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Everyone knows karaoke. Here in the Philippines, karaokes are those machines without screens attached to them. When screens come with the machine, we call it videoke. It has become quite a pastime for many people, particularly for those who work regular 8-hour jobs. Videoke bars would be packed at the end of a working day. The pre-dinner crowd would start having drinks and start picking songs. Tables take turns at the mic and voices would ring.
Filipinos love to sing, and it’s just fortunate that at least 75% of the population can do it well, so sitting in a videoke place is not much of an ordeal. It could be quite pleasant, actually.
We do have those people who can’t carry a tune, though. And like the rest of the people-who-can-carry-a-tune crowd, they like to pick up the mic and belt out a song every now and then. Good-natured comments abound and the audience would mostly take it in stride. BUT….not when the song being sung is “My Way” by Frank Sinatra.
When karaoke, and then videoke became popular here, My Way would be sung about 3 or 4 times a night, and that’s a conservative estimate. The older generation would ask for it again and again, and each singer would put his own twist to the song. It became so popular that bars would have at least two copies of the disc with the song in it, in case one goes wonky.
After some time, however, people began to fight over the song. When a particularly tone-deaf person starts singing the song, instead of the usual good-natured comments, rumbles of disgust would ensue. Some would even boo. It had gotten so bad that bar patrons would get into fistfights over it. There was even a rumored shooting incident.
Eventually videoke bar owners got smart. They banned the song and took it out of their song lists.
I could never understand why My Way had that effect. Maybe I never will. But perhaps if I asked a person who got beat up why, he’d just say I” don’t know but I did it my way.”
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