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Why “Shallow” Is Destined to Be a Karaoke Classic


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Why “Shallow” Is Destined to Be a Karaoke Classic

by Jillian Mapes

Senior Editor

 

Spoiler

“Are you happy in this modern world?”

At least for web-addled millennial and Gen Z listeners, it’s the kind of loaded question that could make you want to delete your Twitter on the spot. But on A Star Is Born’s “Shallow,” lyrics like these are sung so earnestly, with so much torture, that there is something almost campy about them. Whichever way your enjoyment skews, there is definitely something cathartic—and fun!—about singing the song that birthed both a star and a tragic love story between Lady Gaga’s Ally and Bradley Cooper’s Jackson Maine. I should know. I’ve sang it at karaoke too many times already.

In the film, Ally wanted to run and hide when Jackson initially tricked her into singing the unfinished duet in front of thousands, choosing a faraway mic and putting her hand over her face. I certainly felt that way before I sang “Shallow” in public for the first time: hiding in a gross basement bathroom of an karaoke bar in Manhattan’s East Village, shaking out my nerves and black fringe, wondering why I ever wanted to embrace the challenge of recreating Gaga’s vocal acrobatics for my coworkers’ entertainment at the office holiday party.

Tequila helped me fake it, until I got to the parts of “Shallow” that are filled with the ridiculous melismas and strange pronunciations, all Gaga oh-la-la. While singing that one note where Gaga really goes off—which I will not attempt to spell phonetically, out of respect—the momentum of the previous chorus (sha-ha-ha-hallow) caught up to me, and soon I was belting at full volume. “Shallow,” I learned, does not accept apathy.

The thing I love most about that part in “Shallow” is how Gaga sings it not in an awe-inspiring falsetto but a broadly projecting wail that’s meant to inspire listeners to join in, which they often do. (Gaga herself called it “a cry or a prayer for freedom.”) In A Star Is Born, Ally’s crazy bridge seems to be the result of improvising a song she’d only sorta written that morning, in a grocery store parking lot, before Jackson secretly fleshed it out. Without the context, that note makes absolutely no sense but feels like a triumph anyway. It’s Rocky running up the stairs in the course of a single vocal run.

An ambitious YouTuber nails Lady Gaga’s bridge from “Shallow.”

As far as glory notes go, “Shallow”’s is intimidating but not impossible to replicate. (If all else fails, just scream.) Attempting that drunk-on-life smattering of ohs earns the respect of the room, and it’s a little less scary with a duet partner standing there, playing the Jackson to your Ally. Also, “Shallow” is the kind of song that reminds you how good it feels in your body to really sing out, that maybe makes you look back fondly at singing in church or high school theater. The only thing that’ll sink you is a lack of enthusiasm. There is no way to timidly sing “Shallow,” and that’s part of the beauty of it.

In the sport of karaoke, blind confidence is key and critical judgements are overrated. This is a world where “Don’t Stop Believin’” remains an eternal favorite, a choice you can’t get thatmad about once you’ve seen how it plays. You’ve got to read the room, consider the ages and subcultures of the people in it, and pick something that will add to the energy, not deplete it. “Shallow” ticks all the boxes. It’s current and it’s ubiquitous, so young and older folks both know it. And because it’s wildly ubiquitous, it works as both a normal choice, and an inadvertently funny one for those who still believe in guilty pleasures. Most importantly, it’s anthemic, repetitive, simple in structure, 100 percent over the top, surprisingly versatile, and, at 3:36, the perfect length. On YouTube, you can find “Shallow” karaoke instrumentals that lean toward piano sentimentality and others that attempt to recreate the smoky rock breakdown of the original, always betraying a glint of digitized chintziness.

Gaga’s wildly different performance of “Shallow” at the Grammys, like a sexy, glam-rock praying mantis, was further proof of the song’s karaoke powers. “It’s so tied in with her movie’s two characters that even when she sings it at the Grammys, she’s forced to do karaoke on her own song,” says Rolling Stone’s Rob Sheffield, who wrote a great book about the ritual bliss of karaoke, Turn Around Bright Eyes, and is so intense about this stuff that he takes notes while his friends perform at private-room karaoke.

