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When two Filipino men sarcastically applauded a student’s off-key rendition of My Way in a Manila karaoke parlour in February 2002, a fight broke out. The two left to avoid further trouble, but the 21-year-old student ambushed and shot them outside. One was killed and the other seriously injured. In another case, Casimiro Lagugad, 25, was asked to sing My Way during a birthday party in Caloocan, a suburb of Manila, on 22 June 2003. Annoyed that he was singing out of tune, his neighbour Julio Tugas, 48, stabbed him in the neck. Lagugad was rushed to hospital, but died while being treated. Tugas later surrendered to the authorities. [R] 19 Feb 2002; [DPA] Sydney Morning Herald, 25 June 2003.

Karaoke is immensely popular in the Philippines; stand-alone karaoke machines can be found in the unlikeliest of settings, including outdoors in rural areas, where men can sometimes be seen singing early in the morning. By 2001, My Way had been removed from many karaoke playlists all over the Philippines – but at least six people have been killed in the last decade while performing Sinatra’s egocentric anthem. “And now the end is near / And so I face the final curtain” all too often comes true.
It is still one of the most popular song choices in the Philippines, which is home to more than a million illegal guns and has a culture of violence, drinking and machismo. “I used to like My Way, but after all the trouble I stopped singing it,” said Rodolfo Gregorio, 63, a Filipino barber and keen karaoke singer. “The trouble with My Way is that everyone knows it and everyone has an opinion. You can get killed.”
In one case, Romy Baligula, 29, was shot dead in the city of San Mateo in 2007. He was halfway through My Way when a security guard shouted that he was out of tune. He carried on regardless and the guard shot him in the chest with a revolver. Int. Herald Tribune, 8 Feb; D.Telegraph, Independent, 10 Feb 2010.

My Way killings are not confined to the Philippines. In December 1992, for instance, diners at a sushi bar in Toronto, Canada, watched in disbelief as a furious karaoke performer, who had been crooning a Vietnamese dialect version of the song, flung down his microphone and shot two members of the audience in the head. Tan Ngoc Le, 22, was killed and Khanh Van Cao, 25, was hospitalised. Far from laughing at the perform­ance, they had been smiling their apprec­iation. “There was nothing wrong with his singing,” said Khe Ba Lin, a waiter. “He was actually quite good.” D.Mail, 3 Dec 1992.

Drunken revellers fatally stabbed Ely Dignad­ice, 29, after he sang an off-key rendition of a popular love song, Remember Me, at a Manila karaoke bar. His perform­ance drew jeers from 10 men, who later attacked him with knives, bottles, wooden clubs and a gun. Independent, 7 July 1998.

Between 1989 and 2001, six people were shot dead in Thailand while fighting over possess­ion of karaoke machines. In a Bangkok karaoke bar in February 1994, Thai property tycoon Chen Ka Sek hogged the microphone for three hours and sang Candle in the Wind three times. When another man asked to have a go, Mr Sek had his bodyguards shoot the presumptuous fellow dead. “We were carried away by the beauty of my voice,” said Mr Sek.
In 2000, Thai policeman Jirawat Sangworn, 25, shot and killed one man and wounded a friend. He was about to sing the same song for the third time when the pair began heckling. Another victim was village headman Pichet Iamfuang, 37, killed on 9 July 2001. Also in Thailand, some time in 2008, a man shot dead eight of his neighbours after they repeatedly sang John Denver’s Take Me Home, Country Roads. Guardian, 2 Mar; Big Issue, 8–14 Mar 1994; Scotsman, 11 July; Sunday Times, 25 Nov 2001; Guardian, 6 Dec 2008.