Week 4, Karaoke Songs

If there's one thing the Bachelor does well, it's cultural misappropriation (note, Chris Harrison, I did not say designing shirts). And this week's episode was virtually littered with misunderstandings about what constitutes Korean culture (I'm looking at you Clare "I don't even own a kimono" Crawley). But Karaoke was not one of these things. Because, while Karaoke comes from the Japanese for empty orchestra (eerily appropriate for women with so little substance), it is the Koreans who have truly gotten it right. Korean Karaoke or "Nori Bang" combines the traditional background music and hilariously emotional videos that may or may not correspond to the actual lyrics of the songs (But truly make you wonder how we ever listened to Bruce Springsteen's Dancing in the Dark without the accompanying image of a sobbing girl cradling her cellphone like a baby) with a private room so that you are only subjected to the torturous vocal stylings of yourself and your friends. No more drunken frat boys slurring their way through Journey; no more ton deag crop tops grinding up against the mic stand to Spice Girls' 2 Become 1 as somewhere Victoria Beckham is seized with the sudden and inexplicable desire to call the girls and break up the band again; no more diva wannabes trying to start Elvis-like rumors that Whitney Houston still lives. Just you, your friends, and a video of a gangly Korean teen, combing his hair on loop to the entire Cyndi Lauper catalog.

And for that reason, we will take a break this week from the probing psychological portrait that I have been painting of Juan Pablo (clearly, the fantasy league is just a front for my audition to be an FBI profiler) and focus instead on the girls by examining what each lovely lady's karaoke song would be. Everyone has a karaoke song and, much like a spirit animal, it is deeply personal and highly revelatory (unless it's a son that they just sound really good singing, in which case - Get out of my karaoke room, Whitney Houston lady! No one gets discovered at a karaoke bar). For example, my personal song is I Think We're Alone Now (The Tiffany version, obviously - not the Tommy James and the Shondells original) which speaks to my nearly indestructible 80's roots, my deep-seated issues with authority, and that time I ran away with a circus performer for a hasty, yet passion-fueled elopement. So as the week winds down, I will reveal, what I believe to be, the karaoke songs for each girl on the show and analyze what that choice (you know, the one they didn't make) says about them as a person.