Welcome to “This week on Red Karaoke” where we recap all the exciting news from our site, the forums, our facebook and the rest of our karaoke community. This week there was a lot more going on in the forums and on facebook than in the blog, so read closely to make sure you didn’t miss anything important and get yourself ready for next week’s Karaoke Challenge!

So what’s been happening in our karaoke world?

We’ve added tons of new songs to our karaoke catalogue as well as the Red Karaoke Store, including the fun theme from Spongebob Squarepants, Pink’s chart topper Raise your glass, a country favorite from Billy Currington and James Blunt’s fun single Stay the night, which was featured in the Red Karaoke blog series Discover and download!

A few weeks ago we saw how karaoke could be used as a tool to change the world when Bjork held a three day karaoke protest in defense of Iceland’s natural resources… this week Microsoft’s search engine Bing is helping the world (or at least China) learn English one karaoke song at the time.

The suggested songs this week came from some of Red Karaoke’s favorite artists, including the incredible talented Christina Aguilera and her ballad Hurt as well as the moving single Zombies from The Cranberries. But if you aren’t into Irish bands or pop ballads, Underground Karaoke has a very unique and different guide to selecting a karaoke song from a more punk rock genre.

And finally, make sure to browse all the exciting stuff going on in the forums including some new troubleshooting tips we’ve added, this user created and run contest, the suggested song of the day game and of course, the week’s karaoke challenge…

What A Wonderful World - Vote for my rendition!

Speaking of, this week’s winner of the It’s a wonderful world challenge is the talented Nighthours. Thank you to everyone who entered their amazing renditions and congratulations to our winner who will be featured not only here, but also on facebook and in the newsletter!

Want your chance to be featured in the RK blog, newsletter and facebook page? Well, why not try singing your own version of the silly but fun Spongebob squarepants theme song, one of the newest additions to Red Karaoke this week! Creativity gets you extra points, so post a link to your rendition in the karaoke challenge forum and you could win!

That’s what you missed this week in our Red Karaoke community. Make sure to become a fan of our official facebook page and check out the forums so that you can stay up on all the exciting karaoke news!

This week’s Discover and Download special highlights the musical styling of everyone’s favorite British sensitve man, James Blunt, and his recent hit, Stay the night, which we’ve just added to the karaoke catalogue. Join us as we take a look at the newer happier sound of Mr. Blunt in the Red Karaoke blog.

Some kind of trouble is James Blunt’s third studio album and a venture away from the persona of the “Beautiful” singer/songwriter. Released in November of last year, Blunt showed us with Some kind of trouble and it’s lead single Stay the night that he knew how to have a good time.

“After the last tour, I tried writing at the piano, but I found I was repeating myself, writing sad songs about poor old me. I needed to get away from music for a while. My new songs are more optimistic…” Blunt told Contact Music in an interview after the successful debut at the number four post of Some kind of trouble in the UK.

And optimisim is the perfect way to describe Stay the night, an acoustic tribute to Bob Marley that references his legendary classic Is this love and gives you the feeling of dancing on the beach with a smile on your face.

Now you can sing James Blunt’s Stay the night with a smile on your face here on Red Karaoke with our mp3 flash player, or check out James Blunt’s hits in the Red Karaoke Store, available to download and take with you anywhere.

Welcome to “This week on Red Karaoke” where we recap all the exciting news from our site, the forums, our facebook and the rest of our karaoke community. Keep reading to make sure you didn’t miss anything exciting and to see what this week’s new karaoke challenge is!

So what went down this week on Red Karaoke?

This week Red Karaoke added some great new songs to the karaoke catalogue and the Red Karaoke store, including Michael Jackson’s latest hit Hold my hand which was featured in the blog. But we weren’t the only ones who were sharing new songs. Jennifer Lopez had a new single and in honor of the we featured our five favorite karaokes by J. Lo in the blog.

Keira Knightley decided the best way to get over a break up was to belt out some Bon Jovi at her favorite karaoke pub. We agree and think she should check out the website for some post relationship therapy. And we learned some Latin with Beyonce’s karaoke of Omnes feminae caelibes (All the singles Ladies).

Once again there were some great suggested song’s of the day this week, including songs by Bette Midler, Louis Armstrong and John Lennon. Share your renditions of these suggested songs in the Suggested song of the day game forum.

Also in the forum this week you may have noticed the second round of the Red Hot Karaoke contest (completely user created and run). Check it out to hear some great renditions. And don’t forget to stop by and give one of our users, Quickblade, some kudos for the book he published and mentioned in the Off topics forum.

