it and I’m pretty good at it! So if I can start one new playlist a week, I can share them all here with my readers, and hopefully you all will enjoy this just as much as I do. After all, I’ve got pretty good taste.
I created three playlists last week, Bestest Cover Songs (who doesn’t love a good cover song?), Sad Songs I Actually Love (I usually avoid sad songs altogether), and Super Good Album Openers (ones that make you want to keep listening to the whole thing). If you’d like to see them, you can look me up on Spotify (and give me a follow, while you’re at it) and check ‘em out. There’s also the obligatory This is Kristen Malcolm playlist, which has all of my songs on it, soon to be a few more.
So this week’s playlist has all my favorite songs to sing at Karaoke. If you’re new here, you probably don’t know that my husband Ian (The Producer himself) and I host a weekly karaoke show at a local restaurant, and in fact, karaoke at this particular restaurant is how we met in the first place. Even if I don’t get to sing every week, which I don’t if we have a long list of singers, it’s still one of my favorite things to do. I’ve built up quite a list of songs I like to sing, and I am always practicing new ones because I don’t want to do the same thing every time. And you’ll probably notice that my song choices are more than a little varied. So here it is (you’ll want to open this in your browser or in the app if you’re reading this from email):
Some notes about a few of them:
Torn by Natalie Imbruglia is the song I was singing at karaoke one night that helped Ian decide for sure that he needed to ask me out. And he did. And here we are.
There are a few duets on here, both are songs that I sing with my daughter Miranda. I have to do the boy part every time, but I don’t mind. They are both so much fun to do! One is Be My Forever by Christina Perri and Ed Sheeran, and the other is Me! by Taylor Swift and Brendon Urie. There’s a few others that Miranda likes me to sing with her, even though they aren’t duets, such as No Roots by Alice Merton, Feel it Still by Portugal. The Man, and Galway Girl by Ed Sheeran. I absolutely LOVE Galway Girl cos it’s so fast and really freaking difficult, so it’s always impressive. Also I love when we do She’s Kerosene by the Interrupters.
There’s a few that Ian and I like to do together when he’s feeling it, like No Rain by Blind Melon, the Final Countdown by Europe (which always used to be our closing song), and Tommy Tutone’s 867-5309/Jenny. We also used to do (Don’t Fear) The Reaper by Blue Oyster Cult, complete with a real live cowbell that he bought just to make it authentic! I kinda miss doing that one, it has been awhile.
The very first time I ever sang karaoke, it was Sheryl Crow’s the First Cut is the Deepest. I still try to do it on the regular.
Some songs that kinda push my vocal limits but I love doing it: Alone by Heart, River by Bishop Briggs, and What’s Up? by 4 Non Blondes.
There’s a lot of songs from the ‘90s, cos that’s by far my favorite decade of music, but there’s also stuff from the ‘80s and earlier than that, too. Much like my musical tastes in general, this playlist is all over the map. I do hope you will give it a listen, and maybe it will inspire your own karaoke song choices. How about you? What are your go-to karaoke jams? Let me know in the comments! And what other playlist recommendations can you think of? I’ll be back next week with another one for you.