83 Fun Facts About Karaoke

The word karaoke is a clipped compound of two Japanese words meaning what?

Empty orchestra: Daisuke Inoue said even the word wasn't his invention, since it was already show-business slang before his machines.

Daisuke Inoue later invented a way to kill which pests that crawl into karaoke machines and eat the wires?

Cockroaches: Inoue never patented karaoke, so he missed out on its fortune, but he has made money selling pesticide to kill them.

What did Daisuke Inoue call his original coin-operated karaoke machine?

8 Juke: Inoue leased the first machines to bars in Kobe, where a ¥100 coin bought five minutes of singing.

How did Daisuke Inoue get customers to try his machines after Kobe's bars ignored them?

He had a woman sing on them: Inoue says he sent a female employee around the clubs as a decoy, and the stunt soon got customers interested.

Which award did the man credited with inventing karaoke receive?

The Ig Nobel Peace Prize: when he accepted it at Harvard, the audience gave him a standing ovation.

Which Filipino inventor patented a karaoke-style machine called the 'Sing-Along System'?

Roberto del Rosario: he first built the system as a teaching aid for the singing students at his own music school.

What were the instrumental-only B-side tracks used in the Philippines popularly called?

By the 1980s including a Minus-One track on the B-side of Philippine singles was standard practice.

What do Filipinos call coin-operated karaoke machines that show running lyrics on a screen?

Videoke: a five-peso coin buys a song, and the machines became so popular that nighttime videoke bars sprang up.

What are private karaoke rooms called in South Korea?

Noraebang: a visit is almost a compulsory last round after drinking, because Koreans see singing together as a way to strengthen relationships.

What is the Japanese term for singing karaoke alone?

Hitokara: solo singing has become common enough that karaoke chains have added more one-person rooms.

Japanese karaoke singers call their showpiece song juhachiban, a nod to what?

The 18 best kabuki plays: actor Ichikawa Danjuro VII named his family's 18 signature plays, so 'number eighteen' came to mean a specialty.

What is the CD+G format's "G" for?

Graphics, the lyrics encoded on a subcode track: they sit in spare channels a normal audio CD leaves unused, which is why plain CD players can't show the words.

What technique do cheap home systems use to strip vocals from ordinary CDs?

Subtracting one channel from the other: it cancels anything mixed dead center, so centered instruments like the bass can vanish along with the voice.

What was Japan's networked system that sent MIDI songs by phone line to singing machines called?

Tsushin karaoke: new songs arrived over the line instead of on discs, so bars got fresh hits fast, and it swept Japan in the 1990s.

Which company introduced LaserDisc karaoke machines that showed lyrics over music videos?

Pioneer: its disc changers eventually ran out of room for new songs, and phone-line karaoke networks replaced them in the 1990s.

Which PS2 game by Harmonix and Konami scored players on pitch, timing and rhythm?

Karaoke Revolution: Harmonix later carried the game's singing features over into Rock Band.

Which song became so linked to fatal karaoke disputes in the Philippines that some bars removed it?

Newspapers called them the "My Way killings"; some singers simply refused to perform it among strangers.

Where did a 2009 crowd set the Guinness record for the largest karaoke by singing 'Friends in Low Places'?

Bristol Motor Speedway: 160,000 NASCAR fans sang the Garth Brooks hit together before the Sharpie 500 race began.

Which singer turned a Robert Hazard song written from a guy's view into a feminist anthem?

Cyndi Lauper: with Hazard's blessing she changed some of the lyrics, and 'Girls Just Want to Have Fun' took on a new meaning.

Many of Japan's early roadside karaoke boxes of the 1980s were built from what?

Shipping containers: the roadside boxes opened karaoke to people who wanted to sing away from bars, creating a whole new market.

Finnish producers organize which international amateur singing competition, running since 2003?

Its 2011 edition inspired ABC's Karaoke Battle USA to pick American entrants; the 2025 finals were set for Bangkok.

Which late-night host's Carpool Karaoke featured Mariah Carey and Paul McCartney?

James Corden: he says the idea came from a 2011 Comic Relief sketch in which he sang along with George Michael in a car.

In Lost in Translation, Bill Murray's character is in Tokyo to shoot ads for which product?

Suntory whiskey: his character is a fading movie star taking the lucrative ads, and he ends up singing karaoke with Scarlett Johansson's Charlotte.

