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Rob Sheffield: Looking In Karaoke Bars For The Meaning Of Life

Author and Rolling Stone contributing editor Rob Sheffield spends a lot of time listening to music. He is one of those music fans who can recall Britny Fox and Twisted Sister b-sides with the same enthusiasm other people have for The Beatles. Actually, he loves them too.

But aside from some mean tambourining at rock and roll fantasy camp, Sheffield, who is familiar to VH1 viewers, has never been very musically inclined — when many of his peers were trying to make it in underground indie bands, he was the guy at the bar scribbling notes.

Which perhaps is why he has such a passion for karaoke — a perfect setting for a clash of irony and sincerity, musical greatness and amateurism.

Karaoke forms the borders of Sheffield’s new memoir, Turn Around Bright Eyes: The Rituals of Love and Karaoke, which is published by HarperCollins imprint It Books, but it’s about much more than that: love, loss, family relationships, the cosmos.

A lifelong resident of the Capital Region, Ian joined WAMC in late 2008 and became news director in 2013. He began working on Morning Edition and has produced The Capitol Connection, Congressional Corner, and several other WAMC programs. Ian can also be heard as the host of the WAMC News Podcast and on The Roundtable and various newscasts. Ian holds a BA in English and journalism and an MA in English, both from the University at Albany, where he has taught journalism since 2013.
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