I knew the bar was loud, but all I could hear was my own breathing. I put my hand up to call the server's attention. “Two shots of tequila, please.” He poured, I handed over the money then got my change. Knocked back one shot, then the other, and went and sat back down with our group.
I was in Belfast, my friend Kenny's karaoke night. I'd never done karaoke before. I had decided to sing All Rise by Blue.
A little known fact about me is that I would really, REALLY love to be in a boyband.
I think I'd be excellent in any boyband, but I would especially love to be in Blue for All Rise. To the extent where I will practise singing along to it in my bedroom. My only obstacles to this coming true:
- Not a boy
- Can't sing
- They were never looking for a fifth member
- They've split up
But singing it karaoke...THIS was the chance to somewhat experience it. Singing All Rise in front of a crowd of drunken Irish would be the closest I would ever come to actually being in Blue. And so, I was nervous.
Really, REALLY nervous.
As it got closer to my go, I turned to one of the guys in our group (who I'd just met that night), and said, "I'm going to be looking at the monitor, where the words are. I don't need to look at the monitor. I know every single word". He laughed. I wanted to cry.
Finally, Kenny called out on the mic, “And NEXT! We have...MARSHA!”
I got up on the stage, and the music started. I felt like throwing up.
It got to the first verse. I started to sing,
Your honour, please/ Gotta be-lieve what I say-ay-ay
- and, as I sang, I realised with horror, something that mouthing along would never have taught me: the melody is too low for me to sing along to, too high for me to sing an octave above.
And I really can barely sing in tune anyway.
Oh god. Oh god.
I looked out to the crowd, a couple of them looked back, but most people were ignoring me. This, somehow, made it 50 times worse.
Oh god. What had I been thinking???
I struggled through the first two verses...
But THEN - I got to the rap:
Step in my house - you find that your stuff is gone/
But in reality to WHOM does the stuff belong?
Suddenly, something about the campness of it – and not having to sing in key – meant I got SUPER into it, right to the end of the song. I did the boyband moves. I reached and grabbed the air, pulled it back with a look of concentration on my face as I sang. I stopped looking at the monitor. I did Lee's extra high vocal bits at the end, that weren't even ON the monitor.
The song ended, and I got a MASSIVE cheer.
Afterwards, a girl came up to me to see if I had a cigarette, and we started chatting.
"I saw your singing, it was really good!"
"Ha! Thanks".
"Are you - are you a professional singer?"
After laughing for about ten solid minutes, I realised why all these people who aren't that good audition for X Factor and are gutted when they're not praised: because, if you give it enough welly, you can totally smoke-and-mirrors people into thinking you're talented.
Yes Yes Marsha: helping you become Dream Client Catnip.
You know you're brilliant at what you do, but your dream clients don't - YET. Find out the quickest way to INSTANTLY show them that you are the answer they've been looking for, whether it's live at a conference, or when they land on your 'About' page.
