Yet Another Year In America May 27, 2010

[koganbot]

OK, now that I've admitted finally that Lea Michele is a talent, is there anything you guys want to tell TV-free me about her, or Rachel, or the show? What's she like as an actress? Does she need freeing from the theatah?

In the meantime, Miranda Lambert's "The House That Built Me" is digging in around 30, neither climbing nor falling much, while at 47 "Pray For You" by Jaron And The Long Road To Love seems also to be crossing from country to pop, at least in a minor way. The guy's obvious in his sarcasm, but he's more fun and less of a fuddy-duddy than Aldean or Turner, at least this song is.

Miley Cyrus "Can't Be Tamed": I feel a disconnect between song and singer, and between me and both, even though this is a team - Cyrus plus Armato & James - that's thrilled in the past. Catchy dance-pop, but the singing doesn't dance well with it. I hope that no one who looks at the supposedly provocative video claims Miley's growing up. BORDERLINE NONTICK.

Glee Cast ft. Neil Patrick Harris and Matthew Morrison "Dream On": The singers never find a way to be comfortable, heaving themselves up from one massive boulder to another. But the song itself rises to excitement, finally lifting them beyond their own exhaustion, and they hit the climactic falsetto. So this isn't the massacre I'd feared. BORDERLINE NONTICK.

Glee Cast ft. Idina Menzel and Lea Michele "I Dreamed A Dream": Veteran show-singer Menzel sounds clear and characterless on this staid show tune, while relative newby Michele sounds tattered and pushy and passionate and almost makes this worth caring about. BORDERLINE NONTICK.

Mike Posner "Cooler Than Me": So far, I can't get a reading on this guy. On "Drug Dealer Girl" his scratchy whisper might be haughty, sly, sad. I can't tell, but it's got something. On "Cooler Than Me" he just sounds absent. NO TICK.

Comments

[meserach.livejournal.com]

On the show, Rachel is played up as having a "terrifying" personality, and she pretty much does, although we are encouraged to root for her. She's explicitly stated to be the best singer, and the one with all the theatre-school-type training. She takes everything VERY SERIOUSLY, and tries to monopolise attention, wanting all the solos and so forth. She's unpopular in the school, viewed as one of the geeks by most of the school and viewed as scary and pushy by her bandmates.

Her early plotlines essentially involved her mooning over the lead male teenage quaterback character, Finn, who was of course unavailable due to being in a relationship with head cheerleader Quinn. Things have progressed rather since then.

Lea Michele herself, of the younger cast, does seem to have the strongest musical theatre background, and has actually been in Broadway productions of Les Miserables, from which "I Dreamed a Dream" is taken.

[koganbot]

The thing is, I don't like much show singing from after the mid '40s or so, and I don't like much show music made after 1970. And the advent of rock 'n' roll in the mid '50s pretty much scuttled Broadway as a source for pop stars anyway. Well, the story is a bit more complex than that, but that's it in outline.

According to Wikip, almost all the cast, not just Michele, were recruited from Broadway. This maybe explains why so few of them sing pop music well, though they don't seem the sorts that would sing show music well, either. But what I don't like about latter-day show music is that it puts acting above singing. What I mean by that isn't so easy to explain, though I tried in my Jukebox blurb for Demi Lovato's "Don't Forget" - Demi being my exception to my general rule, in that she seems to take an actor's approach to singing, but she pulls off the singing spectacularly.

[meserach.livejournal.com]

Actually, of principal cast that play students, only Lea and Jenna Ushkowitz (Tina) have Broadway backgrounds. The rest:

Kevin McHale (Artie) - was once in a boy band called NLT
Dianna Agron (Quinn) - television roles only
Cory Monteith (Finn) - television and film roles only
Chris Colfer (Kurt) - The actor is only 20 and relatively fresh out of high school himself - Glee is essentially his first role except for one short film. HE was very musical-theatre-y while IN school, though.
Amber Riley (Mercedes) - once auditioned for American Idol but was turned down.
Mark Selling (Puck) - a trained musician and singer songwriter, but no Broadway or other musical theatre roles.

Of the adult cast, the only one to sing anywhere near regularly is indeed a Broadway star, however.

[koganbot]

Ah, OK, that's what happens when I only do a quick skim through the Wikipedia article. I was also misled by the fact that the ones that went top forty (about 13 or so) included performances by Matthew Morrison, Jonathan Groff, and Idina Menzel. I'd incorrectly assumed Groff was a regular. I gather that he and Menzel could become semi-regulars.

By the way, what do you think of it (as a show, as music, whatever)? Most of the music doesn't work for me, but I'm getting it outside the context of the show. If I'd only heard the soundtrack to Robert Altman's Nashville I'd have thought the thing was lousy, but the music worked well in the movie.

[meserach.livejournal.com]

Memo to self to answer this tomorrow when I have time. Now, bed.

[meserach.livejournal.com]

Most of the songs, considered separately from the show, have nothing to recommend them over the originals. They're karaoke, essentially, and they're fun in context but pointless otherwise. The exceptions are when more of the individual performer's character is allowed to break through (not often - they're usually so slathered in Autotune that they end up either bland or indistinguishable from the original), or when they manage a noticeably different take from th original (here I can only think of "Gives You Hell", where the vastly different vocals really do change the song a good deal.

The show itself is hit and miss episode to episode, surprisingly so for an American show as they usually tend toward consistency (a writer's room effect). There's a tendency to theme each episode, so all the songs and the plotlines revolve around some common concept - this works well when the theme is "Madonna" or "[songs with] bad reputations" to give two recent examples, but less well at other times ("songs with Hello in the title"?).

The songs in the show work best when a) the song really is stunningly appropriate to the plot, so that you laugh with recognition when it shows up, and/or b) they've choreographed an impressive/hilarious "music video" or dance routine to go along with it. Too often though, the choreography is non-existent and the song choice is either trite or baffling. It helps a lot if you already know and recognise and like the song (and it's also good when they dig up a genuinely good song that you don;t know and perform it well, but that's pretty rare).

The show has a strong and capable cast, but the writing is all over the place. Episodes veer dizzyingly from mawkishly sentimental to hilariously cynical. There's a particular predilection for introducing some characters with disabilities so that the main cast can have a Heartwarming or Meaningful Moment. But some of the character interactions are genuinely sweet and affectingly portrayed (gay fashion-concious musical-theatre geek character Kurt's difficult relationship with his straight auto-shop working father, who tries to support his son but struggles to relate to his interests is a good example).

SO it's not exactly Shakespeare, but it has a lot of charm.

Also Sue Sylvester, the toxic, irascible and deeply unpleasant (mostly) cheerleading coach, is the obvious breakout character, dependably entertaining even in the worst episodes.

[koganbot]

Thanks. I think some of it has been streamed on Hulu, so I'll take a peek someday.

Actually, one of the reasons I haven't yet is that none of the actors look like they are young enough to be in high school (whereas even the older actors in High School Musical - Ashley Tisdale, for instance - looked plausibly high-school age, you didn't have to wildly suspend disbelief for the high school years of Buffy, and My So-Called Life got amazingly good performances out of actual 14, 15, and 16-year-olds).

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

I'm currently pissed because Jane Lynch, the actress who plays Sue, left the modest but dependable "Party Down" (which I love) for "Glee," which I still haven't been able to bring myself to watch enough to form an opinion on it.

[koganbot]

But Lea can do pop songs well, as she does in "Crush."

And of course Demi - fortunately - doesn't record show tunes. (I once complained about Courtney Love taking too much an actor's approach to singing, though also said that when she lets loose she's so spectacular that this doesn't matter. And I'd hardly call her music show tunes.)