Which French song, first recorded by Claude François, did Paul Anka rework for Frank Sinatra?

Comme d'habitude: its French lyrics describe a couple drifting apart, while Anka's English words look back on a whole life.

Which comedy's headbanging car scene sent Queen's 'Bohemian Rhapsody' back up the US charts?

Wayne's World: Mike Myers insisted on using the song for the scene when others making the film had doubts about it.

Which ballpark turned Neil Diamond's 'Sweet Caroline' into a nightly eighth-inning sing-along?

Fenway Park: days after the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, Neil Diamond came to the ballpark and led the crowd in singing it.

Besides Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora, who co-wrote "Livin' on a Prayer"?

It was the band's second consecutive Billboard Hot 100 number one and spent four weeks on top in early 1987.

Which group wrote the Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton duet that topped the Hot 100?

The Bee Gees: Barry Gibb says they wrote it as an R&B song for Diana Ross, then offered it when Kenny Rogers wanted a duet with Dolly.

David Bowie wrote which song as a parody of an English adaptation he had lost the chance to write?

Life on Mars?: after his lyrics for a French hit were shelved, Paul Anka's version became a Frank Sinatra smash, and Bowie answered it with this 1971 song.

Who wrote and produced Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart"?

Jim Steinman: while it topped the US chart, it kept another song he wrote, Air Supply's 'Making Love Out of Nothing at All', stuck in second place.

Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive" won a Grammy in which category, the only time it was ever awarded?

Gaynor recorded the vocal in a back brace after a fall at a concert; the song entered the National Recording Registry in 2016.

Which Killers single became the first song to spend five years in the UK singles chart's Top 100?

Mr. Brightside: it has no second verse, because Brandon Flowers says he 'just didn't have any other lines' when he wrote it.

Which band covered Toto's 'Africa' after a teenage fan's Twitter campaign?

Weezer: it first trolled the fan by covering Toto's 'Rosanna' instead, and Toto later returned the favor by covering Weezer's 'Hash Pipe'.

Billy Joel based 'Piano Man' on six months playing a lounge in which city under the name Bill Martin?

Los Angeles: the song's bar regulars were drawn from real customers and staff at the Executive Room, where he played in 1972.

Which Oasis song became the first track from the 1990s to reach a billion Spotify streams, in 2020?

Liam Gallagher performed it with Beady Eye at the 2012 Olympics closing ceremony.

Which company's streaming music service turned the late-night segment Carpool Karaoke into its own series?

Apple: the series launched as an Apple Music exclusive, and Apple later moved it to its Apple TV+ streaming service.

Which magazine named karaoke inventor Daisuke Inoue among the most influential Asians of the century?

Time: its writer said that as much as Mao Zedong or Mohandas Gandhi changed Asian days, Inoue transformed its nights.

What is the bar game of punching in a random song number and singing whatever comes up called?

Some machines pre-program the game and limit it to a genre, so nobody gets stuck with an obscure national anthem.

What is "movieoke" or karamovie?

Acting out movie scenes in place of the stars: film fan Anastasia Fite launched it at a New York bar, muting the DVD so volunteers could voice the characters.

Who hosted the early-1960s NBC series that ran song lyrics along the bottom of the screen for viewers to sing along?

Mitch Miller: as Columbia's pop chief, he passed on a young Elvis Presley, balking at the price Colonel Parker demanded.

Shigeichi Negishi's 1967 coin-operated machine, the first sold commercially, carried what brand name?

The Japanese engineer ran into distribution troubles and stopped making it soon after.

Bandai's karaoke game Karaoke Studio, sold with its own microphone, was released for which console?

The Family Computer: its sound chip could only manage bleepy versions of the pop hits, and Bandai sold extra song cartridges that plugged into the unit.

Which basic skill did Daisuke Inoue lack while playing in Kobe's club bands?

Reading music: he had to learn each new song by heart, and he says that struggle was part of why he built his machine.

Shigeichi Negishi's 1967 singing machine avoided the name karaoke because it sounded like the Japanese word for what?

Coffin is kan'oke in Japanese, too close to karaoke for a distributor's comfort, so the machine went on sale under other names and sold about 8,000 units.

Which country's karaoke venues go by a local name that literally means 'screen accompaniment music room'?

