First Listen: a-ha’s “Butterfly, Butterfly (The Last Hurrah)”
June 23, 2010
It’s 25 years ago next month that a certain Norwegian synth-pop trio first entered the Billboard Hot 100 with a song that would become one of the most beloved of its era, and a video that still looks as ground-breaking and exciting as it was in 1985: “Take On Me”. Though a-ha never managed another U.S. hit of that magnitude (or even close), they never really went away. Well, except for that time when they went on hiatus for most of the 90s. But with last summer’s lovely album Foot of the Mountain, and their current “Ending on a High Note” world tour, lead singer Morten Harket, keyboardist Magne Furuholmen, and guitarist-songwriter Pal Waaktaar-Savoy are, in fact, calling it a career. But not without a small postscript. The band will release what will presumably be their last single, called “Butterfly, Butterfly (The Last Hurrah)”, for digital download in July. After news of the new single was leaked by a mixing engineer, the song made its official world premiere on the internet via Warner Music Norway last week. For a good-bye song, “Butterfly, Butterfly” is remarkably unspectacular – just a typically sweet, three-minute, mid-tempo, synth-pop song, with a matter-of-fact vocal performance by Harket well in keeping with Waaktaar’s ambivalent farewell of a lyric: Tomorrow, you don’t have to mean what you say/left without a reason to stay/comes the last hurrah. The single is being released in conjunction with a forthcoming 2-disc retrospective set, and coincides with Rhino Records’ recent deluxe edition reissues of the band’s first two albums Hunting High and Low and Scoundrel Days.
What Will Drake Sell First Week With His Debut Album “Thank Me Later”?
June 15, 2010
Thank Me Later
Just two weeks ago when Drake’s Thank Me Later was leaked, people were talking as if Drake would join that exclusive club.
However, talk of the 1 million club has subsided a bit, and expectations are a bit more realistic now that the album is officially out. I have gone on record as saying that I think he crosses the 500,000 mark.
Rapper The Game thinks that he’ll sell 650,000 according to an article on MTV.com.
Game said:
You think he ain’t gonna go out there and push over gold the first week? I got [him selling] over 650,000 first week. That’s what I’m giving Drake: 650, man. Every now and then, a man comes along and reshapes hip-hop; this is the dude for this time. I came out, my first album, 590,000. I feel he got a bigger buzz than I did. When I came out, everybody else was still poppin’. Right now … he’s just coming down. I got my album coming, Tip coming, Ross coming, but everybody is on their Drake stuff — even me. Dude is good, man.
What does everyone else think? We’ll know next week how hot Drake really is when the numbers are announced. Until then, it’s just guesses.
David Bryan and “Memphis” Win Big at the Tonys!
June 13, 2010
Bon Jovi keyboardist David Bryan was always the band’s resident geek. A former pre-med student who left Rutgers to study at Juilliard, he ventured into musical theater in 2002 when he, along with playwright and lyricist Joe DiPietro, started work on a musical called Memphis, the story of a white radio DJ (based loosely on real life DJ Dewey Phillips, one of the first white DJs to play black music) and a black singer who fall in love in the Jim Crow south at the moment of rock ‘n’ roll’s ascendancy. Following several regional theater productions, the show finally opened on Broadway last fall. Tonight, it was nominated for 8 Tony Awards and won four including the night’s top prize for Best Musical. Bryan himself won for Best Score and (with Daryl Waters) Best Orchestrations. Early in the night’s broadcast, Jon Bon Jovi (and an entire Bon Jovi concert audience) wished his bandmate well via satellite. 
And apparently the well-wishes worked. Memphis won out against 11-time nominee Fela!, based on the life and music of Nigerian bandleader Fela Kuti. Among that musical’s many producers were Jay-Z and Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith. Though they left without trophies, the three Fela! producers got a lot of special attention from some of the performers. Lea Michele of Glee serenaded Jay-Z and Beyonce with “Don’t Rain on My Parade”, and, earlier, Douglas Hodge, who went on to win Best Actor in a Leading Role (Musical), playing drag queen Albin in La Cage aux Folles (the part Nathan Lane played in The Birdcage) delivered one of the night’s best laughs when s/he started to take a seat in Will Smith’s lap only to leap suddenly away with a coy glance to his crotch.
