Seoul Music - YMCA

Posted by Adam Stanhope in Music, Travel & Places, Video Clips on August 26, 2007 at 4:33 am



I’ve been traveling back and forth between Asia and the US for almost 20 years now and I’m still strangely fascinated and thrilled by the Asian obsession with karaoke. You haven’t truly felt humiliation until you’ve been forced to stand in front of a crowd of drunken strangers whose language you do not speak and sing Home on the Range or Rainy Days and Mondays Always Get Me Down. A friend sent me this clip tonight and it reminded me of how wonderfully wacky the karaoke craze can be. So, who among our readers has the best karaoke story? YouTube.


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COMMENT

10 comments to "Seoul Music - YMCA"

  1. shihui
    August 26th, 2007 at 5:11 am

    awesome. this is some serious old school karaoke.

  2. Sankt
    August 26th, 2007 at 5:19 am

    in the philippines, karaoke is just as everywhere as it is in korea or japan. one thing though, never sing “my way” by sinatra. it has been known that people get shot or stabbed singing the song. reasons are usually because of terrible singing, singing it over and over again or maybe, the song just makes other drunk people around you want to kill. you choose. but i am not kidding.

  3. stavrosthewonderchicken
    August 26th, 2007 at 7:03 am

    This is from Japanese TV, and is making fun of Korea and Koreans, as far as I can tell. Japanese tend to look down their noses at Koreans.

    Not really charming at all.

  4. Adam Stanhope
    August 26th, 2007 at 8:24 am

    It’s clearly parody, but “looking down?”

  5. Alex
    August 26th, 2007 at 10:08 am

    Here’s my karaoke story: one night while waiting to cross the Golden Gate bridge, we noticed in a car next to us is an older Asian guy singing. Into a microphone!

    He had set up a complete karaoke system in his car so he can sing while stuck in traffic!

  6. sass
    August 26th, 2007 at 12:33 pm

    I struck up a friendship with the guy who ran karaoke night at a local pub a few years back. Since most of the pop songs people were singing were ~3 mins long, he never really got a chance to take much of a break. Whenever he was dying to take a step outside and clear his head, or go run and grab a bite to eat, he’d set my friends and me up with what he called “the longest set” - American Pie by Don McLean and Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen. By the time we’d finish our set he would have had time for a bathroom break, a cigarette and a sandwich. We just liked being on stage in a big group absolutely butchering these LONG LONG songs. I can’t say the folks at the bar loved us too much for it, but it was certainly fun.

  7. Adam Stanhope
    August 26th, 2007 at 1:32 pm

    hehe

  8. John
    August 26th, 2007 at 2:23 pm

    That was Seoulful, but in the race for best YMCA cover, this guy will always Finnish first: http://youtube.com/watch?v=lCgrG35-3js

  9. Adam Stanhope
    August 26th, 2007 at 4:41 pm

    I’d have to agree, John.

  10. stefan-boltzmann
    August 27th, 2007 at 2:59 pm

    this is not a parody. it’s a real korean entertainer called e-pak-sa. the rendition is now called “young man”
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epaksa
    http://www.fancymag.com/epaksa.html


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