2026 Karaoke Playlist

One of my sillier goals for 2026 is to try all new songs or, at least, never do the same song twice at karaoke. I live next to a bar The Mermaid that has karaoke nights on Tuesday and Thursday and on Wednesday nights, down the road a bit, Uncle Ollie’s Penthouse (one of the better new bars in LA imo) has Gong Show Karaoke - three comedians watch you perform, can gong you off stage, and if they let you finish, they then give you a review kind of American Idol-style. The night I went, the winner of the evening went home with a fancy new bong.
My recent go-to’s have been Mr. Brightside, Say It Ain’t So, and Lonely Boy but I want to try to mix things up in 2026 so I’ve been compiling a Spotify list of potential karaoke options. At first, I went for a lot of deep cuts until I remembered that a lot of songs aren’t available for karaoke so I nixed those from the list. The Mermaid and Prime Time Pub (another fave karaoke spot) both go with the modern version of karaoke which is just pulling up videos from YouTube so there are far more options than the standard karaoke that has books of song choices but, even then, some deeper cuts aren’t on YouTube yet.
I’m added some of my standards to the list but the rule - if I stick to it - will be to delete a song from the playlist after I sing it and then it is off-limits for the rest of the year. Listen, I said it was one of my sillier goals!