Sing your heart out, baby!

I’ve come to think that offices should have karaoke rooms.

There should be a soundproof glass booth with a high quality karaoke machine somewhere in the back or a corner. Singing out loud is such an awesome stress reliever, and having that at work would blow off steam in a controlled, safe way that doesn’t involve exploding on co-workers.

You get a bad e-mail from your boss saying you have to work late to finish the Jones project. You go into the soundproof box, and you wail Janis Joplin’s “Cry Baby.” You feel better, refreshed, calmer, level-headed, and you go back to your desk and work on the proposal for the Jones project. Mission accomplished.

My problem is that I would be in there 20 minutes of every hour. “Ooh! I just thought of an awesome song to sing! I’ll be back in five minutes.” Two songs, three songs, four songs later, “Sorry, I sang all the songs by INXS In the catalog.”

I always look for good karaoke songs for my voice, even though I only actually do it about twice a year, and by the time karaoke trips come around again, I’ve forgotten what songs I picked. My stand-by is “Vacation” by the Go-Gos. I’ve sung it in two different states and one different country. Everyone sings along for the chorus, so it doesn’t matter if I’m bad. Which I’m not. I rock the karaoke. But the audience participation makes singing alone on a stage a communal experience that bonds us all closer.

Now where’s my soundproof booth? I wanna sing “Venus” by Shocking Blue.