The saga of bathroom singers

Have you ever wondered why people sing their hearts out in the shower, although they won’t do the same, even if they were paid lakhs of rupees, before a huge audience? On behalf of all my bathroom singer brotherhood, let me share some of my thoughts. Whenever I enter the bathroom and the water continues to rush over my body, it inspires me naturally chant the melodious lyrics. You cannot even imagine of a better sound system too, that boosts your voice by adding bass and makes it louder, fuller and deeper.

Eventually, it hardly matters if someone is shy, because in the shower, he or she is a star. A bathroom imposes no restriction – we are allowed to strike all the notes or pitches and remix any song according to our wishes – even if we sound terrible outside.

To speak about my experience, I stay in a hostel where the fellow neighbours share shower cubicles consecutively lined up in a row. While it is a common habit to add our voices to the chorus when someone sings (only the first few lines and humming the rest), it’s not unusual to witness a concert where a duet performance is accompanied by drum beating on an upturned bucket, finger snapping, clapping and whistling. Bathroom singing is a tight slap for the fellow mates, impatiently pounding on the door, to make them realize that the guy inside won’t come out soon.

The choice of songs is roughly indicative of the mood as well. While having bath today in the morning the boy, preparing himself to express his feelings to someone, could be heard singing a song like “Mere sapnon ki rani kab aayegi tu?... (O the Queen of my dreams! when will you come to me?...)”; it is quite likely for the him, who goes straight to the bathroom pulling a long face after returning in the evening, to croon: “Mera jeevan kora kaagaz, kora hi reh gaya?... (My life was a blank paper, it remained blank...).”

The critics say that the amplified and deepened tune is all because of the bouncing of the voices back and forth around the small space that act as an autotune. Well, it is a common practice for the modern singers to modulate their voices by manual tuning. Again, if the legendary Kishore Kumar invented the famous ‘Yodel-Ay-Ee-Oooo’ songs from bathroom music and Jon Anderson had tiles installed in the studio to create a ‘bathroom effect’, we do not care a fig for the fault-finders. We have always set the stage, nay the bathroom on fire and we will continue to do so.

So, if you have never tried bathroom singing even for once, next time simply get under the shower, grab the showerhead like a microphone and simply rock on!