Subversive Supreme
4 Out Of 5 Stars
There was a time when pop music and classic popcraft went hand in hand. The Beatles, The Jackson 5, The Fifth Dimension, all took assorted Broadway songs and mixed them with pop and rock. The Beatles did "Till There Was You," The Jackson's did "Corner Of The Sky," The Fifth Dimension took on "The Age Of Aquarius." After a couple decades, that seemed to be too square. Until The Who decided to turn "Tommy" into a Broadway musical - and now Green Day actually winning Tony Awards for "American Idiot" (!?!?), Broadway and modern rock/pop travelled very separate pathways.
Glee has taken that and upended it entirely. Here, they cover The Fifth Dimension AND Broadway in the same song. The medley of "One Less Bell To Answer/A House Is Not a Home" fashions itself in the mold of Barbra Streisand, who has appeared in song throughout the first season. Take songs from "Phantom of The Opera," "Gypsy" and "The Wiz" AND set them next to The Beatles, Kiss and Lady Gaga, and you get what is easily one of the most subversive albums to hit number one this century. Granted, the amount of Auto-tune here annoys me (these kids can sing, really...enough with the gadgets), but when I think of millions of kids being exposed to classic rock ("Dream On"), classic pop ("Hello Goodbye") and Broadway standards ("I Dreamed a Dream:), I'm secretly thrilled. Add that the show itself is one of the most positive on network TV right now, and I am happy to make these soundtracks the guiltiest of my guilty pleasure CD's.
There was a time when pop music and classic popcraft went hand in hand. The Beatles, The Jackson 5, The Fifth Dimension, all took assorted Broadway songs and mixed them with pop and rock. The Beatles did "Till There Was You," The Jackson's did "Corner Of The Sky," The Fifth Dimension took on "The Age Of Aquarius." After a couple decades, that seemed to be too square. Until The Who decided to turn "Tommy" into a Broadway musical - and now Green Day actually winning Tony Awards for "American Idiot" (!?!?), Broadway and modern rock/pop travelled very separate pathways.
Glee has taken that and upended it entirely. Here, they cover The Fifth Dimension AND Broadway in the same song. The medley of "One Less Bell To Answer/A House Is Not a Home" fashions itself in the mold of Barbra Streisand, who has appeared in song throughout the first season. Take songs from "Phantom of The Opera," "Gypsy" and "The Wiz" AND set them next to The Beatles, Kiss and Lady Gaga, and you get what is easily one of the most subversive albums to hit number one this century. Granted, the amount of Auto-tune here annoys me (these kids can sing, really...enough with the gadgets), but when I think of millions of kids being exposed to classic rock ("Dream On"), classic pop ("Hello Goodbye") and Broadway standards ("I Dreamed a Dream:), I'm secretly thrilled. Add that the show itself is one of the most positive on network TV right now, and I am happy to make these soundtracks the guiltiest of my guilty pleasure CD's.
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