The first five minutes of the broadcast looked more like the Grammys than the Tonys, culminating with Green Day’s appearance on stage to rip through the song “Holiday” with the cast of American Idiot, the musical based on the band’s 2004 concept album. The musical was only nominated for three awards (including Best Musical), and only took home an award for Best Lighting Design. The fourth Best Musical nominee was Million Dollar Quartet, a stage re-creation of a legendary Sun Studios session that brought together Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Johnny Cash for a historic, one-off rockabilly summit in 1956. Levi Kreis, the cast’s Jerry Lee Lewis, won for Best Actor in a Featured Role (Musical).
Paul’s Sunday Brunch Buffet: The Big Gay Superbowl LXIV Edition
June 13, 2010
Tonight, it’s the 64th Annual Tony Awards! Can I get a huzzah up in here? Growing up in Paddock Lake, Wisconsin, the Tony Awards represented the very closest I ever got to seeing new Broadway shows. And, frankly, as someone who doesn’t really get out to New York all that much (umm, like, once… ever), it still is the very closest thing I ever get to seeing new Broadway shows. Moreover, in recent years, musicals seem to be making a comeback. It’s not necessarily a new golden age, but at least it’s not the like 90s when virtually every new musical that got produced got nominated – a nadir being the 94-95 season which only saw two new musicals hit Broadway, Andrew Lloyd Weber’s torpid adaptation of Sunset Boulevard, and a theme-park-calibre revue of Lieber & Stoller rock ‘n’ roll songs called Smokey Joe’s Cafe.
Thankfully, things started looking up almost immediately when the late Jonathan Larson’s Rent opened the following year; and with the sleak, minimalist revival of Kander & Ebb’s Chicago. Musicals just feel cooler, more relevant, now than they did 20 years ago, and a new generation of musical composers – Jeanine Tesori, Adam Guettel, Andrew Lippa, Tom Kitt and Jason Robert Brown, to name a few – seem to finally be coming out of their predecessors’ long shadows, re-creating the musical in their own images. Meanwhile pop songwriters like Duncan Sheik and Elton John are taking more than a vanity interest in musical theater as a form, and both have been rewarded for their efforts. Sheik’s Spring Awakening won Best Musical in 2007, and Elton’s scored two Best Musicals in The Lion King and last year’s winner Billy Elliot.
This year’s batch of nominees has a lot to offer fans of pop and rock music – most obviously, Green Day’s American Idiot, a stage adaptation of the band’s 2004 masterpiece, which the band previewed with their performance of “21 Guns” at this year’s Grammy Awards.
This isn’t the first time a rock album has been adapted as Broadway musical. In 1993, The Who’s Tommy became a huge hit. It’s general lack of coherent plotting not only didn’t hinder it – it actually became a sort of selling point. It was a colorful rock spectacle no-brainer. Here’s a performance from that year’s Tony Awards, introduced by (of course) Liza Minnelli – only slightly more coherent than Pete Townshend’s story.
Another rocker who’s taken more than a passing interest in musical theater is Bon Jovi keyboardist David Bryan, who wrote the score for this year’s Best Musical nominee Memphis, which originated as an Off-Broadway show 8 years ago.
Though the arrival of Memphis on Broadway has been a long time coming, Bryan continues to play in Bon Jovi and he’s most recently co-written another show, Toxic Avenger – The Musical, based on the horror film of the same name.
This year’s top Tony contender is the musical Fela!, based on the life of Nigerian composer, bandleader, and activist Fela Kuti, and set to his music. The show coincides with the Knitting Factory label’s recent Fela Kuti reissue campaign, and is notable not only for its 11 nominations, but for the fact that it could very possibly make Jay-Z – along with Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith, one of the show’s producers – a Tony Award winner.
