Music To The Ears

I was at karaoke last Sunday. One can throw caution to the wind and sing one's heart out when in the company of good friends. We don't judge, but we do snigger when someone starts on a wrong pitch or goes off-key midway through a song. That's what you can do in front of good friends - be silly. And there's lots of encouragement and applause too when we are screeching at the top of our voices trying to hit the notes that are way beyond our reach. All in the name of amusement.

If only Janet was there to see us sing with reckless abandon. Janet Lee is someone we like having around at wedding fairs. She is affable, chatty, enthusiastic. Most importantly, she humours us and entertains our requests when we ask her to sing. She gets us to sing along too sometimes, although we mostly only manage the chorus, and it has to be a relatively well-known song to boot. You see, we are rather hopeless with lyrics when there's no karaoke screen in sight. Still we have a good time.

Janet sings in English, Chinese and Malay, and her repertoire ranges from show tunes and arias to jazz and evergreen favourites. Some of us are planning to sing a Chinese number at an industry colleague's wedding later this year, though most of us do not read nor write Chinese at all. So I ask Janet for a tip. She sends me an mp3 of 'Ru Guo Mei You Ni' or 'Without You' in English. It sounds great but I reckon only she can pull it off, not us amateurs. So it's likely that we will go with the song that we originally chose during our karaoke session. Something with a simple, familiar melody and not too challenging but nevertheless appropriate for the occasion. Perhaps we'll ask Janet to come listen during rehearsals and let her have a laugh, at our expense.

Photo shot by Callista, courtesy of Janet Lee.