This week’s SOTW is Total Eclipse of the Heart, as massacred by the cast of Glee. Don’t get me wrong; I have nothing against people who enjoy watching Glee – some of my best friends watch Glee. But for me, the experience is akin to taking pleasure from watching a Rottweiler butcher a squirrel. Fascinating? Undoubtedly. But enjoyable? No, no, no. Bad and wrong and so disturbing it may haunt me for the rest of my days.
Still, other people are entitled to watch Glee, particularly if they don’t expect me to join them. But apparently it’s not enough for these people to just watch the damn show; they want to inflict its soundtrack on me too. Argh.
Every single week a new song from Glee sails merrily into the top 40, masquerading as music. It’s fine for the world’s Mr Blobbys and Bob the Builders to make the occasional goofy appearance in our Top 40, but every ruddy week? This is not on.
As Total Eclipse of the Heart proves, so-called songs taken from the Glee soundtrack are not music. If you listen to it out of context, it does not work, because it is rubbish. Lea Michele may be natural and charming in Glee, but her voice has the kind of shrill, saccharine edge capable of inducing toothache. Cory Monteith is so bland that if he were a colour, he would be beige.
You need only watch the episode clip to see how embarrassed everyone is of their inadequate musical ability. As those clunky piano chords barge their way in, simply observe the despair on Michele’s face to comprehend how mortifying the whole experience is for her.
Johnathon Goff is a wreck of simmering resentment at 00:27, and Cory Monteith appears sickened by the whole debacle at 00:42. I can only assume the indignity is made worse by the fact that the only video I could find of this song was clearly filmed directly off some loner’s telly.
Glee’s Total Eclipse of the Heart reminds me of those bargain-basement pop compilations you find in developing countries, in which a myriad of barely competent singers phone in their imitations of that month’s chart-toppers. The women sound like they’ve been sucking helium, the men like they’ve been snorting coke. They’re fast, disposable commodities, dashed out with minimum effort so people like me can buy cheap knock-offs of manufactured pop songs without paying those record company pigs quite so much money.
“Oh, but you don’t get it,” simper the Glee aficionados in their booby socks and letterman jackets. “It’s all about the show – it’s all in the performance. It’s meant to be funny.”
Funny? Since when was Bonnie Tyler anything other than the root of all soft-rock misery? Tom Reynolds compares the experience of listening to her original version of Total Eclipse of the Heart to ‘an opera company bludgeoning you with copies of Anne Rice novels’, and certainly its baroque hysteria is hard to beat. In fact, if you want camp melodrama best served with a cynical slice of irony, look no further than Bonnie’s video.
Ballerinas? Pah! Bonnie’s got balletic ninjas. Cory Monteith? Check Bonnie’s Duran-Duran-style wild boys. Heck, old razor-mouth’s nabbed a fencing team, some gymnasts, angels, American footballers, biker boys, and a boys’ choir. Who needs a smart-alec High School Musicalfor grown-ups when Tyler’s disturbed choir mistress is screaming her way through a public boys’ school, haunted by erotic fantasies involving her young charges.
And let’s not forget the amazing boy-on-strings at 03:34. In your face, William McKinley High.
By Stephanie King