Of course, Jay-Z signalled early on in his career that he might have a soft spot for Broadway musicals. Long before Gwen Stefani’s update on Fiddler on the Roof, Jay-Z was channeling the orphans from the 1977 Broadway musical Annie in “Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem)” – a sample which, for me, established him as one of the smartest and ballsiest rappers to come out of the 90s. All of which makes me wonder: How long until “The Blueprint Trilogy: The Musical” hits the stage?
Lady Gaga Mixes Religion and Sex in “Alejandro”: And? So?
June 10, 2010
There once was a time when a music video was meant to promote a song. In the last year, Lady Gaga has been hard at work reversing that equation. By the time she releases videos for her singles, they’ve already saturated radio playlists. When “Alejandro”, the third promoted single from Gaga’s The Fame Monster album, first hit the airwaves a couple months ago, I was less excited by the song itself than I was curious about what the song’s video would be like. Increasingly, her singles have become teasers for forthcoming short films, which are increasingly promoted the way movies are, with trailers and making-of videos popping up via Gaga’s website, her Twitter and Facebook feeds to throw a little lighter fluid on the bonfire of her “little monsters’” ardent devotion. The songs are just soundtrack.
In this case, the soundtrack is essentially the greatest Ace of Base single they haven’t recorded since “The Sign”, although it’s drawn more comparisons to Madonna – apparently because it’s got Spanish names in it and Madonna sometimes sings songs with Spanish names in them too. The video, however – a collaboration with fashion photographer Steven Klein – is unmistakably Madonna: a veritable mash-up of “Vogue” and “Express Yourself”, with a heaping dollop of arty que-erotica (“Justify My Love”), a big, drippy, melty scoop of religious provocation a la “Like a Prayer” and, what the hell, a tiny bit of “Live to Tell”’s confessional intimacy. It’s all enough to forget about that silly Ace of Base re-write entirely. 
But if the song seems a bit beside the point, the video, after nearly nine minutes, seems disappointingly pointless. It’s not the video’s imagery I object to, although the images’ presumed objectionability appears to be one of the video’s central objectives. The marionetted bodyguard holding a golden gun where his penis ought to be? The leather military uniforms and near-naked goosestepping choreography. The funereal march, the disembodied heart strapped and spiked to a silk pillow? The rubber Joan of Arc hoods and scarlet nuns’ habits? Gaga in ill-fitting flesh colored undies, simulating penetration of a man on an institutional bed? When Gaga previewed some of the video’s imagery on the American Idol stage last month, she was fairly inviting Fox viewers to stage protests and boycotts. (All I could think of was poor Adam Lambert, simulating a little oral sex and giving a band member a kiss on a low-rated awards show after kiddies’ bedtime, while Gaga’s spectacle appeared on a top-rated paragon of family entertainment.)
But “Alejandro” doesn’t feel courageous, or even outrageous, or even terribly interesting. More than anything, it reads as parody – of Madonna, yes, but of Gaga herself. How else to read the way she allows herself to be manhandled by her flock of gay-boy dancers with their ridiculous Catholic monk bowl cuts? The first time I saw it, it just looked hokey. More and more, it comes to resemble a really expensive, really elaborately bit of sketch comedy – only it’s not that funny. In fact it’s a bit dull. And it’s friggin’ long. “Bad Romance” was a masterpiece because it packed a universe of ever-escalating sexual menace and spectacle (and heaven knows how many damn costume changes) into five action-packed minutes. “Telephone” succeeded because it demonstrated a wicked, mordant sense of humor, and it just looked fantastic. There’s no question that “Alejandro” is beautifully photographed. But none of it feels new. And it’s ultimately, strangely… boring. There’s nothing in either the song or the video to justify nine minutes of this stuff. Then again, this could be one of Lady Gaga’s most subversive innovations: she’s managed to erect (yes, I said “erect) a monument to a character in a really dumb, Ace of Base-like song out of old-guard gay fetish imagery, sadomasochism, and Catholic iconography that people can yawn at, that people will click away from, not because their sensibilities have been offended, but because that article about where the original A-Team stars are now looks way more interesting.
