Last week saw the folks behind everyone's favourite series of Wii based karaoke games, the We Sing series, decided to unveiling a portion of the setlist for their latest game, We Sing: Rock in a rather unique way - by getting random members of the public to hum portions of the popular songs, and then sticking the videos up on Facebook for people to attempt to guess. It worked a bit like the Intros round in Never Mind The Buzzcocks, only rather than risking embarrassing yourself on national TV, people who guessed the most correct answers could win a copy of the game. With that over and done with, the game's developers have now released the full, and rather impressive forty-song-strong setlist, which covers five generations of rock music, with plenty that everyone should know.
From Alice Cooper's 1989 hit Poison...
For those of you that are unfamiliar with the series, We Sing is a collection of karaoke gams that's become equally well known for its impeccable taste in song lists, and tons of multiplayer variations on the usual versus (where players compete for the highest score) or co-operative (where everyone works together to get the best score) modes. For example, there's one where the lyrics and sound will drop out at random points in the song, leaving you on your lonesome; or there's one where you have to pass the microphone around, with each of you singing different parts of the song.
Here at Everybody Plays, we've been waiting for a more rock-oriented karaoke game since the beginning of time, seeing as our taste in music probably tends more towards the Deep Purple end of the spectrum than the more pop-y Lady Gaga, Taio Cruz and Lilly Allens that usually fill up karaoke games. Sticking our music on random will often find you jumping around between Marilyn Manson and Taylor Swift, Nine Inch Nails and Blondie, Jack Johnson and Hole - we always found Rock Band more to our tastes than the likes of Lips and Singstar, too. Going by the setlist below, then, it looks like We Sing: Rock is going to be right up our collective street.
... To Coldplay's Violet Hill in 2008, there's a wide range of music on the disc.
Without further ado, here's the forty tunes you'll be belting out in the coming months:
- 30 Seconds to Mars - "Kings And Queens"
- 4 Non Blondes - "What's Up"
- Alice Cooper - "Poison"
- Bloc Party - "The Prayer"
- The Cardigans - "My Favourite Game"
- Coldplay - "Violet Hill"
- Creedence Clearwater Revival - "Proud Mary"
- The Darkness - "I Believe In A Thing Called Love"
- Daughtry - "What About Now"
- Def Leppard - "Pour Some Sugar On Me"
- Elvis Presley - "Suspicious Minds"
- Europe - "The Final Countdown"
- Evanescence - "Bring Me To Life"
- Extreme - "More Than Words"
- Faith No More - "Epic"
- Franz Ferdinand - "Take Me Out"
- Free - "All Right Now"
- Garbage - "I Think I'm Paranoid"
- Gossip - "Standing In The Way Of Control"
- Heart - "Alone"
- INXS - "Never Tear Us Apart"
- Kasabian - "Underdog"
- KT Tunstall - "Suddenly I See"
- Limp Bizkit - "Rollin'"
- Meredith Brooks - "Bitch"
- Motörhead - "Ace Of Spades"
- My Chemical Romance - "Welcome To The Black Parade"
- The Offspring - "Pretty Fly (For A White Guy)"
- OK Go - "Here It Goes Again"
- Panic! At The Disco - "Nine In The Afternoon"
- Paramore - "Ignorance"
- The Pretenders - "Brass In Pocket"
- Robert Palmer - "Addicted To Love"
- Scorpions - "Wind Of Change"
- Sheryl Crow - "All I Wanna Do"
- Simple Minds - "Don't You (Forget About Me)"
- Survivor - "Eye Of The Tiger"
- Tina Turner - "The Best"
- Wheatus - "Teenage Dirtbag"
- Whitesnake - "Here I Go Again '87"
In a word: woah. There's a fair few of the best songs from good old Rock Band in there, like Garbage's "I Think I'm Paranoid" and "Here I Go Again" by Ok Go (although it would be nice to see games actually choosing some different songs for once). And there's more than a few of our favourite female singers like Sheryl Crow's "All I Wanna Do", 4 Non Blondes "What's Up", The Pretenders and "Brass In Pocket" and Meredith Brooks' "Bitch" - all it needs is some Alanis Morissette and we'd be set, but you can't win them all. We can already imagine The Darkness' "I Believe In A Thing Called Love" would go down veeeery well at parties too, with everyone failing abysmally at hitting the high notes (and with my rather low voice, I'd likely be one of them). And I'm going to have to work hard to not sing the Weird Al interpretation, "Pretty Fly (For A Rabbi)", when singing The Offspring.
There's no news of a release date as of yet, but We Sing: Rock has already rock-eted (see what we did there) to the top of our most wanted list, so stay tuned - and keep your eyes peeled for We Sing: UK Hits, which hits stores this Friday.
