Starz Karaoke Lounge
No vocal training is required to belt out Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” in a room full of strangers.
With microphone in hand, eyes glued on the overhead screen and feet planted on the stage at the front of the room, anyone can be a rock star for five minutes.
And at Starz, every night is karaoke night.
“It just feels different than the way a lot of people are used to karaoke,” said branch owner Rob Loboda. “Karaoke isn’t filler time for us, karaoke is what we do. That is what we strive to be the best at.”
Starz Karaoke Lounge, now a smoke-free venue, offers karaoke six nights a week. Loboda said it’s because they know what they want to be good at and they stick to it.
While some locations offer karaoke as a way to fill one or two slow nights at the bar, Starz focuses on providing the best sound system, updated song lists and the best atmosphere for karaoke.
“One of the neat things about that is that everybody, or at least somebody with everybody, is there because of karaoke, so it is a little bit different environment than just about everywhere else,” Loboda said. “I think we get better singers than most places because that is why they are here.”
The first Starz location opened in Birmingham on Valley Avenue. Loboda has been involved in karaoke since 1997 and his U.S. 280 spot has been open for about nine years. He remembers 15 years ago when there were a lot of places that would do karaoke a couple nights a week, and he noticed how much people enjoyed participating in it.
“In my mind, no one really catered to the people who wanted to do karaoke,” Loboda said. “I thought it would work because karaoke can entertain all different ages and all different demographics of people. If you became the place that did that, you can have a huge, diverse group of people on any given night.”
He believes what makes karaoke fun is the no-pressure, fun atmosphere where in any given hour you might hear every genre of music. Joining in during the chorus, clapping and contributing to the positive energy can also involve everyone in the room.
“The fun thing about karaoke is that it is never the same thing two days in a row,” Loboda said. “One night you could come and the whole vibe and feel in the room could be one thing, and the next week it could be different.”
While guests circle in and out of the singing rotation, they can enjoy appetizers, which are served all night, or a cocktail to help them take the stage. Starz has hundreds of varieties of liquor, about 100 bottled beers and six local brews such as Good People, Railyard and Avondale on tap.
The business is also keeping up with the smartphone generation with a new app it is releasing soon to make karaoke night even easier. Instead of browsing through songbooks, this app will allow guests to search for songs, create a personal profile and put song requests into rotation from their dining tables.
“Karaoke is one of those things that is fun even if you’re not good,” Loboda said. “It can be crazy entertaining if you have the mindset, ‘Hey, this is fun.’ Everybody is coming in just to have a good time, and everybody gets up to sing for a different reason.”