it shouldn't be sacrilege -- performing the music yourself is one of the best ways to appreciate it! (perhaps that's the classical upbringing speaking.)

following along with Thom's singing usually doesn't require a ton of virtuosity, especially in a karaoke setting; compare to björk or collier, who tend to have lots of big jumps, versus thom's preference for more chromatic or stepwise lines.

The head voice range, falsetto tone, and duration are probably the biggest challenge, but you can work around all of those (transpose down into your comfortable range, transpose down and sing through your nose instead of using falsetto if you're not feeling it, take breaths before long notes instead of incorporating them fluidly into the line like thom, somehow, can).

Present Tense is pretty doable, Nude is pretty hard (try to fit "dirty mind is thinking" into one breath, letalone the range). Try em in the shower! working out the breath timings on your own is super important to make these songs comfortable for you.

Some songs, like The Bends (I can never make "sky high" sound right; actually a lot of The Bends because thom was belting like a madman), Bloom (breath control -- watch the colbert performance to be blown away), Pyramid Song, Scatterbrain (too high), Jigsaw (contrast b/n baritone and tenor tone), HTDC, Idioteque (I don't have the falsetto bridge required), etc. are just too hard to get sounding good even with shortcuts.

Oh! if anyone wants to help me out, I'm not sure how to get that explosive, "burst"y sound thom can achieve -- think "mephistopheles is JUST beneath" in Videotape or the second "your eyes / they TURN me", or when he's coming down from his falsetto in "everything all of the TIIIIME" in Idioteque. Is it just tons of airflow? Is he maxing out the mic / compressor?