Margins
Turn Around Bright Eyes book cover
Turn Around Bright Eyes
The Rituals of Love & Karaoke
2013
First Published
3.64
Average Rating
288
Number of Pages

An emotional journey of hilarity and heartbreak with a karaoke soundtrack, in the spirit of Rob Sheffield's bestselling Love Is a Mix Tape. Turn Around Bright Eyes picks up Sheffield's story right after Love Is a Mix Tape. He is a young widower devastated by grief, trying to build a new life in a new town after his wife's death. As a writer for Rolling Stone, he naturally takes solace in music. But that's when he discovers the sublime ridiculousness of karaoke, and despite the fact that he can't carry a tune, he begins to find his voice. His karaoke obsession takes him to some strange places, whether that means singing a Frank Sinatra song in a senior-citizen community in Florida, attempting a Merle Haggard classic at a cowboy saloon in the Mojave desert, or clearing the room at an after-hours dive in Chinatown. But he finds the music leads him to the most surprising place of all—a new life and a new love. Turn Around Bright Eyes is a story about finding the courage to start over, move on, and rock the mike. It's about falling in love and navigating your way through adult romance. It's about how you can learn the weirdest things about yourself just by butchering a Hall & Oates song at 2 A.M. under fluorescent lights in a room full of strangers. It's about how songs get tangled up in our deepest emotions, evoking memories of the past while inspiring hope for the future. But most of all, it's a book about all the strange ways music brings people together. Sweet, funny, honest, and full of the music you love, hate and love to hate, Turn Around Bright Eyes is Rob Sheffield at his very best.

Avg Rating
3.64
Number of Ratings
3,378
5 STARS
20%
4 STARS
39%
3 STARS
31%
2 STARS
8%
1 STARS
3%
goodreads

Author

Rob Sheffield
Rob Sheffield
Author · 7 books

Rob Sheffield is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone magazine. In addition to writing music reviews and profile stories, Sheffield also writes the Pop Life column in the Mixed Media section of the magazine. His work has also been featured in The Village Voice and Spin. A native of Boston, Sheffield attended Yale and the University of Virginia, and is six foot five. His first book, Love is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time (an excerpt of which was featured in the January 2007 issue of GQ), was released by Random House in January 2007. It received starred reviews in Publisher's Weekly and Library Journal.

548 Market St PMB 65688, San Francisco California 94104-5401 USA
© 2026 Paratext Inc. All rights reserved