“No New Tale to Tell”
by Love And Rockets
from the album Earth Sun Moon
1987 Beggar Banquet Records
Buy the album on Amazon.

The first song I ever sang at karaoke was “Billie Jean” by Michael Jackson. My friend Sasha finally dragged me to the stage after a few work outings where I would just stare at my friends performing, but never actually participate.  She said, “We’re doing this now” and we did and it was horrible.

I was totally hooked.

The problem with most karaoke catalogs is that while they’re constantly expanding with new tracks, the songs tend to hot new singles.  Anytime I’m thumbing through the fresh adds section I feel incredibly unfresh because none of the artist names mean anything to me.  The songs I want to sing tend to occupy the period between 1985 and 1998.  They’re the songs I know backwards and forwards because I blasted them on the cassette player in my car (car singing=poor man’s karaoke).  If I could sing my songs I’d never have to look at the monitor for lyrics.  I could KILL THESE SONGS.  It would be 100% performance.  FROM THE HEART.  But the odds are, my songs will never be added to the back catalog.

Which brings me to my song choice for #KaraokeTuesday: “No New Tale to Tell” by Love and Rockets.

It’s got everything I love in a karaoke song:

1. Limited range, so I can sing it even if my throat isn’t ready for a night of singing.
2. Harmonies on the chorus so my friends can jump in (only if invited – natch).
3. It’s not really a danceable song, so you can interpretive dance.
4. Totally air guitarable/pan fluteable so I can go nuts (see point #3)
5. Just obscure enough so that only one guy in the bar will actually get what you’re doing, but he’ll TOTALLY GET IT.

Awesome!  But they’ll never add it.  Unless…