Gleeks, unite: make the lip-synching stop!
Sing, dammit. (Courtesy of FOX)
Last night I became an official Gleek. My husband and I have DVRed “Glee” since its inception, but only last night did we watch it (almost) live. The episode, on the knock-down, drag-out battle between Jane Lynch’s Sue Sylvester and Matthew Morrison’s Will Schuester, was the series’ best yet — mainly because it gave Lynch nearly every scene.
Here’s what turns me off about “Glee,” and will eventually force me to stop watching: its musical numbers.
Sure, sure, the show pivots on these. It’s about a high school glee club, after all. And I, like most of America, as a certain other Fox property has proved, am a sucker for watching young people sing their hearts out.
They don’t do that on “Glee.” They lip-synch.
As overproduced and overhyped as “American Idol” is, its contestants sing. Live. That’s the great attraction of the show: you’re watching talent unfiltered, or as unfiltered as you can get through make-up and costumes and Simon Cowell.
In last night’s episode, the glee clubbers sneaked a covert jam of Nelly’s “Ride Wit Me.” No mics, no digital manipulation, no synthesizers. Just a bunch of teens singing their hearts out. It rocked. (Listen below.)
The music is produced by Adam Anders (watch this typically retarded local TV interview on Fox) and a partner in Sweden. “The main thing is that we stay true to the original [song],” he says in the interview. “The vocals are pretty embellished.”
Aaaargh! Don’t stay true! Don’t embellish!
You know what I won’t be buying? The “Glee” album to be released next month. That’s sure to be more overproduced nonsense. And I wonder if the recently greenlighted tour will feature real singing or fake.
In other news, NBC gets the Sour Grapes Award (from TVSquad):
NBC cut a performance by the cast of Fox’s Glee for the upcoming Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. The network pulled the performance because they thought the size and scope of the performance was too much promotion for a show on a rival network.
Gleeks, unite. Go to Fox’s Glee site and sing it out on the many community boards: make the lip-synching stop!
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Lisa,
Firstly, I want to say how much I love your posts — usually.
While I agree that the synching is bad on Glee, it should be noted that all sound in most movies and television shows is often dubbed in after – especially music (look at music videos and musical movies).
And yes, the synching can be bad on Glee, but one has to keep in mind they don’t have the budgets of a major motion picture or a music video – nor the time required – to nail the synching down.
Comparing American Idol is like apples and oranges. Singing live while standing on a stage is much different than getting all the necessary shots and singing exactly the same way every time (I am assuming Glee uses a single camera here).
As for the soundtrack, what I love about the released songs is they sound the same as they did on the show and sometimes – as was the case with Heart’s Alone from a few weeks back – you get the whole song instead of the one minute snippet on the show.
Sarah — it’s not that the lip-syncing is bad. It’s not. It’s that they’re lip-synching ALL THE TIME. I get the appeal of a professionally produced, choreographed piece. Narratively speaking, I even think they work — say, in fantasy sequences, like Quinn’s solo on the football field. But when the glee club is rehearsing, why can’t we hear their real voices without all the tone correction and the synthesizer?
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