GLEE's Lack Of Showtunes These Days...- Page 1

[ksimone1120]

Posted: 12/3/12 at 8:18pm

It Just Makes Me Mad Because It Started Off As A Musical Based Show, & Now It's Doing A Bunch Of Crappy Pop Songs Hint: "Let's Have a Kiki / Turkey Lurkey Time." "Gangnam Style: I Know They Are Trying To Appeal To A Different Audience But I Think They Should Go Back To Their Roots. I'm Pretty Satisfied With "All That Jazz" & "Being Alive" Though :)

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 12/3/12 at 8:19pm

Turkey Lurkey is a show tune (though it was barely used). I dunno, I don't watch as closely as some, but it seems like the balance of musical tunes and pop tunes is pretty much the same as it's always been...

[ksimone1120]

Posted: 12/3/12 at 8:27pm

Oh Yes, Turkey Lurkey is one, Yeah it wasn't used a lot. But this Season, So Far, there hasn't been much show tunes.

[CapnHook]

Posted: 12/3/12 at 8:27pm

They Just Did Two Episodes On GREASE For Crying Out Loud.

[jpbran]

Posted: 12/3/12 at 8:37pm

I actually read earlier this year the producers were blaming the ratings slide and music sales drop on the "less popular" music. They were making an intentional push for more recognizable pop music and more 'songs of the moment' (gimmicky crap like "Gangnam Style.")

Cause, you know the ratings slide could in NO way be due to ridiculous character inconsistencies, after-school special plots, and ear-splattering auto-tuning.

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 12/3/12 at 8:45pm

As well as now having a bunch of pretty bland new cast members--and the fact that, really, a ratings slide was pretty inevitable especially since Glee became such a big teen zeitgeist thing so early in its life.

I thought Glee picking less well known songs had been working out for them? Fun. has said several times they think having We Are Young on Glee before it became a hit was what made it chart so quickly. *shrug*

[Kad]

Posted: 12/3/12 at 10:08pm

Glee has relied on memetic hit songs to ensure it stays relevant and that the albums sell since the start.

[ucjrdude902]

Posted: 12/3/12 at 10:11pm

I remember a time where BWW users were very upset and overly protective when Glee used showtunes.

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 12/3/12 at 10:39pm

Glee has relied on memetic hit songs to ensure it stays relevant and that the albums sell since the start.

Absolutely. But I think the mix used to be more 50/50 (with the first 50% including show tunes and pop/rock standards and the rest recent charters). Now it's more like 10/90, which for an old-timer like me is less interesting.

But that's to be expected: I'm about a decade outside their target demo.

However I really did enjoy learning new Katy Perry songs back when they were better mixed with Judy Garland songs. Now that it's almost all new music, it tends to sound alike to me. (And, no, the auto-tuning doesn't help.)

(ETA I should have acknowledged CapnHook's point: yes, the GREASE episodes were exceptions to what seems to be the new format.)

Updated On: 12/3/12 at 10:39 PM

[wicked1492]

Posted: 12/3/12 at 10:55pm

I was greatly concerned. Glad someone brought it up.

[Gothampc]

Posted: 12/3/12 at 11:01pm

I hear Chita Rivera is very upset about this.

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 12/3/12 at 11:04pm

I don't remember a Perry/Garland mashup! Tough it sounds kinda scary to me.

I actually liked, in the mess that was last season, some of the lesser known recent songs they used, but I do see Gaveston's point if we include classic pop/rock and standards in with showtunes. Still, this year, not to defend Glee or anything gauche like that, seems to have been relatively balanced. I think (I sorta tuned out for much of the Grease stuff).

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 12/3/12 at 11:07pm

For the record, my single favorite GLEE song to date was Darren Criss and the Warblers' cover of Perry's "Teenage Dream", a song I had never heard at the time.

So I'm not opposed to everything written since 1990.

[Jane2]

Posted: 12/3/12 at 11:22pm

I don't watch Glee but through BWW I listened to them doing Don't Dream It's Over, a favorite song of mine. They did a pretty good job. I know, it's not a show tune. I just wanted to give out a compliment.

[LYLS3637]

Posted: 12/4/12 at 9:45am

It's a shame. The show was never good, but it was fun watching older songs (both showtunes and others) get a new exposure to a new generation. From Journey to Queen to Barbra to "Gypsy," I really enjoyed seeing what they would do next.

