Glee. Glee. Glee. You simply had to be there. Just for today, as we’re celebrating 15 years since its premiere, I don’t want to hear about its many, many faults. If you were a gay child or if you just liked musicals (so if you were a gay child), and Glee came out, no one could blame you for being obsessed with it. You were a little fruit who loved Wicked, and then, they made a TV show where the challenge of being able to sing a Wicked song and be a fruit at the same time was the A-plot. You were only mortal!
The general reaction to Glee really upholds my theory that the general populace does not know how to handle showtunes in mainstream television. Like the level of insane Glee is operating on is less insane if the primary media you’re consuming is musicals. Kurt and Blaine get trapped in an elevator with the Saw puppet? Okay, well, do you know the plot of Bat Boy?
There’s so much going on in any five minutes of Glee that I expect we’ll be excavating its mysteries for centuries, to come as it's a sort of cryptograph of Obama’s America (stay with me). One fact that explains a lot is the show didn’t have a writer's room for the first couple seasons. The three creators- Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk, and Ian Brennan- wrote the scripts mostly independently. If you look at the pie chart below, you’ll see their tastes run fairly mainstream where showtunes are concerned. Realistically, Rachel and Kurt would definitely be well-versed in these shows, but what they actually listened to would probably be much more contemporary and less well-trod territory, especially when it came to auditions and competitions. Ask the 2018 Jimmy Awards winners- you want a selection that is not in everybody’s songbook!
For a show that defined itself as being written for theater nerds, its tastes are just so pedestrian. Like the real Rachel Berry in 2009 would be trying to convince her classmates she was deep by belting Next to Normal solos, and I bet Artie really wanted to white boy rap to Lin Manuel Miranda’s parts in In the Heights. There were lonely teenagers camped on Ryan Murphy’s lawn DEMANDING we get a Spring Awakening song. Don’t tell me it would’ve been too meta when we had that much Wicked going on! Maybe writers pitched lesser known musicals but Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa shot them all down so he could use those ideas later in Riverdale. Also as time went on, I know what would sell on iTunes had a lot more to do with the choices. Or could it be that the ravenous desires of lonely teenagers devoted to a niche art form somehow didn’t sync up with a mainstream network sitcom audience…NAH!
Below I have graded some of these choices on a rubric of my own design:
and now…wicked mode
The Wicked trailer dropped last week, and I have been changed for good. The movie musical 21 years in the making actually looks…good??? Even though they’re splitting it into two parts. Even though they’re saying they’re taking more from the absolutely bonkers book. Even though the musical itself is more bonkers than its extreme commercial success would have you suspect, and I’m not sure if I’m ready to be reminded of that. I will continue reporting on this until it premieres and will be rereading the books in preparation. So Glinda, come with me, think of what we can do together!
good reads
Slate | The Blank Slate of Barron Trump by Luke Winkie
A lot of fringe-dwelling MAGA people took these obscure books as proof that Trump’s presidency was some kind of time-travel experiment, or foreseen in the past.
TCF emails | The erotic binds of motherhood by Tracy Clark-Flory
There are no lunches to pack and no dishes to do. Sex isn’t routine or scheduled; it’s snuck in at every possible moment. The book relishes the kind of eroticism that is antithetical to domesticity—particularly domesticity that is defined by suffocating inequality.
Intelligencer | 5 Takeaways From a Magical (and Promising) Knicks Season by Will Leitch
This was a tough way for the season to end. But the Knicks are just getting warmed up.
SEEN/READ
05/17 BRIDGERTON
05/18 Hamlet
05/19 BRIDGERTON
05/20 The Viscount Who Loved Me
05/21 ABBOTT ELEMENTARY
05/22 The Viscount Who Loved Me
05/23 ABBOTT ELEMENTARY
letter to the editor - issue vii: goodbye to bazinga
Hey Gabby,
Do you think AI is the future?
Love,
Hi Skylar!
I have to say, I didn’t until this week, when I found a YouTube channel that stopped my heart. This user is using AI to make Glee and Riverdale characters sing new covers. The choices of characters and songs are completely unpredictable. The creator acknowledges their versions are cursed, but like, they’re almost too creative and specific for me to really buy that it's not a little earnest. I actually don’t think someone who watched all of Glee and Riverdale is capable of being that ironic (autobiographical, and if you don’t hear from me next week, it’s because I’ve found this person, and we’ve run off and eloped). Like, why did they do the entirety of The Last 5 Years? Why are Fangs from Riverdale and Mason from Glee specifically featured so much? It is so uncanny valley to hear, especially if you’ve listened to all these actors singing as much as I have.
Here are the ones that broke me the most:
Sincerely, Me from DEAR EVAN HANSEN sung by Puck, Blaine and Teen Jesus from Glee
Unholy by Mason and Madison from Glee (the twins from the last season)
Domo Arigato,
Gabby
give me the metrics in comparison to the pop songs glee covered!