“Torn”
by Natalie Imbruglia
from the album Left of the Middle
1997
Buy the album on Amazon

Like a wandering storyteller traveling the land, regaling the local townfolk with stories of adventures from afar, I often like to tell new friends and old tales of great karaoke adventures. As I’m also clearly not above self-deprecation, one of the stories I like to share is of the lowest karaoke moment for my dear friend Lance and I.

See, the spots that we considered our usual karaoke go-tos were such largely because they had big open rooms, but small crowds. An experience close to a private room, but with no additional charge, close to the bar, and occasionally small pockets of people to perform for? This is karaoke nirvana. But that’s not to say we are above forking out the cash for a private room occasionally. Sometimes it was at one of our regular spots but the crowd got too big, or sometimes it was at a place that only had private rooms. There’s a bar we would go to every once in a while called Japas 55. There is a small open area in front, but it was always packed, so we always did private rooms there. And when Lance and I go to karaoke by ourselves, and get a private room, we like to workshop different things. You know, try out some new things that maybe we’ve been thinking of, but were maybe afraid of bombing in front of a crowd, or things that we’d be a little embarrassed to try in front of a crowd, but still want to try nonetheless.

Picture it… New York City, 2006(ish), a small private room in a tiny Japanese bar… The waiter opens the door to the private room to take drink orders, and discovers a shocking scene. Two men, one of them on the couch, the other standing up and singing “Torn” to him. The waiter asks about drinks and then quickly leaves the room, embarrassed by what he has witnessed.

Yes, folks, this was a defining moment. And no, I never added the song to my queue.

Side note 1 – I remember when this song came out, my roommate Joe and I were super into it. Probably because Natalie Imbruglia was crazy hot.

Side note 2 – I saw the Hollow Men live a couple of times, and both times one of the guys performed the interpretive version of this song, below. Fantastic.