But above all, we at Red Karaoke were really excited to introduce a new and more efficient tool for blocking users in hopes of avoiding more mishaps among users and creating a more friendly, peaceful karaoke community. Read all the details in the blog.

Love me tender - Vote for my rendition!

And now, the exciting news of who won last week’s Love me tender karaoke challenge. There was only one entry and we are glad to share it with you here. Congratulations Ricky_2126Powell and thanks for entering!

Hopefully we’ll see some more entries in this next karaoke challenge, a true classic and one of the suggested songs of the day this week, Louis Armstrong’s What a wonderful world.
You have until next Friday to share your rendition http://www.redkaraoke.com/forum/showthread.php?p=13831#post13831“>in the Karaoke Challenge forum for a chance to be featured in the blog, the newsletter and the official facebook page.

That’s all this week in the Red Karaoke world. Keep singing, keep having fun and have a great weekend!

Tired of all those users that make life impossible on Red Karaoke? From now on you will have at your disposal a new tool for ignoring users, amplifying our already existing tool and making it much more effective.

How to ignore a user?

You will need to enter into “My Karaoke” at http://www.redkaraoke.com/my-karaoke.
Once you have accessed this area, choose the option in the left hang menu “Friend’s list/Ignored users”.

In the page that opens there will be two lists. The list on the right is designed for those users you wish to ignore. All you have to do is type their Red Karaoke user name and click the button “Update list of ignored users”. You will have to repeat this action with each user you wish to ignore. There is no limit, even if you want to ignore all of Red Karaoke. But of course, you cannot include them all at the same time.

If you change your mind and want to “unignore” a user, all you have to do is delete their name from the list and click the button.

That’s how easy it is. We trust that this tool will end the bothersome actions of some members of the community that have been going on and will make the environment of Red Karaoke more peaceful and all of us can enjoy this web community without anymore bad moments.

Voting

One important point we don’t want to forget: The ignored users will be able to continue voting. The votes influence the ranking and if we permit that each person can decide who can vote for them and who cannot by adding them to their ignore lists, we will have people who ignore all of the users who do not give them a 10 and thus another form of manipulating the system of ranking. For this reason the votes cast will continue being anonymous as they have until now, and you will not be able to see who voted nor how much they have voted. On our part we will continue revising the votes and punishing anybody who does not comply with the norms of voting.

With the drop of her latest dance single On the floor it only waits to be seen what the sensational Jennifer Lopez will bring to the dance charts and hot 100 with her newest album. Until then, join Red Karaoke as we look at the five J.Lo singles we love to sing along with while we’re on the dance floor.

If you had my love

First on our list is Jennifer Lopez’s first hit single and the lead song of her debut album On the six, the hit If you had my love. The single was a huge success for Lopez’s budding career and became one of the biggest hits of the summer of 1999 and held the number one spot for fifteen weeks.

Waiting for tonight

Also a big hit from Lopez’s On the six album was its third single Waiting for tonight. Waiting for tonight was actually recorded previously by other artists, but Jennifer Lopez’s version remains the most famous and is considered a signature song of hers. Not only was it her second number one single in English, she recorded a hit Spanish language version titled Una noche mas.

Love don’t cost a thing

Leading on Lopez’s second album, J.Lo, was her hit Love don’t cost a thing, an anthem about the value of love above all the more material things in life. The song was a hit in 2001 and remained in the top twenty for several weeks, peaking at number two for two weeks straight, as well as gaining video nominations in two different categories.

Play

Following Love don’t cost a thing was the dance hit Play, another chart topper for Lopez, co-written by fellow pop artist Christina Milan, who also provided all the vocal backup. The video and song charted for weeks, and was so popular that a Korean pop group created a hit cover in 2004.

I’m real

Lopez has had two popular versions of I’m real, the original on her second album, and the remix featuring Ja Rule and sampling a bit of Maryjane by Rick James. Both versions peaked at number one on the billboard charts and remained strong there for five weeks.

You can sing these and many more hits from Jennifer Lopez here on Red Karaoke and check out the latest Jennifer Lopez mp3 backing tracks available in the Red Karaoke Store.

This week RK has the pleasure of adding to the karaoke catalogue of one of our all time favorites, Michael Jackson. Read about his post humus release Hold my hand and the recording process with Akon here on Red Karaoke.

