Turn Around Bright Eyes

Buy the book.

Don’t even read the rest of this review. Just go buy it immediately. While you’re at it, buy all of Rob Sheffield’s books, too. Just give him your money and let him write beautiful words and tell your friends about them. You won’t regret it.

This is the second of Sheffield’s books that I’ve read (here's the first one) and as soon as this plane lands, I’m buying the other one. I have to; I literally started this book when my plane took off from Spokane. By the time I landed in Denver, I had skipped out on a planned nap and burned through 180 pages. Less than an hour into this leg of my flight, it’s done and sitting beside me like a baby bird* that I want to protect and cherish (*that’s not a good analogy for me. I don’t like birds. Maybe a baby lamb. Mmm… lamb…)

Sheffield is a music guy. He writes for Rolling Stone and you can feel through his words that music seeps out of every pore. The first book I read broke my heart over and over again. Love is a Mixed Tape tells the story of Rob and his wife. They married young and lived a young couple’s dream, punctuated by music and mixed tapes (youngsters: I’m sorry you missed out on mixed tapes. Mixed tapes are not spotify playlists. Mixed tapes aren’t even mixed cd’s. Mixed tapes are EVERYTHING.) Their love story comes to a gut-wrenching halt when she dies – at 31- from a pulmonary embolism. Their love – and, their music – remain. But, everything sounds different now.

This book picks up years later, as Sheffield himself is coming back to life. It’s about meeting the next great love of his life and finding the happiness he thought he’d never again achieve. The book is also about his other true love: karaoke. And, how karaoke got him out of his spotless apartment and back into the world.

Now, we’re getting somewhere.

You can scoff at karaoke and pass it off as corny. But, guess what? That’s the freaking point! Of course karaoke is corny and often terrible and also the most fun you’ll ever have in your life. And, love it or hate it (you love it, you know it), this book will have you seeing the whole thing differently. You’ll appreciate so much more the value of putting away every inhibition and, even for just a few minutes, being a damn rock star.

I’m a bit of a karaoke early adopter. A ham since birth who happens to really enjoy the sound of my own voice, I had a karaoke machine in my room in middle school. Two tape players, so I could get the next song cued up. And, I would freaking JAM. No cheesy hairbrush lip-sycning for this girl. I would pick up that real (plastic) microphone and BELT THAT SHIT OUT. In high school, we’d sing karaoke on Jessica Willis’s laser disc karaoke machine. We would all sing along until, about an hour in, all my friends would be sitting on the couch staring blankly as I proudly declared “I’m gonna do one more!”

Even now at 39, I’ll turn up some serious Pat Benatar at Karaoke. Really feeling it? Grab a Kleenex, y’all, because End of the Road is about be all up in your face. Just a few months ago, a group of highly-skilled, highly-respected broadcast professionals and I found ourselves in the basement of a dingy bar in DC’s Adams Morgan neighborhood, cranking out hit after hit in a private karaoke room. Music – preferably a bit off-key – is the great equalizer.

And, that’s what so much of this book is all about. How karaoke can turn off all those inhibitions and make us stars. About how we find ourselves rooting for tone-deaf strangers and providing the background vocals for old men. He also subtly drops his love of the often-ignored TLC slow jam “Red Light Special.” He had me at T-Boz.

Sheffield is the music geek in all of us who happens to have a gift for eloquent writing. Is it a love story about his new wife and how singing karaoke has helped define their relationship? Or a love story about how it feels to sing Neil Diamond? It’s never just one thing. And, that’s why I love it.

I learned about music here, as I did with Sheffield’s other book. I learned about family. I learned about finding love. And, I learned that you can’t call karaoke a guilty pleasure if you don’t feel guilty about it to begin with.