Even to an introvert like me, the cheesiness and being corny is part of what makes karaoke so good, it has an automatic atmosphere where you are allowed to do badly because we can all laugh at ourselves.
Polish and perfection makes this less appealing to me. Makes it feel up-tight and a bit snobby.
for me, I can't sing along if it's not close to the original because my brain remembers every tick of the original and wants to match the key of the original as well.
Also, I had a friend who got addicted to Smule which is an online sing duets with random strangers. It uses auto-tune so that anyone can enjoy themselves. I never tried it but he said it was amazing and he got a ton of joy from it.
Me, I like the idea that I can show off my amazing singing skills so if this auto-tunes everyone then that will go away. On the other hand, it's always been frustrating that box style karaoke places rarely have a large selection of western music (most of them are targeting the subset of their local market that would actually to got a box style karaoke place). My hope is that with this more of them will support just using the room as a place to use this service and then my friends and I can sing from a larger variety of songs.
> I can't sing along if it's not close to the original because my brain remembers every tick of the original and wants to match the key of the original as well.
I don't know if this helps at all, but you probably want to learn to sing in a different octave, not a different key. This means shifting your voice up and down from the original in multiples of eight notes. You can sing in a different octave without changing the background music and it'll sound completely normal, and have the same feel as the original song.
Polish and perfection makes this less appealing to me. Makes it feel up-tight and a bit snobby.