The 5 Best Karaoke Picks That Rock Hard — And Aren't Lame Cliches

"My Way." "My Heart Will Go On." God help us all, "Volare." Some tracks are fatal to the vibe at any karaoke gathering, either because they're badly overdone or because they're more difficult than they seem, and the combination of an amateur singer and two-for-one Long Island iced teas can drain the life out of any tune. Fortunately, most good karaoke systems have a deeply stacked back catalog with hundreds of hidden gems that haven't been sung dozens of times that week and several that night, and that even a modestly talented singer with a fresh song and a confident presence can deliver.

None of the songs here require a particularly strong singing voice to carry, with attitude and verve doing much of the salesmanship for a good performance. Likewise, none of these is an especially long song, saving you (and your audience) the desperation of trying to carry a track you didn't remember was over six minutes long.

"Harper Valley PTA" is that rarest of things: a ladylike diss track. Jeannie C. Riley's no-nonsense rendition was a country-pop crossover success in 1968, and fortunately for karaoke singers if no one else, its basic theme of calling out sexist double standards and small-town hypocrisy will still land with audiences today. "Harper Valley PTA" was so popular on its release that it spawned a film and a sitcom, both starring Barbara Eden as the leggy, free-spirited central character, so you can be assured that someone in your audience will recall and like the song.

The narrative tells the story of Mrs. Johnson, a widowed mother who receives a catty communique from her daughter's school PTA accusing her of wearing short skirts and carrying on with men, among other sins against propriety. The mother then storms into the next PTA meeting, her skirt presumably unlengthened, and airs the dirty laundry of the "Harper Valley hypocrites" who questioned her childrearing abilities. Riley was a stronger performer than singer, and anyone who can match her sass can rise to the limited pipes this song requires.

Complaining about men is an even more tried-and-true songwriting concept than complaining about women, but British singer-songwriter Kirsty MacColl offered a fresh take with "England 2 Colombia 0." The song is told from the point of view of a single mother getting back into the dating pool who finds out that the charmer with whom she's gone to watch a televised soccer game not only has children himself, but it still married to their mother. The tune ends with one of the best kiss-off lines you'll ever hear: "Now you can go to hell / I'm going to Brazil..." It would be worth the price of a ticket to Rio just to deliver that line and mean it.

"Tropical Brainstorm," on which "England 2 Colombia 0" appears, was MacColl's last album before her death in a boating accident in Mexico in 2000. A truly skilled songwriter, she deserves to be better remembered than she is for the wry wit she infused into her music. Do your part next time the karaoke signup comes around.

This one will take some rehearsal, but if you're willing to put in the work, you'll have the crowd lining up to buy tickets for the chance to maybe eat out of your hand. "Prisencolinensinainciusol" is a gibberish song intended to sound like American English, delivered with the same Elvis-like swagger that had influenced writer and singer Adriano Celentano as an emerging artist. The song was a hit when it came out in 1972 and has never completely left the public consciousness, notably being performed during the opening ceremonies of the 2026 Winter Olympics in Celentano's native Milan, joining works by Italy's operatic titans as symbols of the country's culture. If you can stick the gibberish and dress it up with some vigorous stage presence, you've got an act worth a free drink at least.

Celentano is one of the most famous Italian pop stars of the post-war generation, famous perhaps as much for his intense stage presence as for his musicianship. His own website refers to Celentano's singing as "Brechtian," a comparison to the experimental German playwright Bertolt Brecht, in the same paragraph that it describes his dancing as "epileptic," which implies an interesting self-image. Fortunately, his twangy delivery and self-confidence are easier to mimic at a karaoke night than whatever performance style his website is trying to describe. 

It's not karaoke night without at least one duet, and "You're the Reason Our Kids Are Ugly" by Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn is a humdinger. Lynn and Twitty's fictional relationship varied from sultry to dead-end based on which song they were singing at the time, and "You're the Reason Our Kids Are Ugly," a good-natured marital spat in which the spouses blame each other for everything up to and including how their children look, lets the singers' comedic skills shine.

"You're the Reason Our Kids Are Ugly" is easy to sing and even easier to vamp on, with the good lines split evenly between the singers. As an added bonus, the song really shows off Lynn's accent, or at least a version she was willing to play up for the bit: Her pronunciation of "wires" features a vowel seldom if ever heard from anyone else in the world. But you don't have to be, or talk like, a coal miner's daughter to sell this song to an eager crowd. Just let the lyrics and the built-in eye rolls they inspire guide you.

You want something fast, angry, and nasal? That's why God made Green Day! The punk-pop juggernaut's huge catalog provides any number of karaoke options for a singer with bouncy energy and a middle finger for the powers that be, but one of the best choices is the underappreciated "The Grouch" from their album "Nimrod."The gloriously pessimistic track is told from the point of view of a grumpy, dissatisfied  "old" man, kvetching about all the opportunities he's wasted and all he now has to put up with. (Danger: reflecting on what age Green Day considered "old" in 1997 may cause permanent psychic damage to millennials.) 

Billie Joe Armstrong, bless him, sounds exactly like himself on this track, meaning that your best Armstrong impression can carry the day. And at just a hair over two minutes long, the song is wonderfully tight, the kind you can deliver quick and hop offstage before anyone looks at their watch. Channel your contempt for the nimrods in your life as you perform "The Grouch" and let the applause wash over you.