it’s recently made more sense to me why the asian pop market places so much emphasis on the karaoke industry. for those who haven’t noticed or don’t know, asian (more so chinese, i think) MTVs are made with the karaoke-version in mind, which is that they produce it (as opposed to those for english songs which include the generic default ang moh girl running along the beach). this allows the karaoke-goer to not only enjoy the original video, but pretend they sing as well as the singer too, by having the singer lip sync to them in the process.

also, it means that the song doesn’t suffer from a bad cover band using synthesised instruments and drum machines to recreate it. so that the song retains all its original oomph for maximum destruction by the random karaoke-er.

i think they place emphasis on it because karaoke serves the purpose of firstly exposing the song further, because of the multitude of asian people who would rather munch on barsnacks, sitting in a room too close to a TV set and listening to their friends butcher songs they’ve previously loved. it’s a more helpful word-of-mouth sort of tool, since a lot of people (or me, at least) get to hear most of their chinese songs first this way.

secondly, it makes the original record sound mindblowingly fantastic. if you’ve always heard a song done a particular way by a particular friend who wants to do it at every chance, hearing the original version for the first time is CRAZY. it sounds like heaven, really; angels singing, muses dancing… yeah, the works. it really helps the record industry for random people to cover their songs with the over-vibrato-ed mikes in the too-small marble rooms because the original song—having been done and redone, and mixed by expensive professionals—sounds… well, professional.

it makes everyone feel good, really. and those that are able to sound a smidgeon like the real thing are then hailed as gods and carried around on the shoulders of the staff till the applause dies down. no, not really. but that’d be interesting to see, huh?