Who doesn’t love show choir? Add a bunch of Broadway stars into your cast, great songs, a funny and dramatic plot and you’ve got a whole TV series about show choir. Now there’s the jackpot, a show all about show choir, or in this case, Glee Club. Fox started the TV series “Glee” after an episode of “American Idol” with a pilot episode and began running the season in September.
Mixtures of show tunes and top hits comprise the 19 songs featured on the first installment of the soundtrack Glee: The Music, Volume 1. With impressive voices, fun instruments and a hint of a cappella, many of these songs that were chosen for the album have respectively gotten more than a million hits on YouTube. While the album and all of the songs it contains are fantastic, some cannot stand up to the original versions, but then there are others that are powerful all on their own, even better than the originals.
One song that is not as good as the original is “Defying Gravity” from the Broadway musical “Wicked,” sung by Lea Michele and Chris Colfer. While Michele has an undeniably can’t-say-enough-wonderful-things-about-her-voice effect, Michele and Colfer just simply cannot stand up to Idina Menzel’s magnificently unique and beautiful voice or her original version of “Defying Gravity.” Sorry guys, but nobody can top Idina Menzel.
There are a few songs on the album that could have been replaced. Another star taken straight from Broadway, Kristin Chenoweth, who was Glinda in “Wicked,” has two songs on the album. Chenoweth guest-starred in only one episode, where some other Glee cast members have been permanent thus far and don’t have as many songs on the. Other options could have been including any of the songs from the Acafellas or the mash ups the cast sang.
Amber Riley and Michele are undeniably the two best female singers on the album. Michele gives Celine Dion a run for her money with “Taking Chances,” sounding, dare I say it, better than the superstar herself. Michele enhances every song on the album and makes hitting the repeat button a necessity.
Riley is another cast member that has a take-your-breath-away kind of effect when she sings. Riley’s songs on the album include “Hate On Me” and “Bust Your Windows,” and with her stunningly powerful and strong voice, she makes these two songs 100 percent better than the original versions.
Standing alone, Glee: The Music, Volume 1 is a great album. Some songs are just unbelievable by themselves and give the original artists a run for their money. But of course, the whole idea behind show choir is singing and dancing simultaneously, and every song on this album is even better and a thousand times more powerful paired with the visual images of the show, whether it be an actual number from Glee Club or someone breaking out into song in the parking lot during a car wash.
If status updates on Facebook are any indication, everyone is into Glee, Glee Club, the cast of Glee and the songs, proving the show and Glee: The Music, Volume 1 will be devoured. Listeners will just have to take chances by busting a move, even if they are dancing by themselves, then, alone, they take a bow because they will have no air left but they will keep holding on because they won’t be able to stop the feeling of glee.
4 stars out of 5.
