With a song in my heart

When I first wrote about Glee on this blog about a year ago, none of us had any idea what a multi-media behemoth Ryan Murphy's little show would become. A 'dramedy' (no-one does word-merge like Hollywood) about a midwestern school choir didn't exactly sound like a surefire mainstream smash.

Maybe it was the fact that there was nothing like it in the schedules (repeats of High School Musical don't count), but something about this unapologetically cheesy show captured the zeitgeist in a way that no-one could have predicted. In just over twelve months, those scrappy showtune-loving misfits have managed to usurp no lesser act than the Beatles, by scoring a record 75 chart appearances in the Billboard Hot 100. Just for the record, it took Liverpool's finest 32 years to notch up 71 placings.

Perhaps the secret of Glee's appeal lies in the fact that, contrary to popular belief, it offers something for everyone. The cast are largely attractive (and cater to a wider variety of tastes), the music is well selected and slickly produced, and there's a biting seam of humour that counteracts some of the schmalz - which can sometimes leaving you feeling as though you've just munched your way through a jar of Splenda.

With America's viewers comfortably nestled in the palm of his hand (and still humming Don't Stop Believin'), Murphy is taking some bold steps to use his show as a platform for addressing a subject he feels strongly about.

Given the way that the gay bullying epidemic has dominated headlines in the US, it's reasonable to expect that many popular shows will make a timely reference to the issue, taking care to neatly resolve its characters conflicts before the end credits run (Next week - alcoholism and dog-snatching). However, Murphy has other ideas, and is planning to extend the current 'gay bullying' plotline as an arc for the whole season - with repercussions for all the characters, not just Kurt Hummel.

In last week's show, lonely young gay Kurt was taken under the benevolent and immaculately tailored wing of new mentor Blaine, as he attempted to spy on the prep school's own glee club. Given that his infiltration skills are about as subtle as James Bond in a bright red clown wig (see Octopussy for more information), he's quickly uncovered.

But the boys of  Dalton Academy see the longing in the young gayling's eyes and treat him to the most homoerotic display since Jake and Heath checked each other for ticks. The song they perform is Katy Perry's recent chart-topper 'Teenage Dream', given a nice acapella all-boys-together makeover. It's clear from the look on Kurt's face that this is one dream that's likely to cost him a fortune in laundered bed-linen.

And yet, despite the fact that this is possibly the three gayest minutes in the history of network TV, mainstream audiences have embraced it with open trousers arms. The audio version of the track is already set to become Glee's best selling song to date, shifting 200, 000 downloads in its first week on release.

As Murphy pointed out: "That’s our biggest-selling single ever in the history of the show and the fact that it’s one boy singing to another boy on a network television show and it’s a No. 1 song... is a very profound thing that I’m personally very proud of. It just shows to me that people are hungry for that."

Bold TV producers have spent years attempting to raise acceptance of homosexuality through boundary-pushing, taboo breaking depictions of the gay experience. Turns out, all they needed was a troupe of close-harmony vocalists and the Katy Perry songbook. Who knew?

PS. It wouldn't be a gay anthem without a hands-in-the-air remix, so here it is...


Glee Cast - Teenage Dream (DJ MichaelAngelo's Sing Mix)(DJ DigiMark Remix Video) from DJ DigiMark on Vimeo.

Shut up and sing?

Ever since the golden age of disco, female singers have been intermittently churning out gay-friendly anthems to encourage and support their sparkliest fans. The songs themselves haven't always been explicitly pro-gay, but they tend to have a message that can be easily applied to the trials and tribulations of post-closet life.

These days, however, the divas are getting much more active when it comes to voicing their support for the gay community, beyond the occasional PA in a clothing-optional nightspot. Katy Perry, Lady Gaga and Ke$ha have all become outspoken advocates of homosexuality, consigning Gloria Gaynor and Diana Ross to the bargain bin of homo-activism.

Despite still being months away from an official release, Gaga's 'Born This Way' is already being talked up by no less than Elton John as the ultimate gay rights anthem. So far, all anyone's heard is a short acappella snippet that Gaga performed whilst accepting her MTV Music Video Award. But that was enough to inspire a bunch of DJs to turn the sample into a stomping anthem that's been doing the rounds in every club from Christopher Street to the Castro.

Katy Perry's new single Firework is also being talked up as the official soundtrack of the 'It Gets Better' movement. Having pledged her support for the anti-bullying YouTube campaign, Katy managed to tear herself away from her epic nuptials long enough to tweet that "Everyone has the spark to be a firework.”

