Lounge Lizard

Thank God you don't have to hear him.

Ryan Stiles: Thank God you're here, Captain Lounge Act.
Colin Mochrie: [puts on smarmy face] Have you ever felt it as hot as this? It's amazing, isn't it? And where are you from?
Greg Proops: There's no time for that! The temperature's getting too hot! Can't you see?
Colin Mochrie: [singing horribly off key] It's too hot!

— Whose Line Is It Anyway?, Superheroes

For decades, clubs and hotel and airport lounges have hired singers for entertainment. In the 1960s and 1970s, a lot of them incorporated the jazzy style of singers like those in the Rat Pack.

Now, according to Sturgeon's Law, some were better at this than others.

In the world of fiction, not only does that 90% rule apply, but it seems that lounges give this job almost exclusively to people (sometimes Casanova Wannabes) who are not only insufferably smarmy, but their fashion sense (like an all-polyester leisure suit or Tacky Tuxedo) seems to have a bet with their singing and facial hair to see which can be more godawful.

Some standards for this character include The Love Boat theme.

Yet this seems to be mostly that way in comedy, where it's meant to be a caricature. A club singer who simply appears in the background will likely be much better than you'd expect in real life.

Note that this has very little to do with the original twentieth-century meaning of "lounge lizard" in British English (a sleazy, would-be "sophisticated" seducer, with implications of social-climbing), though the two can overlap.

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Examples:

Comedy

• Andy Kaufman's Alter-Ego Acting character Tony Clifton is a particularly repellent version. Since Andy always presented/claimed him as a separate person, Tony engendered true hatred from audiences who didn't know he was a character (which was Kaufman's goal).

Films — Live-Action

• A subplot in Ernest Goes to Camp concerns a Lethal Chef with Mad Scientist tendencies trying to perfect a dish called "Eggs Erroneous" (which doubles as high explosives). In The Stinger, he force-feeds the final batch to his assistant, who is transformed into a lounge singer.
• In Lost in Translation, Bob hooks up with a female lounge singer — though she’s not noticeably bad at her job.
• Give 'Em Hell, Malone: Frankie the Crooner spends his time badly singing to either a disinterested club crowd or the senile residents of a retirement home.
• Freddy Fredrickson, singer of the lounge hit "Mr. Downtown", in the movie That Thing You Do!.
• Mars Attacks! ends with Tom Jones singing "It's Not Unusual" in his stage-act garb, which is a model for many instances of this trope — but Tom Jones is a good singer.
• In Airplane II: The Sequel, Stryker is trying to escape from prison and is dodging the guards' searchlights. In one searchlight beam he sneaks around, a Vegas performer is singing The Love Boat theme.
• When Joliet Jake and Elwood are trying to put The Band back together in The Blues Brothers, a group of former band members has put together a lounge act (Murph and the Magictones), complete with amplifiers upholstered in thick red shag carpeting. "Murph" seems to have fully embraced the Lounge Lizard trope; the others appear to be going along with it mostly because hey, a paycheck is a paycheck.
• In Repo Man, The Circle Jerks appear As Themselves as a lounge band.
• In Demolition Man the Taco Bell has Dan Cortese portraying one while singing "Jolly Green Giant."

