Conclusive Study Proves That British Karaoke Fans Are Illiterate. Or Maybe They’re Not!

Brian Raftery | December 18, 2006 4:30 am

Another day, another dubious bit of speculative, headline-grabbing research from the U.K.:

Millions of adults in England have reading skills too poor to enable them to belt out many favourites from a karaoke autocue, research suggests. The lyrics of the 10 most popular karaoke songs have been assessed and rated by government literacy experts….

Experts from the Get On literacy campaign said 17.8 million adults would not be able to follow [Robbe Williams’ “Angel”…they would also have trouble following the lyrics of Gloria Gaynor’s I will Survive, the Commitments’ Mustang Sally and Queen’s Don’t Stop Me Now, the research says.

In summary: There are lots of people in England who can’t read. And there are lots of people who do karaoke. What if they were all in the same room–wouldn’t that be kinda weird? Like if someone who can’t read has to sing “We Didn’t Start The Fire,” and they say “rockin’ roll our color wars” instead of “rock n’ roller cola wars”?

Either way, can we just get a picture of Freddie Mercury in there somehow, and pray to God that the Drudge Report picks this up? Great!

Lyrics ‘stretch reading skills’ [BBC News, via No Rock & Roll Fun]