In order to cover your tail when requested or requesting to sing at a karaoke gathering, here are a few tips. I do recognize that watching people botch their performance is most of the entertainment of the entire act of kara-okaying. But to not be on the laughing-stock side of the fence when singing, I recommend the following selection criteria.

1. Avoid songs with long instrumental solos, because, hey, what are you going to do, hum clapton’s riffs during Layla?
2. Choral works with fifteen separate voices are not good karaoke material. The original recording included fifteen trained (or at least corrected) voices, and just because you’ve consumed fifteen smirnoffs that evening, most likely you won’t even nail one of those voices well enough to not look outright stew-pit. ABBA is out of the question.
3. Imagine how the song would sound while sung by William Shatner. If he can pull it off, you and your friend Smirnoff can as well:
4. Tone-deaf people only find out that they are tone-deaf through the help of concerned and well-wishing friends. “Friends don’t let tone-deaf Friends Karaoke”
5. Forays into music genres which don’t already appear in your home playlist should be avoided. Budding Garth Brooks protoges, steer clear of those Jay-Z songs, no matter how many Smirnoffs that budding Shania Twain at the bar has plied you with.
6. Bohemian Rhapsody can never be successfully karaokayed, okay? See points one and two.