‘Glee’ Rides The Train, Covers “Hey, Soul Sister” A Cappella

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!

[wpaudio url=”//idolator.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Hey-Soul-Sister-Glee-Cast-Version.mp3″ text=”Glee Cast – Hey Soul Sister” dl=”0″] [wpaudio url=”//idolator.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Dog-Days-Are-Over-Glee-Cast-Version.mp3″ text=”Glee Cast – Dog Days Are Over” dl=”0″] [wpaudio url=”//idolator.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Valerie-Glee-Cast-Version.mp3″ text=”Glee Cast – Valerie” dl=”0″] [wpaudio url=”//idolator.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/The-Living-Years-Glee-Cast-Version.mp3″ text=”Glee Cast – The Living Years” dl=”0″] [wpaudio url=”//idolator.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Ive-Had-The-Time-Of-My-Life-Glee-Cast-Version.mp3″ text=”Glee Cast – (I’ve Had) The Time Of My Life” dl=”0″] 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?