Broken Heart

Kareoke has recently found its niche in my heart. Not only is the karaoke building airconditioned (a wonderful plus on a hot day) but my love for Thai music is overflowing and spilling out as I learn new songs and begin to sing along.

I love going to sing karaoke; if I have nothing to do and everyone else is busy I'll go and pay $1.50 to sit in the brightly coloured box for an hour and listen to my favourite Silly Fools, Potato and Tattoo Colour songs.

On Friday my friends and I went out for lunch and shopping before renting the biggest karaoke room (filled with two black leather couches, disco balls and strobe lights) and putting on a personal concert for the next two hours. It was so much fun to spend time with my friends, to joke around, to not have to speak perfectly formal and to learn more "teenage Thai". We sang lots of songs that I know the words to and others that I don't. I wrote down all the songs that I didn't know and I've made myself another CD to add to my growing collection.

Though I noticed before, it has become much more clear to me that almost 99% of all Thai songs involve some sort of romance, in which someone walks away broken hearted. You cannot hear a song without hearing "sia jai" (broken heart) or "kid teung ter" (i miss you). It is even less common to hear a song without "i love you" weaseled in there in some form of conversation. Thailand is a country of sappy love songs - period. Another thing I noticed is that Thai people (or at least my friends) don't feel compelled to sing in key at all; if they can't sing in the key of the artist, they sing in their own key.. WHILE the artist is singing as well. They have wonderful voices, Kate and Klao having the nicest voices of any Thai person I know - but that doesn't mean so much when it sounds completely off. Sometimes I have to hold back from covering my ears.. not that my singing is anything to be proud of.

"I wanna eat you up" - BoA