defend the indefensible, search & destroy: music from the tv show Glee

I know there's an ILE thread about the show and the show has its fans, and I've never really gotten through an entire episode of it, despite the enthusiasm of some friends family, but every time I look at the Hot 100 and see like a dozen entries credited to the Glee cast I think it's kind of odd that we don't have an ILM thread about the music from Glee.

I will say upfront that while I have a rep for trolling the old teenpop thread, I am generally at least a moderately receptive audience for cheesy modern pop phenomenons -- I watch American Idol non-religiously, and can name at least one song I've enjoyed by Bieber, Jonas Bros, a High School Musical cast member, etc. But man, every Glee version of a popular song I've heard is like at most one notch above Kidz Bop, and their first big Max Martin-produced original song "Loser Like Me" is just ugh. Are there any tracks from the numerous Glee soundtracks that are actually worth hearing?

There's a bunch of opinions on ILE thread.

Stil....

yeah i mean if you want to point out any posts on the ILE thread feel free, i just wasn't sure if it made sense to wade through discussion about plots/jokes i know nothing about and try to start a convo about just the music

Well, the plots are tired, corny or both, and the music is not good enough for me to make up.

stay far far away from their Rocky Horror numbers

probably the best thing they've ever done on the show was "Teenage Dream"

Alice wanted to see that one, It was way past bedtime, school night, etc.

(Marc Bolan's Teenage Dream?)

LOL no, Katy Perry's, sung by Kurt's love interest Blaine:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruXTtJjLVy4

probably the big reason why I dig this is because it's an actual a capella arrangement

yeah i remember tim f talking abt that on his 2010 recap

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmuUKh3Z2jk&feature=related

here's one of Britney Spears' former backup dancers singing "I'm A Slave 4 U" (I never actually saw this show so this is the first time I'm hearing it)

I know we all have opinions and different tastes but fu forever if you don't love Glee is my honest feeling

i don't think the music divorced from the show is often the high point tho

probably the best thing they've ever done on the show was "Teenage Dream"

― fat fat fat fat Usher (DJP), Friday, April 15, 2011 10:41 AM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark

haha the first time i almost started this thread was when MTV Hits aired this as a video a few times, so this post is pretty much telling me i should continue avoiding this stuff at all costs

I know we all have opinions and different tastes but fu forever if you don't love Glee is my honest feeling

Man, I don't know how I'm going to go on.

Yeah, if "Teenage Dream" is one of the better, then I should continute ignoring this show. I'm sick of my local Target constantly playing that Michael Jackson/Yeah Yeah Yeahs mash-up on a loop in the electronics department.

if someone edited Glee episodes down to Jane Lynch being funny and maybe also Jayma Mays being cuet i'd watch that, but i dunno if i could deal with the whole thing

I've been ignoring the show since day 1. I have an account on Project Fox so I was there when the show was originally being pitched to the online focus group a few years ago. I downvoted the show several times because I thought it would be just as rediculous as Cop Rock or Viva Laughlin. I'm still disappointed that the show got passed and became mainstream, there's better pilot material out there that is being downvoted for lowest common denominator merchandising stuff like this.

shd maybe clarify a little: if something's not yr bag, it's not yr bag, but when I'm watching Glee it does fill me with so much happiness that my general feeling is "fu if you don't dig this". not fu in a cab driver way or anything just general happy fu bafflement

glee's version of rebecca black's "friday" ought to be interesting.

i agree, though, most glee covers are awful and i fail to understand why anyone would listen to them. i actually saw the "teenage dream" cover when it aired since my friend was watching it at the time, and i guess i can understand why that was a *moment* for the series, but otherwise i guess i don't really get this show

never seen or wanted to see the programme but goddamn every glee cover version i've heard is the worst shit ever

they're only barely a step up from those karaoke versions of big pop songs that get knocked together in 2 minutes and thrown up on itunes before the official thing emerges

i think thinking of them as cover versions or reinventions of songs isn't the right way to approach them. my daughter (and my wife tbh) have got all the CDs but outside of the context of the show to me they're just collections of pleasant-enough versions of either good or bad songs. a lot of them i don't like any less or more than the source material. i kinda like something like "You Can't Always Get What You Want" which does do something different to its material but more by way of accident than anything. I wouldn't listen to the albums thru choice but 95 percent of the time they don't offend me either.

