KJ, Feeling Contempt for karaoke.
39M, hosted karaoke for 2 and a half years before covid and back at it for almost another 2 years now. I've been a musician my whole life, played in school, college marching band, joined the army band, and performed in a few indy bands over the years, releasing 4 albums onto Spotify etc. Basically, I love performing.
When I first started going out to karaoke as a way to move on from a failed marriage and meet new people, I had a blast. The crowd always hyped me up when I sang. I never worked on vocals before, but my musician spirit and competitive nature got me pretty good, at least for dive bar karaoke.
Years later, I'm here KJ'ing again because I got ghosted out of my last job and needed something quick to keep up with rent. I told myself I wouldn't stay here long, but it's almost been another 2 years and I'm just dying inside.
I know it's not about me. It's for the people to come fuck around and have fun. But for fucks sake every time someone wants to do colt 45 or before he cheats or honestly so many songs I just wanna break shit. I'm so burnt out on hearing the same stupid ass songs by the same stupid ass people that think they're so cool doing fuck her gently for the billionth time this weekend.
I have no facial expressions anymore, I'm short with people, and I visibly react negatively to their song requests. I used to have enthusiasm and actual joy in my heart for this. I know you're probably thinking, "just get a different job". I say the same thing to my gf, who also runs karaoke at a different bar, when she complains about all the bullshit we deal with in the bar scene, but she feels kind of the same as me in the sense that; we still like it and we don't really know wtf else to do. After doing karaoke for so long, it's hard to imagine doing a job that has literally nothing in our interests or skillset. Like, just go be an accountant? Construction? Everything feels like even more torture than what I deal with doing karaoke.
Does anyone else ever just get fucking tired of karaoke like me? I'm always annoyed when I'm dead in the bar but this one person just wants to sing back to back to back all fucking night and they're never good singers. And I know it shouldn't matter, but it's just making me angry.
Sorry for long post, just hoping someone out there feels like me and has some insight on how to work through this. I'm not a bad person and I don't like how this job makes me act and talk to people. Just want to know if I can ever enjoy this again.