Gaga Says She May Have Opened For Michael
June 2, 2010
Lady Gaga says she was asked to open for Michael Jackson on the singer’s 50 date London concert series. Speaking with CNN’s Larry King, Gaga looked beautiful, sounded charming and probably won over more middle America fans than if she had played a shopping mall while scarfing a smoothie.
“I guess I can speak about it now,” Gaga told King. Later she told King there was talk about different opening acts doing duets with Michael.
The singer also said that some of her fascination with death and other macabre images comes in part from watching iconic performers like Jackson be “destroyed” internally or “by the media”.
The comparisons to Madonna are inevitable, but Gaga is accomplishing what Madge did at a much younger age. She is in that magic zone of age–still only 24–and seems to handle all audiences well. Theatrical and witty, she has charmed Queen Elizabeth and Larry King, two paragons of established oldsters, while retaining incredible popularity and credibility in music circles.
Just 22 when The Fame was released, she mixes musical and marketing skills like few ever have. There’s every reason to believe that Gaga could still be a relevant entertainer in 2040 or even 2050.
How’s that for today’s deep thought as you ponder what a Gaga / MJ duet would have sounded like?
First Listen: Sara Bareilles “King of Anything”
May 28, 2010
Singer-songwriter and just all-around-neat-kinda-person Sara Bareilles is previewing her forthcoming album Kaleidoscope Heart, the long-awaited follow-up to her 2007 major label debut Little Voice, with a series of making-of-the-album “webisodes”. She’s also posted audio of the record’s first single “King of Anything” on her website and on YouTube (the single will be released for digital download June 22nd). Like her big hit “Love Song”, this new song does a gleeful little dance in sharp stiletto heels all over a stupid boyfriend’s inflated sense of his own awesomeness: Who died and made you King of Anything? Horn sections and handclaps – Hooray! Kaleidoscope Heart was produced by Neil Avron, whose previous credits include Fall Out Boy’s Folie a Deux. The album is set to be released September 7th.
Big In Germany – Idol Edition: “Superstars” Mark Medlock and Mehrzad Marashi Are On A Boat
May 27, 2010
Back around maybe the second or third season of American Idol, when the show was becoming the established pop cultural phenomenon it is today, we started hearing about similar shows being developed by Lord of the Idols Simon Fuller and 19 Entertainment in other countries like Sweden and Poland and Indo(friggin)nesia. To date, there have been approximately 30 various Idol-esque franchises created around the world. I remember reading around that time about Kurt Nilsen, the first-season winner of Idols Norway – just how cool he seemed. He was a guitar player and unlike earlier seasons of American Idol, he could actually accompany himself on the show. I don’t remember that I ever heard him sing until he did a duet with Willie Nelson on the song “Lost Highway” in 2008 (at which point I was duly impressed), but I remember thinking that he sounded like – well, like an artist. Specifically, the kind of singing-songwriting-guitar-playing artist that our own American Idol showed seemed to hold in contempt.
It’s easy to trash the pop we Americans produce because we’re fairly buried in it. And just like any landfill, you can bet that there are a few treasures in that giant mound of refuse (future ski-hill?), but the smell from the rest of it is way too powerful – even if we thought the Hope Diamond were buried in it, would that be enough for us to throw on the haz-mat suits and go digging? Instead, we see from a distance pretty flowers growing on what looks like a majestic purple mountain shrouded in the soft fog of an early spring morning, and we think: All those international Idol competitions are actually producing, real, good, legitimate stuff. Or at least better than that awful Kelly Clarkson that we’re stuck with. She’s never gonna last. (Editorial Note: This is my 2003-4 self speaking. In gross ignorance. I didn’t watch any of Season 1, and Clarkson hadn’t put out Breakaway yet, which I contend is one of the best start-to-finish pop records of the last decade. Carry on.)
But maybe that majestic purple mountain is really just another gigantic, disgusting, depressing landfill, and maybe its shroud of early morning spring fog is really just a cloud toxic fumes rising out of it.