Distancing herself from the film’s supposed autofiction, Gaga is now embracing “Shallow” as an anthem to outlive A Star Is Born. When she performs it in her current Vegas residency, Enigma, it’s a different version still—a little similar to Ally’s solo piano rendition toward the end of the movie, but usually with more weeping. Here is Gaga preceding a solemn—if pantsless—encore of the song back in December with a speech about the haters misunderstanding her intentions back in the day.

This repurposing is an incredibly smart move, and situates “Shallow” in the tradition of another great movie ballad and gauntlet karaoke choice, “I Will Always Love You.” When Whitney Houston made The Bodyguard in 1992, she was recovering from a less well-received album, similar to Gaga. “I’m Your Baby Tonight was Whitney’s Joanne,” jokes Sheffield, who adds that both The Bodyguard and A Star Is Born “take a country ballad and let this lost-in-the-woods diva do this note in the middle of it that only they can do, that stops the song and becomes its own universe.” From then on, “I Will Always Love You” served as Whitney’s own redemption theme.

“Shallow” may become signature for Gaga as well, but part of the reason why it’s such a perfect karaoke song is its classic construction. “It could have been a Carly Simon song in the ’70s, a Bon Jovi song in the ’80s, a Sarah McLachlan song in the ’90s,” says Sheffield. He points out that if your karaoke place doesn’t have “Shallow” yet, you can improvise it over Extreme’s “More Than Words,” and it’ll turn out mostly fine.

With all this in mind, I gathered together Sheffield and a group of karaoke-loving friends for a one-night challenge: In how many different ways and combinations could we sing “Shallow”? We did it so many times (I lost count around 10), my thighs ached the next morning from jumping up and down onto the tiny light-up stage in the front bar of a Lower East Side karaoke spot. Maybe the best part was watching new groups of people come in and get really into “Shallow” the first time they saw us perform it, then get confused—but nonetheless into it—by later renditions.

One friend, a seasoned Shania Twain karaoker, pulled a black cowboy hat out of her bag that was passed around as we took the stage. There was a Broadway “Shallow” and a sad-cowboy “Shallow,” a torch-song solo “Shallow” and a last-call group “Shallow,” “Shallow”s by singers with something to prove and “Shallow”s by those who wouldn’t say what they do is “singing,” exactly. (The simultaneous sense of dress-up and freedom that Gaga brings to everything she does comes in handy.) If you’re a woman with any kind of low range, the Gaga part is already enjoyable enough, but I highly recommend Cooper’s part too; you’ll know it’s working when your throat kinda hums way in the back.

I sang the night’s final “Shallow” with a new friend I’d just made, Xena, who had heard us sing it at least three times since coming in. Most everyone had left a couple “Shallow”s back, and I sensed the few unsuspecting parties there were sick of this little dare they’d stepped into, so my Jackson and I mounted the last go-around lowkey-like, by the bar. When I heard Xena singing along a few feet over, I instinctively moved near her, sharing the mic instead of passing it. We both belted out the rest gleefully, tipsily. “I really like that song,” she said after the spontaneous duet, with a big smile on her face. “It just doesn’t get old.”

https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/why-shallow-is-destined-to-be-a-karaoke-classic/

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ElectricKing

For sure. You can really belt it out. It has that karaoke power ballad kind of feel to it. Not saying it's a karaoke song but y'all know what I'm saying.

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YourWhiskyMouth

I drunkenly did karaoke on Saturday singing My Heart Will Go On and abruptly started singing Shallow about halfway through the song instead :derpga:

No onscreen lyrics needed of course :ally:

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derpmonster

Too bad literally no one who covers can sing the "ahhh aaahh ahh" part. :triggered:

Anyway yay for the slayage! Karaoke is about having fun, not singing accurately anyway. :applause:

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giskardsb

“Shallow, I learned, does not accept apathy. “

Best line ever.  Great article tho that really showcases Shallows appeal.  

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MonsterofFame

I'm afraid to karaoke anything of Gaga post-BTW.

Her voice is just too powerful for a non-singer like me to even come close to sounding correct.

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gypsy101

most gaga songs just don’t sound very good at karaoke, probably because almost no one can really sing the damn songs like she can. the worst of heard is you and i (from several different people)

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Lord Temptation
1 hour ago, gypsy101 said:

most gaga songs just don’t sound very good at karaoke, probably because almost no one can really sing the damn songs like she can. the worst of heard is you and i (from several different people)

So true. Like you can actually sing “Shallow” drunk and with all your friends, unlike most of Gaga’s songs that require so much...talent we don’t have :messga:

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