Karaoke Forums

Fist, I would like to thank all of you for the good advice.

Songs containing words like. Fu**. Sh**, Ni*****, giving he*d, etc, they’re mostly in PopH Urban will not be listed in my song book. Sexual innuendos, i.e. “I’ll make love to you”. “All I wanna do is make love to you”, “I touch myself”, “Baby got back”, I-95 A**h*** song” are the songs I am referring to.

Anyway, a lot of good advices were presented. Special thanks goes to:

Leonard Lizard. I will incorporate your advice and put a cautionary message in my book – "Caution: Some songs contain adult content. Parents, please monitor your children's song choices”.

JFSW6 advice to “announce to the audience a few times (and for parents to be aware) that the song books do contain songs with explicit lyrics, to please try to avoid choosing them because I can't remember all the songs that might be inappropriate”

Chrosiris advice: “I think putting a warning on the books and making an announcement periodically would be sufficient. In my case there is no way I would go through and try to censor my books. Kids know what they are doing and what they are singing most of the time. If they get up there and sing something they shouldn't it's not your fault for having it, the responsibility lies upon the kid and the parents. With the warnings in place you should be fine.”

With the cautionary message in the front page of the book about songs with explicit lyrics, announcing to the audience about monitoring their kids’ songs, and the songs that were tagged “Rated R/No one under age 16”, I think those should be good enough to cover my own a**.

Thanks again you guys. My appreciation to Karaoke Scene for a very informative forum.

Wow....

The list for this is going to be quite long:

But you can add:

Cowboy - Kid Rock
Mr. Brownstone - Guns N Roses

There are MANY, MANY others...

But I do know that while the SGB version of Cowboy is quite dirty, IIRC the Sound Choice version doesn't list the 'dirty' lyrics on the screen. (Though nothing is stopping anyone from singing them).

It would be nice if the karaoke manufacturers started doing what the DJ music services do and distributing the 'clean' or 'radio' versions of the songs (or both) or at least started marking them with:

WARNING! Content!

That way it would be easy to know what songs would be a potential issue.

A person on another forum posted something that recently happened to them. They had a show in a family restaurant and their trainee host wasn't as familiar with all of the music. She let a song with the bad word slip through and even though she cut off the guy and apologized to the crowd, someone complained to corporate and they lost the show over it. Seems like an over reaction to me but that's what happened.

It is a lot of work but that is why I am printing seperate "Kid Books." I was hoping the work might pay off in marketing the clean show aspect. It has worked better for us to have the kids ask if they can sing a song not in the book and we approve/disapprove it rather than to have all the songs listed and say they can't sing that one.

I always tell parents: "I will do what I can, but I do not know EVERY word of my tens of thousands of songs. I can't be the "Karaoke Police"."

I also tell them that if kids are present, be forwarned! They WILL take over the Karaoke and sing all night long so if the adults want to sing, ever, someone will need to step in and cut the kids off and that should be you...not me telling your guests their kids can't sing anymore!

I stop that by not permitting Katrina and Nicole to take the stage right after Nicole, Katrina, and Katie. Soon to be followed by Nicole, Katie, and Emily. One turn on stage per rotation. That isn't something I do *every* time, but I will if there are single singers ready to sing. And I get no static about that, either.

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[color=#ffff55]Mickey J.[/color]
Alas for those who never sing, but die with all their music in them.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

My policy is to to tell the kids that even if there are rude words in the songs they have chosen they should sing the 'radio edit' instead.

The kids already know all the words and if they want to sing they will follow this rule.

If there are suggestive lyrics but not rude words then the kids who are old enough will already know what they mean, the kids and grandparents that don't know will go on blissfully unaware.

As for 'giving head' Lily changed it to 'kneading bread' for a live lounge performance at BBC Radio 1's Big Weekend last year.

- Jonn (I like fresh bread!)

Well, you can call me Old-Fashioned, but I just don't list ANY songs with profanity, or blatantly graphic phrases or expressions. This way, I don't have to deal with this sort of problem. Like an earlier poster stated, these songs aren't really missed by most of my audiences. In fact, I've been complimented by many of my regular patrons for NOT having these types of songs in my library.

Like the old saying goes: "When in doubt, leave it out!"

Exactly! I do allow some of the 'omitted' songs to be sung if I know someone is going to edit themselves. But the club I work does not want them so I do not list them. Rarely does anyone complain & the ones that do are usually newbies that are drunk and are screaming their songs to begin with.
Had a group tonight & the first thing this guy did was scream as loud as he could - How are you all MF's! Funny thing is our crowd knows the rules & all were yelling HEY, before I could reach the mics. They do not want to hear it either - remember average age group is early 20's to 30's.

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LIKE Lonman on Facebook - Lonman Productions Karaoke & my main site via my profile!

Mmmm.
I have not done any sort of avoidance.
If anyone complains I will delete a song.
So far I have deleted one.
The England football song.
The complainer was me.