Maybe it’s just my deeply ingrained musical Europhilia, but I think it’s always easy to fall into thinking that Europeans are just naturally more artsy than we are; that they’re more willing to hear songs in languages other than their first, more open to genuine weirdness in the name of art; and thus, easier to romanticize their Idols – Kurt Nilsen, for instance – as more talented, more legitimate, more worthy. But in 2010, American Idol’s metamorphosis from mere singing competition to artist farm team is complete, a metamorphosis that probably began around the time of Taylor Hicks’s win in Season 5 (the show’s peak ratings season, by the way) and has culminated with the coronation of an Idol, Lee DeWyze, not so very dissimilar from that chunky (for a Scandinavian) blonde troubadour from Norge; and this against Crystal Bowersox, a very white girl from Ohio, with white-girl dreadlocks, a serious Janis Joplin jones, a long-standing residency at one of her local pubs, and really bad teeth, who not only writes her own songs, but writes them well enough that one of them was actually featured in an Idol video package last week. American Idol has become the very epitome of the Idols I’d always imagined all those Euro Idols to be. (And yet, this season, I couldn’t have been less interested in watching it.)
Meanwhile, the most recent winner of the German Idol equivalent Deutschland sucht den Superstar , 29-year-old Iranian-born singer Mehrzad Marashi has just released the follow-up to his debut, show finale single “Don’t Believe”, which is still charting in Germany’s Top 10 this week. The song, “Sweat (The A La La La La Long Song)” is a pop-reggae duet with openly gay former Superstar winner Mark Medlock, the German franchise’s most successful winner to date. If you are still harboring any romantic notions about the presumed artistic superiority of the artists developed by international (read: non-American) Idol franchises, let the video you’re about to see be your reality check.
BTW: Marashi’s the one whose ridiculous, Guido-er-than-thou facial hair doesn’t form the weird trident points on his chin. And did I mention Medlock’s gayness? Also: Andy Samberg should sue.
American Idol Season 9 – And The Winner Is…
May 27, 2010
Paula Abdul
Tonight, let’s do the recap diary style.
8:02 – It’s been 24 hours since last night’s performances and Lee still looks nervous.
8:03 – Ryno Seacrest introduces the judges and Randall Jackson is wearing a suit that would make a pimp blush.
8:06 – Alice Cooper performs School’s Out For Summer with the Top 12, and Siobhan (aka creepy little girl) stole his creepy thunder with her creepiness.
(By the way Idol, way to understand your demographics with that one. Who’s next tonight, Ozzy Osbourne?)
8:13 – Kris Allen is singing some new song and I’m still giving anyone 2-1 odds who doesn’t think he’s getting divorced soon. He has that look in his eyes that says he’s on the hunt for new meat.
8:16 – We get our first Simon Cowell video package, which is a complete waste of time. But at least I got to see Paula.
8:18 – Creepy little girl and Aaron Kelly are singing How Deep Is Your Love. She looks like she wants to eat him.
8:19 – The beautiful Bee Gees came out to join them. Barry had to sing his lines to creepy girl, while poor Robin had to sing his to Aaron. That was awkward.
8:26 – Big Mike Lynche and Michael McDonald are dueting Taking It To The Streets. If Taylor Hicks comes out right now doing his jig, I will smile largely.
(By the way, Alice Cooper, the brothers Gibb, and Michael McDonald have been the celebrity performers so far, and McDonald is the youngest at a ripe age of 58. American Idol, on the cutting edge!)
8:31 – Let’s take a moment of silence for Dane Cook’s career. Bow, there it is.
8:34 – The top 6 girls came out to perform Christina Aguilera’s Beautiful. Lacy Brown led the way and all of America tried to remember if she was on the show or not.
8:37 – Christina herself came out to sing and she’s still number one on my list of those who I’d request to sing me lullabies before I sleep. Rosie O’Donnell is last on that list by the way.
(The roaming camera reached around to Christina’s backside, and I have to say that for a skinny girl, she’s got some junk in the trunk.)
