Sing K and the art of writing Kantonglish – Part I

For the innocent, unsuspecting people:

Sing K = Sing Karaoke
Kantonglish = Cantonese songs written in English [different from Cantonglish which is a form of Chinglish which stands for Chinese + English (spoken and written)] purely for the sake of Karaoke. Invented by AD and BK.

Back ground
I was introduced to the local style of singing K (popularly known as sing K or K) sometime in 2002. I did try my hand at some very old English classics which did not go down that well with even the old people. And NO, hahaha, my singing was not that bad. It’s just that they were less popular with the crowd. Why did I pick them? Well, the K bars have a very old and unpopular list of English songs. And most of them are renditions by popular local stars with care thrown to the wind for continuity of lyrics and tune. Classic case – American Pie by Leslie Cheung. Leslie by his own right was a big star. And still sells. But what he did to that lovely Don Mclean song forced Madonna to come out with her own version. (I am just guessing this and no offence meant to either parties)

Back to the story now. My visits to the K became more frequent as my younger colleagues often invited me to join them…;-) that was until we decided to form a K-lunch club and I invited them. Why K-lunch?
Simple. The K-chains (like Red Box, Green Box, Neway) charge lesser and offer lunch in the package than how they rip us off in the evenings especially on weekends…And it was great to get away from the stress during a weekday, have lunch with friends and sing K for 1 hour.
Since, English was not a wide choice and I ended up doing solo most of the time, I began to enjoy others’ singing more and stopped singing in English for sometime….just like a lull before a storm….that is until GW (I am going to use initials here since I have not taken permission from them to print their names yet) asked me to join in on his favourite Eason song on YW’s birthday k-lunch party. I was encouraged to sing the ‘re do so’ part which is what it is – re do so (as in do re me). And it went well with the public.
I knew that to enjoy more I would have to sing with the others. And to sing with the others I would need to know how to sing local songs.
They were all happy that I enjoyed that part of the song…but it was getting boring singing the same part every time…especially when the lead singer (read GW) did not want to sing it anymore…so I had to do what I did do….and it is not my fault…

Continued in ….Sing K and the art of writing Kantonglish – Part II