Despite the shoddy disco ball, the mysterious ‘plum wine’ and the melodramatic video clips, I am of the mind that karaoke is good for the soul. My friends and I arrive at Echo Point close to midnight, stumble down the steep staircase, overhear the howling from the other rooms and defiantly think, that won’t be us.

Usually, choosing a playlist is easy, and we sing along without much reference to the (often dodgy) lyrics on the screen. But this time it’s different: we struggle to select songs to sing, and there are mumbled pauses in place of previously well-known refrains. Despite a fair amount of plum wine, I have a series of very sobering thoughts: Am I losing touch with music? Am I turning into my parents, who think everything post-1979 is derivative or ‘too noisy’? Am I losing my memory?