Superstar Recording

Last updated on November 25, 2023

I got a little excited when I spotted this one. In the late 80s up to the mid 90s you could pay to record a song on cassette or VHS in a recording studio. I don’t know how widespread these businesses were, and I never wanted to record myself, but a lot of them were geared towards birthday parties, corporate get-togethers, or family outings at amusement parks. Here’s a write-up for one in an article from the August 23, 1992 issue of the Daily Gazette for Schenectady, NY.

Shopping, entertainment are Hampton diversions

“First, you, as a single or as part of a group, can make a “lip-sync” video to one of hundreds of popular songs – rock, contemporary, classics, show tunes, country and western music, gospel songs, even rap. This costs $19.95 for one, $2 extra for each additional person. Extra video tapes may be purchased for $9.95 each.

“Or you could make an audio tape, similar to karaoke singing (words and background music are provided), and then lip-sync to your own tape for the video. The charge for this is $24.95 with additional tapes costing $5 each.

“Audio recordings at SuperStar Studios, open seven days a week, are $10.95 for one vocalist; $7.95 each for two; $6.95 for three; and $5.95 for four or more. Each participant gets a copy of the tape.”

A later Washington Post article from 1996 only mentions the music video service offered, so there may have been a shift in business model as cassette tapes fell out of favor. A few webpages and forum threads have members reminiscing about the music cassette side of the business hanging on in amusement parks for longer. – with the mortifying detail that everyone in the area could see and hear your performance as it was being recorded.

The tape itself isn’t very interesting. About what you’d expect, honestly, and I don’t really want to put some random person on blast by uploading a recording of it. It’s a contemporary Christian song by Amy Grant titled “Jehovah” and it was released as a single back in 1984, so that’s no help in dating the tape itself. You can find the song on youtube if you really want.