8:47 – The top 6 boys are singing Hall & Oates tunes, which leads me to think…
8:49 – …that of course, Hall & Oates are coming out. I wonder if they’ll get Scott Savol to get on stage and sing She’s Gone? You think Scott’s persona non grata with Idol? All he did was beat his girlfriend. Come on people, where’s your forgiveness!
(By the way, I might be the only Idol blog to mention Scott Savol’s name. I’ll do you one better. How about Corey Clark?
8:51 – Darryl Hall looks like he hasn’t bathed in the year 2010.
8:52 – Janelle Wheeler who was my favorite Idol contestant to look at, and who also dated Tim Tebow is hanging out with Crystal’s fans in Toledo, Ohio. But she’s not wearing those terrific pants that I love.
This Girl Can Wear Some Pants
8:53 – Crystal is out singing Ironic. Wait, does that mean Alanis Morrisette is coming out?
8:54 – Of course it does! I think she’s making fun of Joey from Full House or something.
9:01 – Carrie Underwood is performing. Do you remember what I said about Christina Aguilera being such a skinny girl and having junk in the trunk? Well, as far as having junk in the trunk, it’s the same for Carrie, only the opposite. She has one of the more famous cases of noassatall.
9:08 – Casey James is out singing and Bret Michaels comes out. Wait, isn’t Bret Michaels sick? I have a feeling those guys are going carousing tonight.
9:18 – Lee DeWyze and Chicago perform, and right after, Ryan throws it to Matt Rogers, the former football player who was on Idol many years ago. Rogers looks about 45 years old with a receding hair line. I don’t want to remember my Idols this way. Go away Matt, just go away.
9:21 – General Larry Platt and a bunch of extras from the movie Step Up performed Pants On The Ground. Then William Hung joined the fray and let’s just say that he doesn’t speak English any better than you remember. I would be lying if I didn’t say that I enjoyed this better than Lee DeWyze and Chicago.
9:29 – Yay! It’s Paula Abdul on stage!
9:34 – Boo! Paula’s gone.
9:35 – Kelly Clarkson, Ruben Studdard, and Fantasia Barrino all came out to sing with Simon. Ten bucks says that Taylor Hicks didn’t get invited.
9:36 – Damnit! I owe you ten bucks.
9:37 – Holy jeez! All the terrible ghosts of American Idol contestants past came out to sing for Simon. Mikalah Gordon done growed up. Constantine just winked at me!
9:38 – Mysteriously absent was David Cook. And for that matter, Jennifer Hudson. Wait, she hates Simon.
9:44 – The top 12 is out singing Janet Jackson’s Again. Wait, does that mean…
9:45 – Of course it does! Miss Janet Jackson is on stage sans her weave. Her hair is amazingly short.
9:49 – And the junk in the trunk award goes to, Janet Jackson. Holy cow. She’s now performing Nasty. And you know who choreographed that video.
9:52 – I think Randall Jackson is in love.
9:54 – Please answer this for me once and for all. Is the gap in Crystal’s teeth near the side of her mouth charming or a hot mess?
10:01 – Ryno’s going to tease us about the results for about five minutes here.
10:02 – Ok, I lied. He’s getting right to it. And Lee is terrified.
10:03 – And the winner is… (aw man) Lee DeWyze!
10:04 – Crystal isn’t a sore loser at all, but you have to think that she knows she was robbed heartily.
10:05 – I just realized that Lee’s average cover of Beautiful Day is going to top the iTunes charts next week.
10:06 – I also just realized that this show may be entirely different next year. Good night everyone.
Paula Abdul photo shared via Wikipedia through the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license
Glee’s Gaga Episode Leaves Me… “Speechless”-less
May 25, 2010
Though the show’s most beloved (for her unapologetic hatefulness) character, Sue Sylvester (played with all the purposefulness and empathy of a power drill by Jane Lynch) was pretty much absent from tonight’s Lady Gaga themed episode of Glee, the show still had a lot of great moments. Unfortunately, none of those great moments were musical. Tonight’s show was useful not only in demonstrating the essential commonality between the artistry of Lady Gaga, Barbra Streisand, and KISS – that is, in a word the show beat us over the head with tonight, theatricality - but also in explaining the symbology behind the KISS members’ made up personae. Who knew, right?