North Korea calls them hwamyon panju umaksil, a far drier label than the plain 'singing room' used by its neighbour to the south.

PowerPoint karaoke, an improv party game also known as battledecks, makes a speaker do what?

Present unseen slides, and keep a straight face: the deck may be a real talk on an arcane topic or a jumble of unrelated slides the speaker must bluff through.

Which pop star sang in the car for a 2011 Red Nose Day sketch that later inspired Carpool Karaoke?

George Michael shared the front seat for that charity sketch, and the clip later won over Mariah Carey when no musician would sign up for the late-night version.

Which 1958 instrumental hit by The Champs has a single word of lyrics, its own title, spoken three times?

Tequila won a Grammy at the very first awards ceremony, and Pee-wee Herman later made it a dance craze by winning over a bar full of angry bikers with it.

In a 2005 poll, Britons picked Robbie Williams's ballad 'Angels' as the song they most wanted played where?

At their funeral, said the 45,000-plus people surveyed, in the same year the public voted the ballad the best British song of the previous 25 years.

Which Jackass daredevil hosted season one of Killer Karaoke, where contestants sang through bizarre distractions?

Steve-O ordered every contestant to keep going whatever happened, and later said he was fired for objecting to how the series treated its animals.

Which R&B girl group turned down '...Baby One More Time' before it became Britney Spears's debut single?

TLC passed on Max Martin's song, and so did the Backstreet Boys, before Jive Records' new teenage signing made it her own.

Which electric carmaker built a karaoke app, named with a pun on 'car', into its dashboard touchscreens?

Tesla calls the app Caraoke, and it arrived in the 2019 software update that also brought video streaming to the dashboard screen.

Vanilla Ice's 'Ice Ice Baby' borrows its bassline from which Queen and David Bowie collaboration?

Under Pressure earned its writers no credit or royalties from the sample until after the rap single had already become a hit.

Who plays the rival Julia Roberts's character tries to humiliate at a karaoke bar in My Best Friend's Wedding?

Cameron Diaz plays Kimmy, and the scheme backfires: her off-key but fearless turn at the microphone only makes the groom fonder of her.

Which 2009 romance has Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel's characters bond at a company karaoke night?

(500) Days of Summer uses the office singalong for the pair's first real talk about love, which he believes in and she does not.

Which NSYNC member hosted NBC's The Singing Bee, which mixed karaoke with a spelling-bee-style contest?

Joey Fatone fronted both the American and Australian versions, then hosted an office-singing spin-off alongside the Spice Girl Mel B.

Whitney Houston recorded 'I Will Always Love You', a number one for 14 weeks, for which 1992 film?

The Bodyguard was her film debut, and its soundtrack went on to win the Grammy for Album of the Year.

Survivor wrote 'Eye of the Tiger' for which film after Queen denied its director 'Another One Bites the Dust'?

Rocky III was directed by its own leading man, Sylvester Stallone, who commissioned the theme only after his first choice of song was denied.

John Denver's 'Take Me Home, Country Roads' became an official state song of which US state in 2014?

West Virginia adopted the anthem even though the couple who helped write it got the idea while driving down a back road in Maryland.

Which live-streaming platform ran its own free karaoke game, built with Harmonix, from 2019 until New Year's Day 2021?

Twitch let viewers vote on challenges and send ovations while streamers sang, then closed the servers to invest in other music tools.

Which Sonny & Cher duet wakes Bill Murray's weatherman at the start of every repeated morning in Groundhog Day?

I Got You Babe spent three weeks at number one in 1965, and the film turned its opening bars into shorthand for a day that will not end.

Aretha Franklin's signature anthem 'Respect' was written and first recorded in 1965 by which soul singer?

Otis Redding had a crossover hit with it first, and was impressed when Franklin rearranged it two years later into her breakout single.

Which comedian, later the host of Let's Make a Deal, first fronted Fox's Don't Forget the Lyrics! in 2007?

Wayne Brady won his first Emmy for improvising on a comedy series, and here contestants had to get the words right rather than sing well.

Who duetted with Elton John on 'Don't Go Breaking My Heart', the first UK number one single for either singer?

Kiki Dee shared six weeks at the top of the chart in 1976 on a song credited to the invented writers Ann Orson and Carte Blanche.

