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Pop Rock Nation

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  • Glee’s Gaga Episode Leaves Me… “Speechless”-less

    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.

  • American Idol All-Stars

    As Lee DeWyze or Crystal Bowersox are revealed as the next American Idol during the next 36 hours, we’ll also reveal the winner of our Sonic Spring Singing competition.

    Here’s what I can tell you.  If Lee wins, then our winner and top finishers are a trio of folks.  If Crystal wins, then two of the three people get swapped out.  I want to give a special shout-out though to two people who predicted the Top 3 based solely on the Top 12.

    WTG, Michelle and Shantel!   Each predicted a Top 3 of Lee, Crystal and Casey James.

    Most people went a safer route and chose Siobhan or Michael over Casey.  One person went for the Duke-like upset and picked Aaron, but these two ladies showed they know their stuff!

    Your Task Now Is Important

    GG came up with the idea of American Idol All-Stars in honor of  the show’s 10th season next year and to hopefully allow a Simon-less panel to find its way.   In the interest of that notion since Idol will never do this, we’re going to pick our own All-Stars and have Idol Madness.  For every Kelly or Carrie, there was a Taylor Hicks.  And speaking of Taylor Hicks, anyone still amazed that he beat Daughtry and Yamin in the same year?

    Here are the rules:  anyone who didn’t win (that means you, Bo Bice) and also didn’t become popular later on.  Just answer in comments and tell us as many names as you want in the Idol All-Stars.

    We’re not going to pick obvious people:   Adam Lambert, Chris Daughtry, Jennifer Hudson, Clay Aiken, Elliott Yamin–artists who have had hits don’t count.

  • First Impressions: Jerrod Niemann

    Sunday morning, I came downstairs and sort of half-heartedly flipped on the TV. The show I wanted to watch was still a good 18 minutes away, but sometimes it helps in our house to stake the claim in advance. As it happened, my partner must have been watching one of those Bill Engvall-hosted, hey-y’all-check-out-them-rednecks reality shows the night before, and the TV was still tuned to CMT, which – amazing these days, given the “M” in its initials – was actually playing a music video. Blame it on Sunday morning inertia: I didn’t rush to change the channel. But then, after a minute or so of doing nothing in particular – oh, look at the fog out there, it’s gonna be a muggy day, I thought absently to myself while surveying the progress of my garden – I found myself nodding and humming along to the tune they were playing on the TV.

    The song, “Lover, Lover”, by one Jerrod Niemann, has one of those ultra-laid-back choruses, the kind conducive to lazy Sunday morning head-nodding, but which also fairly begs to be the soundtrack for all your summer tailgate parties, bonfires, and grill-outs; its simple complaint – you don’t treat me no good no more – delivered without self-pity but with a matter-of-fact cool underscored by richly chorded Opryland harmonies, all accompanied by little more than clapping hands, an acoustic guitar, and a bass drum keeping the downbeat as dutifully, as reliably, as unpretentiously as a 50s sitcom father providing for his family. Boring, bordering on enticing. (Or maybe it’s the other way around?)

    In the song’s video, Niemann comes off as a paragon of unspectacular manhood and charmingly impish macho – he’s not going to stick around for further neglect, but he’s not going to get all tear-in-his-beer about it either. Instead – so the video goes – he’ll just sit out on the front steps, looking not-so-bad in blue jeans and a t-shirt, strumming his guitar, singing his song, and, y’know, inviting (or rather, enlisting some of the neighbor kids to put up handwritten posters inviting) passers-by to gut the apartment of all of his corporate career-woman girlfriend’s prized possessions. (Don’t try this on Craigslist!) I’m sure there’s a retrograde comment on the evolution of traditional gender roles in there somewhere, but… shoot, do you hear that bass voice in the harmonies?

    Kansas-native Niemann has been making a decent living as a songwriter for the last half-decade or so (although he didn’t write “Lover, Lover” – it’s a Sonia Dada cover), scoring his biggest hit when Garth Brooks recorded “Good Ride Cowboy”, and recording a couple of self-released records along the way. Last year, he became the first artist signed to Brad Paisley‘s new label Sea Gayle Records, and started work on his major label debut Judge Jerrod and the Hung Jury. While citing such old-school country stars as Eddy Arnold, Lefty Frizzell, and George Strait as influences, Niemann doesn’t seem to belabor the typical country image too much. He eschews the traditional cowboy hat for something a little more train conductor. He may be a-pickin’-and-a-grinnin’, but not on a hay bail against a Hee-Haw blue sky backdrop; rather on the front stoop of his building in the shadow of a big city skyline. “Lover, Lover” is a great little song that’s already a Top 20 country hit, but with its effortless, just-this-side-of-gimmicky, Uncle Kracker-ish chorus – the song’s strongest but also most artistically suspect asset – it’s making its way up the Billboard Hot 100 as well.

    Judge Jerrod and the Hung Jury is set for a July 13 release and is currently available for pre-order.