It also boasted two of the season’s most dramatic and surprisingly uncartoonish plot developments. Kurt’s father’s confrontation with their potential future stepbrother/son over Fin’s use of the “F” word (not the four letter one) was powerful and moving, and suggested a new layer of complexity in the three characters’ relationships with each other.
Meanwhile, Rachel’s thwarted reunion with her birth mother – rival glee club coach and disappointed former Broadway aspirant Ms. Cochrane (played by real life Broadway star Idina Menzel in a brilliant bit of lookalike-soundalike-no-way-these-two-don’t-share-genes casting) – felt almost underplayed. It was emotionally three-dimensional, as the relief of confession turned not into a happily-ever-after ending, but into a sort of relationship limbo. Moreover, when Rachel (Lea Michele) admitted with some degree of regret that she just didn’t feel a daughterly need for her mother, the show seemed to honor her relationship with her adoptive dads in a way the show, which has never really shown us her adoptive dads (which, as an adoptive dad, infuriates me!), never has before.
Unfortunately, the show’s musical numbers tonight were uniformly duddish, from strictly imitative versions (in both staging and arrangement) of Streisand’s “Funny Girl”, KISS’s “Shout It Out Loud”, and, of course, Gaga’s “Bad Romance”, a performance so synthesized and Autotuned that the show momentarily felt like a trailer for RockStar: Lady Gaga Edition, to a boy-band-on-stools rendition of KISS’s “Beth”, similar to their take on Madonna’s “What It Feels Like For a Girl” a few weeks back. But at least in that performance, there were, y’know, harmonies and stuff. Here, the Glee boys couldn’t be troubled to throw in even the most rudimentary harmonies, instead singing key lines of the song’s chorus in an emotionally empty unison. It was like Kidz Bop performed by teenagers. Or rather Kidz Bop performed by 28-year-olds playing teenagers.
But the show, sadly, saved the worst for last. Seriously, what were the writers thinking when they had Rachel and Ms. Cochrane (biological mother and daughter, remember) sing a duet on Gaga’s “Poker Face”? Confoundingly, this was the one musical number in tonight’s episode that did anything new with the song. In this case, it was given a cutesy, playful, old-timey vaudeville melodic treatment that rendered the song virtually unrecognizable – quite a feat given its 18-month pop-cultural omnipresence – while preserving the song’s aggressively graphic sexual innuendoes. It wasn’t just disappointing. It was sort of disgusting. Let me clarify: if this were a duet between Rachel and one of her peers – say, Quinn Fabray, her longtime rival for Fin’s affections – the song would have had a fun, kinky, but ultimately harmless, sexual tension. But the Michele/Menzel duet on the song had an unintended (I hope I hope I hope) incestuous undertone. It was just all kinds of wrong.
Compounding my disappointment is the fact that there actually is a Lady Gaga song that could have served the scene well, and though it’s not one of The Lady’s hit singles, it’s no obscurity either. She’s performed it in numerous television appearances, and it even makes a cameo in tonight’s Glee episode – in an early scene, Kurt’s got it playing on his stereo. “Speechless”, from The Fame Monster, is a big Elton John-style ballad (which she performed with Elton John at this year’s Grammys) that she says was inspired by her own relationship with her father. The song is a full-throated, gut-wrenching emotional plea pounded out with big arena-rock power chords, and seems made for a moment like the one Rachel had with Ms. Cochrane at the end of tonight’s show – a moment full of conflicting emotions, a moment that was neither hello nor good-bye but rather “see ya ’round, I guess”. Unfortunately, especially after their gorgeous duet on “I Dreamed a Dream” (i.e. that Susan Boyle song from Les Mis) in last week’s episode, I can only imagine what Lea Michele and Idina Menzel could have done with “Speechless”.
I could say, to the tune of “Speechless”, “I’ll never watch again.” But that would be dishonest. I still love the show. But as tonight’s episode has proven, it can be wildly – wildly - off the mark.