Patsy Cline's 1961 ballad 'Crazy', once the most-played jukebox song in America, was written by which country singer?

Willie Nelson's tune reached Cline through his fellow songwriter Hank Cochran, and her version became a country standard.

The band a-ha, whose 'Take On Me' video mixed live action with pencil-sketch animation, comes from which country?

Norway's a-ha topped the Billboard Hot 100 with the single in October 1985, lifted by heavy MTV play of a video that took six months to make.

Which band's 1993 hit 'What's Up?' never mentions its title, chosen to avoid confusion with a Marvin Gaye classic?

4 Non Blondes picked the name on purpose, to keep the single from being mixed up with Gaye's 1971 song 'What's Going On'.

Which British synth-pop duo turned 'Tainted Love', first recorded by Gloria Jones in 1964, into a global hit?

Soft Cell reworked the song for the album Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret; it was composed by Ed Cobb, once a member of the Four Preps.

Which US city did The New York Times call the country's capital of karaoke, with dozens of singing bars?

Portland, Oregon, earned the title from the paper, which went further and ranked its bars among the most exciting venues for music in America.

Which actress and singer voices Queen Elsa and performs 'Let It Go' within the story of Disney's Frozen?

Idina Menzel sings the version heard in the story, while a simpler pop arrangement by Demi Lovato plays over the closing credits.

Which rock frontman stars alongside Gwyneth Paltrow in Duets, the 2000 road-trip film about karaoke contests?

Huey Lewis and Paltrow sang their own parts, and their version of 'Cruisin'' from the soundtrack spent two weeks at number one in Australia.

Whose January 2016 Carpool Karaoke ride drew 42 million YouTube views within five days of being posted?

Adele's singalong became the most popular clip to come out of a late-night programme since 2013, and passed 230 million views within five years.

At which university did Daisuke Inoue sing 'I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing' in 2004 to a long standing ovation?

Harvard's audience, packed with distinguished scientists, answered the visiting inventor by serenading him with 'Can't Take My Eyes off You'.

Before Frank Sinatra recorded it, who first sang 'Theme from New York, New York' in Martin Scorsese's 1977 film?

Liza Minnelli performs it in the finale of the musical, for which John Kander and Fred Ebb wrote the number.

Which PlayStation karaoke series from Sony's London Studio was sold with one red and one blue microphone?

SingStar ran the real promo video behind each song and could film players through the console's camera as they sang.

The B-52's 'Love Shack' was inspired by a club and a tin-roofed cabin outside which Georgia college town?

Athens had the cabin where the band conceived 'Rock Lobster'; it stood on a dairy farm, was once rented by Kate Pierson, and burned down in 2004.

Which band's 'More Than This' does Bill Murray's character sing during the Tokyo karaoke night in Lost in Translation?

Roxy Music's ballad became the quiet centrepiece of the night out, and Murray's rendition was tucked onto the soundtrack album as a bonus cut.

The ballad 'Unchained Melody', a hit again after the film Ghost, takes its name from a 1955 film set where?

In a prison: the tune was written as the theme for Unchained, and three different versions reached the US top ten that same year.

On NHK Nodo Jiman, Japan's amateur singing contest since 1946, what sound tells contestants how they fared?

Chiming bells deliver the verdict after about a minute: one or two means elimination, while a full melody means the singer has passed.

Which 1990s anime's opening theme, 'A Cruel Angel's Thesis', became a fixture of Japan's karaoke rankings for decades?

Neon Genesis Evangelion's theme reportedly earned its lyricist about 100 million yen a year, much of it from karaoke and pachinko.

Which label's hits did The Singing Machine Company issue as karaoke cuts made from the original master tapes?

Motown opened its vaults in a 2003 deal, a rarity in a business where backing music is nearly always re-recorded by session players.

Amy Winehouse and Mark Ronson's hit 'Valerie' is a cover of a 2006 single by which English indie band?

The Zutons put it on their second album, Tired of Hanging Around; the cover reached number two on the UK chart a year later.

Which bandleader of David Letterman's late-night shows co-wrote the Weather Girls' 'It's Raining Men' in 1979?

Paul Shaffer and Paul Jabara wrote it in one afternoon for a pop diva who rejected it as blasphemous, and the duo who finally cut it dismissed it at first too.