a lot of what the show is about is loving popular music, obv, so the musical numbers are as much a Pennies from Heaven-esque theatrical device as an attempt to make some groundbreaking pinnacle of music. if the spin-offs sell well and are popular well "pre-teens and lots of other people are partial to pleasant versions of songs they like and not v. invested in authenticity or chops duhhhhh"

Glee's "Don't Stop Believin''" > Journey's "Don't Stop Believin''", for what it's worth.

Well, put it this way: I might not have felt moved to dig up the originals of "cant/want" or "Dancing with myself" for Alice if she'd not heard them here first.

oh if i remember right "Dancing With Myself" Glee-style is a bit annoyingly cabaret-ified but on the other hand I prefer the Billy Idol version to the Gen X one. Most of the time doing karaoke is a smarter move than busting out the wacky arrangements i think.

I didn't know he remade it, I thought it got as far as a remix maybe,.

it might be just a remix but the B. Idol version's a lot less punky than the orig i think?

just think that particular song works better in his louche 80s disco lizard persona rather than the stroppy 70s punka mode

brb, gonna play "Eyes Without a Face" on a loop for half an hour

Still, it's the one reason Tony James need never work again.

wd be up for a Glee version of "Love Missile F1/11" big time

I agree that most of the songs make little to no sense divorced from the context of the show.

However, if you cannot recognize how great the vocal arrangement is in "Teenage Dream" you should probably educate yourself on college a capella and learn how to listen to the entire thing, not just the lead singer.

most of the Dalton Academy stuff is musically the most exciting stuff in the show, it's almost plot-unbalancing how much better than Vocal Adrenaline they are

well that's because most, if not all, of the Dalton Academy stuff is full-on a capella arrangements, using the Tufts Beelzebubs as the singers

http://sillygleek.com/articles/interviews/2011/04/01/tufts-beelzebubs-voices-of-glee-dalton-academy-warblers/

here you go, everything they did except "Blackbird" was the Beelzebubs

I know they're a capella, didn't know who'd done them, they are definitely worth existing as their own thing and I would like an album of just them

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGEZwlDRAaQ&feature=related

this is them on "The Singoff" singing with Nicole Scherzinger

:D

http://www.bubs.com/albums.html

if you want albums by them

signed, the Beelzebubs Street Team

It's no secret this show's demographic is pre-teen girls and gay men. If I had to guess I'd say pre-teens get hooked with the plot and gay men with the musical aspect of it. I kind of hate musicals so I would happily destroy every thing about this show... they have a tendency to make all the songs sound overtly histrionic and overdone, it reeks of plastic imperialism.
That said their song selection ain't bad at all.

It's no secret this show's demographic is pre-teen girls and gay men

Not really.

everyone that used to post about 'lost' on facebook has moved on to 'glee' from what i can tell.

lol @ me defending Glee so rigorously itt when I've watched maybe 3 episodes this season

gotta stick up for my tacky theater cru

everyone that used to post about 'lost' on facebook has moved on to 'glee' from what i can tell.

This. Judging solely from my FB feed, Glee's audience slants very heavily towards married, straight women in their late-20s,early 30s.

Hate this show. The numbers are no better than the average "American Idol" performance, except at least the "American Idol" stuff is live and not slicked up studio afterbirth. Whomever above compared this to Kidz Bop is OTM.