Hold my hand was originally recorded by Akon and Michael Jackson in 2008, though it wasn’t intentionally even written for the two. Akon was working with co-writer Claude Kelly on Whitney Houston’s album I look to you when the song meant for her ended up catching his own fancy. He decided to work on his own version of it, but while simultaneously working with Jackson on what would’ve been his next album, they decided that a mutual contribution would be great for the song.

The collaboration appealed to both artist’s sense of friendship and togetherness. Hold my hand was meant to be on Akon’s 2008 album Freedom, and would’ve been their second consecutive duet release after Wanna be starting something 2008. However, after a leak of an early version of Hold my hand in 2008, and very negative criticism, Akon decided the song was not ready and put it on the back burner for further crafting.

Akon wasn’t the only one picky about the production. “He was a perfectionist,” Akon recalled about working with Jackson in an interview with CBS. “He would never settle with one take, or with one ad-lib or with one idea. He would do thousands of those ideas and then we had to shuffle through them and find the best one. And if we didn’t find it, he would go and do another thousand.”

In 2010, Hold my hand was finally released as the first single on Jackson’s album Michael, per a note left with Jackson’s estate. The song had additonal lyrics written by Akon and was released in November to great reviews.

The Huffington Post called Hold my hand “a simple, but powerful song that embodies so much of what fans loved about Michael Jackson… making the personal something more profound and universal”, and another music review said it was a “catchy, well-meaning addition to Jackson’s catalog… buoyed by strings and a backing chorus, the singer applies his angelic tenor to soaring phrasing that models the uplifting purport of the tune’s love and unity lyrics in the spirit of 1995’s “You Are Not Alone“, Jackson’s last No. 1 hit.”

Now you can sing your own rendition of Hold my hand with RK’s mp3 flash technology or download your own mp3 backing track to take anywhere from the Red Karaoke Store.

This week on RK there was a lot going on, but today we get to announce one more exciting bit of news: the return of the Karaoke Challenge! But instead of our usual post on a random song chosen by the administrator, the new karaoke challenge will be chosen every Friday and will be inspired by all the different news items on Red Karaoke over the week. How does it all work? Keep reading to learn how!

Red Karaoke weekly news items will be taken from the users, the RK forums, the facebook page and the RK blog, and be shared here every Friday, after which a song will be chosen for the challenge! What’s so different about that? Well, with the new RK challenge you’ll have to check the blog every Friday to learn what the new Karaoke Challenge song is! You can then record your own version of the song and share it in the karaoke challenge link listed at the bottom of this post.

Winners will be chosen every Friday and announced in the weekly “This week on RK” blog post, the RK newsletter and on the RK facebook page.

So what went down this week on Red Karaoke?

David Bowie celebrated 64 years as the White Duke and we listed five of our favorite karaokes by him, including his biggest hit, Let’s Dance. We also took a look at the music scene’s fastest rising glittery and glib pop star Ke$ha and her hit songs We r who we r and Tik Tok on RK.

Bill Murray got a taste of karaoke in Lost in Translation and can’t get enough. He’s been crashing karaoke parties and apparently getting his French singing on. Meanwhile, Kelsey Grammer has been making new friends while singing James Taylor’s Don’t let me be lonely in karaoke bars all over NYC.

This week we had suggested songs of the day from Christina Aguilera, The Beatles and Britney Spears and today’s is Strangers in the night by Frank Sinatra. Share your renditions of these suggested songs in the Suggested song of the day game forum.

And last, but certainly not least, it seems Bjork is saving the planet, or at least Iceland’s ecosystem, one karaoke song at a time.

So what is the Karaoke challenge this week? With so much going on around Red Karaoke, there is plenty of inspiration to sing about. But we forgot to honor another birthday boy this week, who probably would’ve partied with Mr. Bowie, the King of Rock himself, Elvis Presley. So this week’s karaoke challenge is Love me tender by Elvis Presley. You have until next Friday to share your rendition in the Karaoke Challenge forum for a chance to be featured in the blog, the newsletter and the official facebook page.

That’s all this week in the Red Karaoke world. Keep singing, keep having fun and have a great weekend!

With her impending spring tour Get Sleazy and five consecutive number one singles, its about time Red Karaoke took a look at pop’s glittered and glib star Ke$ha and her fast paced career.

Though as a child her life wasn’t the image of perfection, Kesha was lucky enough to have a supportive mother whose work getting a demo into the hands of Dr. Luke and his record label helped her get her early start in the music business. Kesha was signed to Dr. Luke’s label in 2005 at the age of eighteen after a ballsy rap Kesha improvised in her demo when she ran out of lyrics for the music caught his attention.

