Ladies and gentlemen, a star is born.
People often associate embarrassing, public displays of singing with Japanese karaoke – and they should. The Koreans have refined the embarrassment and made it more private with their “노래방”noraebang, literally “singing room.” In a noraebang you have a private room with the full karaoke setup – microphones, song selections and video monitors – just without the strangers watching and laughing at you. For westerners, this is probably an idea setup. Only your friends get to see you make a fool of yourself and there are no strangers going to work the next day telling all their friends about the loser they saw last night.
Noraebang are everywhere. Literally everywhere. Over 50% of all commercial buildings have one, usually in the basement. (I expect this is to muffle the noise.) At most of them you can have a tape made of your group’s “performances” to take home, listen to, laugh at and probably file away for blackmail material. Some of the more high-tech ones even have a setup where you can make your own music video. Just stand in front of a bluescreen, do your thing and the system does its thing. The words for your song are superimposed on the image (so everyone watching later can see just how badly you mangled the song, I’d imagine), and a background is added in. It’s a pretty slick production process for what it is.
And it’s from one such place that this video comes. I have no idea who these kids are, though I suspect the chubby one has got some secret familial link to Ozzy Osbourne. Click the “Movies” link at the top of the page (then click the “Money” image) to witness it for yourself.
This girl’s 15 minutes are just beginning.