(Should say I stopped watching after about three eps, because it was that lame)

I don't think I've heard anything divorced from its visuals, and suspect they probably wouldn't stand up too well on their own, but damn these things work so well in the show. 'Teenage Dream' yeah, also the 'Free Your Mind'/'Stop In The Name Of Love' from around the same time was chuffing excellent too.

as a pre-teen girly gay man i'd like to thank Moka for outing me

probably the best thing they've ever done on the show was "Teenage Dream"

Yes, this is OTM.

i like it whenever they have kristin chenoweth on, viz:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D48imRPDDRI

best part about that song: kchen's character on the show hadn't lost a man or anything. but since kchen was singing this on broadway at the time, they were like "o well, we'll just put it in i guess!"

also lea michele doing "don't rain on my parade" was fun:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cl75wWQwwfU

Loved this also, each and every song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ymi52UbGEZM

The a capella Dalton Warblers "Bills Bills Bills" didn't work so well but I (vaguely) respected the attempt.

'Free Your Mind'/'Stop In The Name Of Love'

ugh i could have lived without knowing that this existed :(

i still haven't worked out whether i hate glee covers of great songs that completely wreck them and leech them entirely of life (eg "bust your windows"), or glee covers of dreadful songs that manage to make them even worse, via sudden and unwanted re-ubiquity as much as their own wretched aesthetic ("don't stop believing")

maura was good on why glee is so bad and awful: http://blogs.villagevoice.com/music/2010/12/the_20_worst_so_17.php

dreadful songs that manage to make them even worse

shrug emoticon

That's actually one of the few times I think Maura is totally dead wrong.

as a pre-teen girly gay man i'd like to thank Moka for outing me

― A Zed and Two Nults (Noodle Vague)

No! You can't be both. You have to choose one otherwise you ruin the demographic chart. Also, this is not my opinion. I actually read that one on a market study for the latin audience of the show... if I remember the source I'll post it, there were some interesting numbers over there iirc. I suppose in the states it's not exactly the same demographic... the plot seems to me pretty dumbed down to really appeal adults but what do I know.

people don't really watch for the plots, ppl watch for Sue and Brittany

my irrational hatred of glee went sky-high when a friend of mine said that she thought "bust your windows" was a glee original

hahaha

my irrational hatred of glee went sky-high when a friend of mine said that she thought "bust your windows" was a glee original

i thought the moment i heard the glee version of it was as much as i could possibly hate anything >>>>>>>>>:(

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZ9D5WTbjDQ&feature=related

this will never not make me lol

(lol amateur film editors, too)

"bust your windows" at least lends itself to being gleeified

the best part of that song is where she quotes soulja boy, did they do that on glee?

I don't remember, actually!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ib9yIM4a1no&feature=related

actually this is kind of hot, too, although the actual battle in the show was better

unsurprisingly Broadway songs sit really well on them

I haven't seen any Glee since mid-last season - I was really impressed with the "dreams"-centered ep (the one with the mall flashmob sequence) but mostly shrugged off the rest. The computer-polished vocals are a huge turnoff.

Was that the one where Artie was imagining he could walk?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SG4WOUB3wB4

Yes, that one. Also, I support giving Men Without Hats money.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kanYEOKbBJI&feature=player_embedded#at=93

fight the real enemy

I'm a gay man and I hate both the plot and the music. Jem and the Holograms had better plots and songs.

Wait what? There's not a Rumours episode now, is there?! Last one I saw they did 'Landslide', which means next up must be...

xpost. Kids Incorporated PGTW much better...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEOKdI1eeVE

I second the thought that money to MWH=goodness. First tv show to cover Moonbeam gets my eternal appreciacion. First tv show to cover Everybody's Selling Something gets my next child named after them...

I would consider watching if there was a focus on full albums.

Like if they did all of "Mellow Gold" instead of just Loser..

a 33 1/3 book crossed with godspell

That clip is from a full Rumours episode.

Can't wait for The Velvet Underground & Nico episode.

Glee's "Don't Stop Believin''" > Journey's "Don't Stop Believin''", for what it's worth.

― jer.fairall, Friday, April 15, 2011 11:51 AM (1 month ago) Bookmark

heard this in a store the other day and oh my god i would gladly listen to the Journey another million times before ever hearing theirs again