Tonight’s episode of Glee, “Special Education”, has New Directions competing at Sectionals — and competing against one of their own. Kurt’s now a member of the Dalton Academy Warblers, and the all boys academy busts out a harmonious a cappella rendition of Train’s ubiquitous hit, “Hey, Soul Sister“. The ep also features covers from both Mike + The Mechanics and Florence + The Machine, and it looks like Ryan Murphy shares the same fondness for Dirty Dancing as The Black Eyed Peas. Tonight’s tunes below!
Glee Cast - Hey Soul Sister
Glee Cast - Dog Days Are Over
Glee Cast - Valerie
Glee Cast - The Living Years
Glee Cast - (I've Had) The Time Of My Life
After listening to “Hey, Soul Sister” an infinite amount of times over the summer months, we think Glee‘s a bit late to the party on this one, as everyone is pretty much over this song. (We’ll of course eat our words once it gets nominated for a Grammy or two.) But regardless of timing, listening to an innovative a cappella version of a popular song is infinitely more enjoyable than hearing a studio-tweaked, carbon copy of the original recording.
We think we would have enjoyed this new version of “Dog Days Are Over” much more if it were also done a cappella, since no one can come close to Florence Welch’s effervescent delivery of her own song. (We’re also betting on Florence recieving a Grammy nom tomorrow night.) We are, however, fairly impressed by “Valerie” (originally a song by The Zutons made popular by Amy Winehouse), which has Santana on lead vocals. The snappy, cheerful recording makes a good case for Ryan Murphy to give Naya Rivera more solos in the future — girl can really sing! We keep forgetting she can do more than play bitchy to a T.
What do you think of these batch of songs? Will anything Glee puts out for the rest of the season be able to top “Teenage Dream” on the charts?
It’s horrible to learn that she died. Such a tragedy