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But Kesha came to Dr. Luke at a hectic time, a period of success after his work with Kelly Clarkson on her Breakaway album which meant little time to help Kesha develop her career. Instead, Kesha turned to DAS Communications for help getting a major label contract.

In a short time Kesha did everything from singing backup vocals for the likes of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, co-writing a hit song for The Veronicas and even trespassing on Prince’s property in order to leave him a demo tape. She finally caught the attention of Kara DioGaurdi who wanted to produce her work, but couldn’t follow through because of previous contract obligations.

Kesha finally said goodbye to DAS and returned to work the Dr. Luke and worked out a deal with RCA records. After singing on Flo Rida’s hit Right Round, she gained a lot of attention in the media and was able to release her debut single Tik Tok which worked it way to number one in eleven different countries.

Animal, Kesha’s debut album was released to the number one spot on the charts in the US, Canada and Greece and went on to give Kesha her three next hit singles, Blah blah blah, Your love is my drug, and Take it off. The rerelease, which included more material, Cannibal also debuted at number one and contained within it Kesha’s fifth consecutive number one song We R who we r.

As Kesha prepares for her sure to be succesful spring tour Get Sleazy, you can sing all of her hits here on Red Karaoke or purchase your own mp3 backing tracks of Kesha’s hit in the Red Karaoke Store.

This weekend the walking show of a rock star David Bowie celebrated his 64th birthday. To honor the White Duke’s big day, we’re featuring five of our favorite hits from Bowie in today’s blog, all available on Red Karaoke for your singing pleasure.

Ashes to ashes

First on our list is Ashes to ashes, an innovative hit produced by Bowie in 1980, featuring the character that frequented Bowie’s other music, Major Tom, and highlighting Bowie’s own personal musical journey. Bowie described the single as his idea of “wrapping up the seventies really for myself, and that seemed a good enough epitaph for it.”

Let’s dance

Bowie’s biggest selling hits and his leading single in 1983 Let’s Dance is next on our list. Reaching the top five the same week it was released, Let’s Dance was Bowie’s fastest rising hits, reaching the tops of the charts in no time opening up his fan base to a younger, hipper crowed with its more commercial appeal and dance beats.

Blue jean

Written completely by Bowie and released on his album Tonight, Blue Jean followed the tremendous success of Just Dance and held its on stateside, reaching the top ten with ease. It was another fun, commercial musical piece which Bowie himself described as, “a piece of sexist rock ‘n roll… about picking up birds. It’s not very cerebral, that piece.”

As the world falls down

Featured in one of puppeting’s eeriest and most popular cult films, The Labyrinth, which also starred David Bowie, As the world falls down matches the movie’s intensely surreal vibe as Bowie’s character dances with the heroine in a masquerade ball.

China girl

And last but certainly not least, David Bowie’s hugely popular hit China girl, a song Bowie so graciously included on his Just Dance album to help a friend going bankrupt make royalties. Lucky for us and for him because we got on of Bowie’s biggest pop hits from his kindness!

These are just five of our favorite David Bowie songs, but there are plenty of more to choose from on Red Karaoke and in the Red Karaoke Store. Pick your favorite and see if you can do this rock n’ roll legend’s incredible legacy justice.

This week Red Karaoke has the pleasure of introducing the latest chart riser from British song bird Duffy, her addictive pop hit Well, well, well to the Red Karaoke catalogues and Red Karaoke Store. Join us as we take a more thorough peek at this playful tune.

After the success of Duffy’s first album and her smash hits Mercy and Warwick avenue, Duffy had to slow down the pace of her musical career. She parted ways with her previous management and joined the team of A&M/Universal to produce her second album, Endlessly.

Endlessly, which was released in November, peaked at number nine on the UK charts and battled it out on the US charts as well. The majority of its music, including the lead single Well, well, well were co-written by Duffy and her new partner Albert Hammond to mixed reviews from critics, though the paring does more than well enough with Well, well, well.

Duffy’s music video for Well, well, well, featuring her around town in Oxford, slyly dancing and singing to groups of men, received over 1 million hits in its first month and is reminiscent of a vintage world that so perfectly matches her soulful voice. Duffy also performed Well, well, well for Jimmy Fallon and Ellen DeGeneres on their respectve programs.

Now you can sing Duffy’s hit Well, well, well her on Red Karaoke in mp3, or download the mp3 to take anywhere from the Red Karaoke Store.