A Star Is Born

Usually in my blog posts I try to demonstrate how I am EveryWoman, just like you*. Not so in this post. Because in this post, I demonstrate how I have recently become a Star, elevated above the EveryWoman exponentially, kind of like Nicole Kidman, or Scarlet Johansson, or Katie Holmes (except that she’s... you know... a Scientologist).

ANYWAY, regular readers of this blog may know that I penned a little parody. Well, the other night I went to the home of a lovely young man named Adam (who is EveryMan, except that he is not really like any other man at all), and actually recorded the parody to music. You know. Made a real song. Just like a Star.

The experience was quite surreal. I arrived carrying a large bottle of champagne, partly as a thank you to Adam, but mostly as a means of enabling me to sing in front of a semi-stranger. Given that my children, my husband, my best friend, and the (cruel, cruel) Year 5 teacher who denied me access to the school choir all agree that my singing voice is abysmal, I needed some liquid assistance to get me through.

Surprisingly, though, once the music started, I was off and running. Not literally – I was actually sitting at Adam’s desk in front of his computer, where he was frantically adjusting his ‘AutoTune’ programme to make my voice sound less, well, terrible – but figuratively. So enthusiastic was I that I practically shouted my lines, barely noticing Adam wincing out of the corner of my eye (though when I did, I just thought he’d squirted himself with champagne).

It wasn’t till we listened to the first take that I realised I was out of tune. Not slightly out of tune, not in an ‘AutoTune-can-fix-that’ way, but rather in a ‘not-even-remotely-in-the-ballpark’ way. Like, I was singing a completely different tune to the one required. A tune never before heard. A tune not of this world. A tune that quite possibly could destroy civilisation.

I took another swig of champagne. Adam, who looked somewhat pained, took another seven or eight. And we tried again. And again. And again. After the fourth or seventeenth take, we were both rather drunk, I was singing in a maniacal staccato, and Adam had joined in with a bizarre falsetto worthy of any of the Bee Gee brothers. Through my champagne haze, I was awed.

Adam mixed in some sound effects, which made me sound quite professional, and others, which made me sound like a robot sucking helium. He added sound bites of my children yelling, which made me reflexively flinch and swig more champagne. And he added echo, which made me sound like I had twenty backup singers, which was brilliant, as that was never going to happen in real life.

So now we have our soundtrack. And yesterday we filmed the videoclip. Watch this space. It’s going to be BIG.

And by the way, Year 5 school teacher? The one who wouldn’t let me in the choir? Big mistake. HUGE.

*unless you're a man, in which case I'm nothing like you, but probably a lot like someone you know**
**unless you actually do know me, in which case I'm exactly like someone you know.