Serious About Books. Serious About Karaoke.

The arrival of Rob Sheffield’s Turn Around Bright Eyes: The Rituals of Love and Karaoke has prompted us to dig deep into our staff photo archives. Karaoke is something of a tradition around here. It isn’t a BookPeople holiday party without a microphone and a songbook. Which of course means that we have hundreds of photos of ourselves giving EPIC performances. If only we had the recordings. No wait, actually, THANK GOD we don’t have any recordings.

We took a survey of our all time favorite karaoke songs. Here’s what we rock when we rock it:

Cheryl: Certainly not my favorite songs (a couple of which I downright loathe) but apparently alcohol makes for the most cliched karaoke playlist: Don’t Stop Believin’, Take On Me, Love Shack, Suspicious Minds, and Desperato. I also did an 8 minute version of King Crimson’s Epitaph when I was in Korea.

Michael:  God Save the Queen by the Sex Pistols

Joe:  Fairytale of New York by the Pogues

Robyn:  Life On Mars? by David Bowie;  Hollaback Girl by Gwen Stefani; Dream A Little Dream Of Me by The Mamas & The Papas; Lovefool  by The Cardigans; One by Aimee Mann

Nicole:  Flippo’s version of Sweet Caroline is haunting. (Editor’s note: Flippo concurs.)

Andrew: Sexual Healing by Marvin Gaye

Jerome: I do a mean White Wedding

Scott:  Keep Your Hands To Yourself by The Georgia Satellites

Margaret: Marie and I rocked Man Eater pretty hard at the holiday party.

Julie:  Weezer’s Buddy Holly. Anything off Pinkerton. Different Drum by Linda Ronstadt. Anything by Linda Ronstadt.

Marie:  Give Me One Reason by Tracy Chapman…I’ve been wanting to do this one for a while! And Margaret is totally right, Man Eater, and just about anything by Hall and Oates…

Arian:  Mother by Danzig. What’s Up by 4 Non Blondes.

Turn Around Bright Eyes is currently on shelves. In fact, it’s the Statesman Selects Pick for August. If you, too, have a deep and abiding love for karaoke, come on out to the store Wednesday, August 28 at 7pm when Rob Sheffield talks to the Statesman‘s Joe Gross about his experience karaoke bar-hopping in New York City and the intersection of emotion, memory and song.