Karaoke should be a sport. It’s stressful, sweaty, and it involves far more than 20 beers and an off-pitch rendition of Aerosmith’s ‘I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing.’ Just ask this guy in eastern China who was sent to hospital with a collapsed lung after going too hard at karaoke.
According to the South China Morning Post, a 65-year-old man performed 10 (!!) high-pitched karaoke songs in a row when he began suffering from chest pains and experiencing difficulty breathing.
He visited a hospital the next day where doctors told him he had a collapsed lung, or pneumothorax. Dr. Peng Bin-fei told the South China Morning Post that it collapsed “because of high lung pressure caused by singing high notes.” Ouch.
It got me thinking, with so many iconic karaoke song choices out there, which ones would have been high-pitched and powerful enough to collapse a lung? Here are some thoughts:
‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ – Queen
It’s a cliche karaoke song, but it’s a tried and tested classic. Surely, if you sung “galileo, galileo figaro” enough times in a row you’d pop a lung and break your wine glass. Fun fact: Freddie Mercury doesn’t sing the high-pitched lyrics “for meee!” in ‘Bohemian Rhapsody,’ it’s actually sung by Queen drummer Roger Taylor.
‘I Will Always Love You’ – Whitney Houston
When it comes to karaoke, you can’t go wrong with the Earth-shattering key change of ‘I Will Always Love You’ when Whitney brings back in the “and I” of the chorus. Well, evidently, you can go wrong – you can bust a lung singing it.
‘I Believe In A Thing Called Love’ – The Darkness
This karaoke song is not the faint-hearted, or faint-lung-ed. A large portion of the chorus is spent in a super duper high-pitched tone. It’s also a really speedy song, so catching your breath is going to be difficult to say the least.
‘Honey’ – Mariah Carey
If you’re at the end of an intense night of karaoke, ‘Honey’ by Mariah Carey is sure to send you over the edge. Or at least to the nearest hospital. Let’s be honest, can anyone do a five-octave range like Mariah could back in the day? I think not.
It’s not the first time someone’s love of music has resulted in major injury, either. In 2017, a young girl’s lung collapsed from prolonged screaming at a One Direction concert.
Our thoughts and prayers go out to the ears of the poor soul standing near her at the concert, and whoever was trying to sing along at karaoke.