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" Everyone&amp;#039;s been there: You show up at the karaoke bar sober and incredulous. You promise yourself in your heart of hearts that you will not sing tonight, that you can&amp;#039;t sing tonight, because you can&amp;#039;t sing period. Drink one: &amp;quot;Build Me Up Buttercup&amp;quot; plays in the background and you&amp;#039;re holding strong. Drink two: someone start singing Bon Jovi and you involuntarily start bobbing your head. Finally, four drinks later, those first chords of &amp;quot;Born to Run&amp;quot; play and before you know it you&amp;#039;re frantically searching for a second microphone to join in. Music is infectious like that. And like all infections, without the proper medication (e.g. Simon Cowell likening your baritone to a robotic cow) it can get out of hand and ravage a person, with tragic results -- like these five videos. (Fight through the awkwardness and watch them all the way through. It&amp;#039;s like waiting the full two minutes for the pregnancy test results -- the tension only adds to the enjoyment.) &amp;quot;Simply The Best&amp;quot;      IRONY ALERT! I can think of a hundred things that these kids are &amp;quot;simply the best&amp;quot; at (twirling, embarrassment, losing, sadness) but singing isn&amp;#039;t one of them. Some people might say encouraging things like, &amp;quot;Good for them!&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;Go after your dreams!&amp;quot; but just because a kid has vocal chords doesn&amp;#039;t mean he should sing. I mean, a platypus has wings, but it can&amp;#039;t fly. It&amp;#039;s the same thing, only platypus don&amp;#039;t live long enough to experience the residual effects of an emotional battering like having a stadium full of people cover their ears while you sing.  &amp;quot;The Final Countdown&amp;quot;      What exactly is the thought process that goes into the decision to a) form a band when you can&amp;#039;t sing or play instruments, and b) cover one of the worst songs ever written? (The fact that it is used in player introductions for the Detroit Pistons only confirms that.) Even the kid in the opening frame runs away! (Probably because kids have a heightened sense of danger.) Either way, this is definitely the final countdown -- to the start of their careers at Walgreens.  &amp;quot;Part of Your World&amp;quot;      Everyone loves the Lord, but sometimes he&amp;#039;s a got a really twisted sense of humor. Like giving this man the ability to sing exactly like a 12-year-old girl. And boy, does he nail this song, socially castrating himself in the process. Dude, pick anything else. Try some Jodeci. Something that will get you laid instead of on To Catch a Predator. You&amp;#039;re a man, goddamnit! You&amp;#039;re supposed to have, what do you call them? Oh yeah -- balls. You&amp;#039;re suppose to sing ballads about not seeing anything wrong with a little bump and grind. Or rocking tunes about drinking bourbon, then Scotch, then beer. You&amp;#039;re not supposed to sing Disney tunes about pubescent mermaids&amp;#039; feelings of isolation, no matter how good you are at it. (Plus now that song&amp;#039;s gonna be in my head for the rest of the day.)  &amp;quot;Amazing Grace&amp;quot;      In the action-comedy movie version of this video, Martin Lawrence would be on the lam. He robbed a bank in someplace like St. Louis, then fled the cops to a small town where he&amp;#039;s having a tough time fitting in. And the landlady he rents a room from insists that he go to church with her, and then she makes him sing in front of the congregation. Hell, it&amp;#039;s a more plausible scenario then accepting that this dude volunteered to sing a song in praise of God that he didn&amp;#039;t know the words to. Unless he was really singing the not-as-well-known hymn &amp;quot;Oh-mazing Gray.&amp;quot; Then I stand corrected.  &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s What Friends Are For&amp;quot;      Apparently this is a real recording from some guy&amp;#039;s Bar Mitzvah in 1993. So much to love in this one -- the way the family sings like a class of ESL students or how they sway like they&amp;#039;re on the bridge of the U.S.S. Enterprise, under attack from Klingon warships. Or how the blue-screen background ends up being projected through dad&amp;#039;s blue shirt, which makes his head seem to float in mid-air. And crazy grandpa&amp;#039;s first appearance two minutes in, and subsequent reappearances. But best of all is the fact Seth, the Bar Mitzvah boy, is nowhere to be found in this video -- most likely because he&amp;#039;s in the corner of the function hall, slowly dying of shame. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/music/videos/a4478/5-humiliating-cover-songs/>