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“This is like being at work.”
    But that’s because these two songs express the karaoke worldview at its most extreme. The idea of a lost and lonely solitary voice, fading into a massive communal chorus, lifted up by all these other streetlight people. We’re all just strangers wandering through the night, with nothing except the song to bring us together. But we’ve got each other, and that’s a lot.
    Bon Jovi really nailed this karaoke ethos in their video for “Livin’ on a Prayer”—the first verse is the band in rehearsal, and the film is in black-and-white. Then, just in time for the second chorus, the audience arrives, and boom —it goes from black-and-white to color. That’s the essence of Bon Jovi right there, and it’s also the essence of karaoke. Any of us can sing by ourselves any time we want to, alone in our rooms. We go to karaoke for something more. It’s the crowd that brings the color.
    Going out to sing means you have to adopt a staunch pro-believin’ stance. But it also means you have to suspend your rational doubts. “Don’t Stop Believin’” isn’t about actually believing in anything, just as nobody in “Livin’ on a Prayer” prays for anything in particular. The belief is in belief itself; the prayer is just for more prayers; the song is just an excuse for people to make noise. Samuel Beckett could have invented karaoke for one of his existential dramas, except if he had done so, Waiting for Godot would have ended with Didi and Gogo linking arms to sing “You Give Love a Bad Name.”
    It makes all the sense in the world that in the 2000s, Journey became the first band ever to hire their new lead singer after hearing him do Journey karaoke. The guitarist Neal Schon went on YouTube, looking for people singing his songs, and found one from the Philippines who did a perfect Steve Perry imitation. Does anybody care who is officially singing “Don’t Stop Believin’” or “Livin’ on a Prayer”? The singer can’t own them. The whole point of them is that they’re our songs.
    It also makes sense that the karaoke state of mind is so perfectly encapsulated in these twin apostrophe-abusin’ anthems from the eighties, pop’s most extroverted and bombastic decade. That’s when songs got big, cheesy, overstated, with long fade-outs and shamelessly contrived group sing-alongs. In other words, songs perfect for a room full of hoarse, rowdy strangers who can scream “Whoa-ho!” on cue. It seems so strange, in retrospect, that karaoke didn’t factor into how Americans heard music back then. We didn’t even know it was coming. But the karaoke train was on its way—a midnight train, going anywhere.
    A brief timeline of the dawn of karaoke:
    1981: Journey release the album Escape . I buy the tape as a Christmas present for my sister Tracey, at the Strawberries record store in Boston’s Downtown Crossing. Then I walk a couple of blocks to the underground head shop Stairway to Heaven and purchase two spiffy new buttons for my jacket, endorsing the Pretenders and the Psychedelic Furs. That’s a good day of commerce.
    1986: David Byrne directs the Talking Heads’ “Wild Wild Life” video. Always ahead of the game, the Heads set their latest video in a Japanese karaoke club, where various oddball characters step to the mike to sing a line or two. It’s the first appearance of karaoke in American pop culture, as far as I can tell, and it’s also a great song. I see this video several hundred times while waiting for the next Whitney or Madonna clip. At no point do I ever think, “Hmmmm, that looks like fun.” Instead, I think, “Wow, what a strange and exotic phenomenon. But where are you, Madonna? Open your heart already! Ritorna, Madonna! Abbiamo ancora bisogno di te! ”
    1986: A music industry news item from Billboard , dated April 6. Headline: J APAN E XPECTED TO A PPROVE S INGALONG C LUB L ICENSE F EE . The article explains to U.S. music-biz insiders that there’s this