Then it turned into the Top 40 show, where it looked like the writers got a copy of Billboard magazine that day and went down the Hot 100 list.

That's when I stopped watching, and I don't think I was the only one.

[sephyr]

Posted: 12/4/12 at 9:53am

well, it's getting back to the showtunes slowly but surely. This week we have Chicago, Company, and Hallelujah Baby. Hopefully more MT songs will get incorporated in the future. I love when they sing them especially Chris and Lea.

Posted: 12/4/12 at 10:18am

This Christmas will be a crossover episode with the New Normal's Nana visiting her sister Sue Sylvester in Lima. I can't wait to hear all the "offensive" names she'll call those Glee kids.

[Wynbish]

Posted: 12/4/12 at 10:20am

Remember in the first season when Sue had "Sue's kids"?

"Asian... Other Asian..."

[darquegk]

Posted: 12/4/12 at 10:33am

The tonal shift of the show from pitch-black comedy where everyone was a target to sassy comedy of empowerment and social justice did the show a great deal of harm.

On the one hand, it's become a powerful media advocate for LGBTQ youth, I don't deny that. And it's probably done them a great deal of good. But at the same time, doing so ruined the central concept of the show- a group of oddballs and losers, none particularly likable or three-dimensional, treating glee club (the lowest rung of the performing arts) like absurdly serious business in the face of a tyrannical and bigoted sociopath in teacher's clothing.

And then, one day- oh, these characters, they're not just silly people or grotesques, they're PEOPLE too! And show choir suddenly IS serious business. Any character or plot twist that didn't fit the new focus disappeared, whether it needed to or not.

[rougeduck]

Posted: 12/4/12 at 11:46am

It's a satire that became the very thing it was satirizing...

[TheatreKid3]

Posted: 12/4/12 at 1:25pm

Yes, GLEE's cover of "We Are Young" is in fact what made Fun. go mainstream and gain a lot of popularity. I, myself, had not heard that song until it was covered on GLEE.

[SporkGoddess]

Posted: 12/4/12 at 5:57pm

I actually was wondering how they would handle NYADA when the show clearly hates showtunes.

I used to read a lot of message board commentary on Glee (like Television Without Pity) and most people stated that they disliked when an episode used a lot of showtunes.

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 12/4/12 at 11:19pm

Wasn't Glee sold from the start as a show choir doing, mainly, pop tunes? I remember the gimmick as talked about in TV preview articles was always that it would be a musical using established pop songs--Broadway songs were never mentioned in the concept.

[ComingUpRoses2]

Posted: 12/5/12 at 1:43am

Eh. Who cares? Keep 'em away from the showtunes. They'll just screw them up anyway. Need I remind anyone of the "Rose's Turn" debacle?

The first 12 episodes of the show were brilliant, hilarious, and fresh. I honestly couldn't believe it was such a hit. It felt like a remarkably smart indie black comedy or something like Heathers or Election. Once it came back after the hiatus, it was a completely different show where character and plot where thrown out the window to accommodate 10 songs shoehorned into one episode with the sole purpose of selling iTunes downloads.

I doubt the show will last much longer. Maybe a year or two.

[ClumsyDude15]

Posted: 12/5/12 at 4:43am

Despite the ratings dip, Glee continues to be the highest rated scripted show on FOX, so I can see it sticking around for quite sometime depending on how they work out things. I think they've done a pretty great job this season with the balance of things, and everything is on a much better par than last season, which was an utter disaster.

As someone stated - season one was fantastic, and season two had moments, but season three was beyond awful. I'm very much liking this season, and unlike last year, I'm pretty invested. As for the lack of showtunes, the show came into the public spectrum with a Journey cover, and while they've done several showtunes over the past seasons [ie: the atrocious West Side Story production last year, Rose's Turn, Take Me or Leave Me, etc] the show was born on a pop tune, so it's not surprising that they've stuck with what sells and does well.

Yes, they spent most of last season more concerned with what indie song they could turn into the next big thing rather than any and all character development or process, but I think the sparring use of showtunes has been nice, because a lot of the ones they've done [ie: West Side Story being butchered] were pretty painful. I will however admit that I think they nailed some of them - Grease was fun, Rose's Turn, Don't Rain on My Parade and mashing up I Feel Pretty with TLC's Unpretty were highlights.

Updated On: 12/5/12 at 04:43 AM