Live-Action TV

• Lorne from Angel (not quite an actual lizard, but a green scaly demon) turns out to be a subversion. He sings in a club, and dresses the part, but while he at times makes some questionable/dated choices of songs, he is actually quite a good singer (and "Spin the Bottle" shows he can play the piano as well) who at one point has a fairly successful career in Las Vegas (he had huge numbers of fans, even if he did end up being kidnapped and imprisoned) and has released at least one album. He's also a Nice Guy who isn't really smarmy or sleazy and is much more intelligent than first impressions might suggest. Also, no facial hair. Even the Impossibly Tacky Clothes are downplayed. During performances, he often wears something painfully sparkly, but the rest of the time he tends to wear suits that wouldn't be too bad if not for the overly bright colors. (Like this: [1]) They tend not to have the cheap, ill-fitting look of more stereotypical examples.
• One of these (wearing a truly awful suit and a Dodgy Toupee) sings during the opening credits of The Fast Show.
• Bill Murray's character, Nick Winters, on Saturday Night Live is probably the quintessential portrayal of this. In one episode, he murders the Star Wars theme With Lyrics. In another episode, Murray wore a leisure suit that matched the wallpaper.
• Vic Fontaine in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is played by singer James Darren.
• This is the job of the main characters' mother in The Suite Life of Zack & Cody. She does, however, dress fashionably for every show, is good looking, and is actually a good singer.
• Occasionally turns up in the "greatest hits" game on Whose Line Is It Anyway?. The page quote is from "Superheroes", and other games dip into it on occasion, like "Scenes From A Hat":
  Ryan: Iiii passed a stone today...
  Chip: Cannibaliiiismmmm...
• Frasier: "The Barracuda", an incredibly slimy Latino cruise ship crooner with whom Maris nearly sleeps.
• Taxi had Andy Kaufman's character Latka to have multiple personalities, one of them being Vic Ferrari (an Expy of his Tony Clifton alter ego), who ironically was relatively normal-dressed compared to other examples.
• It's a Living was about the wait staff at a restaurant and also one of these, Sonny. Sonny looked relatively normal, and would have fit in playing classical music had he not had the lounger singer schtick.
• Johnny Crawfish from The Noddy Shop is a lobster who is this. He wears a tuxedo, plays keyboard and is the lead singer in a good amount of the show's songs. However, he has a good voice and is considered to be a superstar. However, a prototype for him, as seen in an image at the start of the "Special" music video, had him with his stomach visible, referencing the "poorly-dressed" part of this trope.

Music

• "Richard Cheese and Lounge Against the Machine" is a band that plays many types of songs, including rock and metal as if they're lounge music. It's all done for the lulz, of course.
  • Black Velvet Flag was a band in The '90s with a similar concept, focusing on lounge covers of Hardcore Punk. Their take on "Institutionalized" got some radio airplay.
• Pat Boone released a 1997 album titled "In A Metal Mood: No More Mr. Nice Guy," in which he covered metal songs in his signature style.
• The term lends its name and music style to the satirical band The Austin Lounge Lizards.
• Even The Beatles got into this, with John Lennon and Paul McCartney suddenly adopting sleazy nightclub personae about a third of the way through "You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)".
• "America Drinks & Goes Home" by The Mothers of Invention.
• Avant-Garde Jazz/Rock outfit The Lounge Lizards (headed by John Lurie of Down by Law and Fishing with John fame) are named after this term but have absolutely nothing to do with it otherwise.
• Depeche Mode's "It's No Good" has lead vocalist Dave Gahan playing a sleazy lounge singer in its music video.

Theatre

• In The Bible: The Complete Word of God (abridged), King Solomon introduces himself with the beginning of a cheesy cocktail lounge number purporting to be "the new single off my latest album, Songs of Solomon."

Video Games

• In The Sims, a level in the Music career track is Lounge Singer. The work outfit for women is a tight, shiny red dress, and for men, it's a cheesy blue tux.
• Dimitri in Sly Cooper... Literally.
• Another literal example is Johnny Gecko, the Cantina lounge keyboardist in the first SPY Fox game, who becomes crucial to the plot when you need to swap sheet music with a cruise ship orchestra.
• Batman: Arkham Knight: One of the unwitting recipients of Joker's tainted blood is a lounge singer named Johnny Charisma, who inherited the former's predilection for flare and showmanship and ran with it. Although we never actually have to hear him sing as Joker hijacks his show with a hallucination, he's apparently godawful.
• Leisure Suit Larry is built on this trope. The first game is literally named "Leisure Suit Larry 1: In the Land of the Lounge Lizards." However, this was probably meant more in the original "sleazy guy who goes to cocktail lounges" sense.

Visual Novels

• When the protagonist and title character of Melody go to see Melody’s favorite band, this seems to be the future of the opening act. The two of them agree that this band is going nowhere.

Web Videos

• Sockbaby. We don't know if Ronnie Cordova can sing, but he dresses the part.

Western Animation

• In The Brothers Grunt, there's an Asian lounge singer dressed as David Byrne who is...very bad at his job.
• The DuckTales episode "The Uncrashable Hindentanic" was a pastiche of 1970s disaster films, complete with an actual lizard being a lounge lizard.
• Subverted in Rocko's Modern Life, where Filburt turns out to be a fairly good singer — though he is a turtle, not a lizard. Played straight with his idols, who are actual lizards.

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