The video for the song features two boys snogging each other's faces off as a series of spectacular pyrotechnics burst from Katy's dynamic décolletage. This is starting to become something of a trend for the new Mrs Brand, since the film clip for her previous single 'California Girls' featured cans of whipped cream exploding from her bikini top. At this rate, by the time her third album is released, she'll have lactated the entire periodic table.

But the real surprise is Ke$ha - a girl with less depth than her own calendar. She's managed to cobble together a timely answer to the outbreak of suicides in the form of a new song called 'We R Who We R'. Presumably she was in such a rush to record it that she didn't have time to sort out the punctuation.
It turns out that when she's not brushing her teeth with bourbon and clambering out a skip, Ke$ha spends her time thinking about people “who haven’t felt accepted because of their sexuality.” 

Her new song is a rallying cry (autotuned, natch) for "people [to be] themselves unapologetically". Although it sounds like a rehashed megamix of all her other singles, Ke$ha believes that she's struck solid glitter this time - "I never could have imagined how much impact my music could have on people. I realized that through pop music, I have the opportunity to stand up for something I believe in.” Even if standing is something that she has trouble doing unaided. 

No doubt the critics will carp that it's all a cynical exercise in selling records and aligning themselves with all the right social issues. And at the end of the day, what difference can a bunch of pampered pop-stars really make? A lot, according to activist and sex columnist Dan Savage. He told the New York Times: “These songs are countering a hateful message that a peer, family member, politician or a bully might be saying. I get frustrated with gay politicos who discount or undermine the importance of pop stars. They’re a huge part of this fight.”

OK, it might be cause for concern that vapid pop tarts like Katy Perry and Ke$ha are the only hope for the world's disaffected gay teens. But given the amount of support they can expect to receive from this niche audience once they find the nerve to throw open the closet door, it's the least they can do.

Time to grow up

Being a parent isn't all that it's cracked up to be. Sure, it means that in seventeen years you'll be able to take advantage of a free taxi service (less petrol costs, natch). And at least there'll be someone to check you into the nursing home once you start leaving patches on the furniture.

In the meantime, there's an awful lot to endure - from sleepless nights and neon faeces to horrendous mood-swings and temper tantrums. However, the real reason most parents look like they're a bug's eyelash away from buying an automatic weapon and shooting up a shopping mall, is the kids' TV they have to endure. 

Inane, repetitive, and featuring more headache-inducing colour clashes than Katie Price's make-up bag, children's programming can turn even the most advanced academic brain into lukewarm oatmeal. So it's hardly surprising that Sesame Street has endured for over 40 years, since its canny producers are wise to the fact that their output is being watched by grown-ups too. 

The show deftly blends in adult concepts and intelligent humour with the low-tech animation and counting sequences, to make sure that the parents in its audience don't end the broadcast wondering if its possible to commit suicide with a Fisher Price building set. 

This week, the show even took on one of HBO's most challenging and controversial dramas in an extraordinary sketch called 'True Mud' - depicting a version of the vampire thriller where Merlotte's Bar gets visited by a stranger with an insatiable hunger for sludge. The sketch even features a fleeting appearance by the fuzzy version of cross-dressing gay chef Lafayette. You never got that on Playschool.  

The street was also visited by Katy Perry this week, who showed up to serenade Elmo with a new version of her single 'Hot and Cold', designed to introduce children to the concept of opposites. Interestingly, the song didn't need that much rejigging to be appropriate for the under-fives, suggesting that Katy might not be the world's most advanced lyricists. 

No-one seemed particularly concerned about the bizarre coupling of a squeaky-voiced, goggle-eyed muppet with one of Sesame Street's longest-running residents. In fact, most people's issue with the online clip was Katy's somewhat inappropriate strapless dress. The low-cut lime-green outfit was in danger of encouraging too many young viewers to count to two - which would be confusing if that day's episode happened to be sponsored by the number six. 

After a flurry of complaints about the footage, the show's producers issued a statement, which said "In light of the feedback we've received on the Katy Perry music video which was released on YouTube only, we have decided we will not air the segment on the television broadcast of Sesame Street, which is aimed at preschoolers." 

It's not all bad news though. Viewers who enjoy the curious fusion of childhood innocence and mature humour will soon have a new show to fixate on. PBS has announced a new concept called 'Next Avenue', aimed at baby boomers, rather than babies, which will teach them "how to handle their lives now that they've reached middle age, much the way the preschool TV show teaches kids their A-B-Cs."

I look forward to seeing how the show's innovative composers handle manage to create catchy songs about final-pay pensions, endowment mortgages and sexual harassment in the workplace. 

Katy should shut the smurf up

Everyone knows the first rule of publicity - do something controversial and everyone will talk about you. Katy Perry knows all about that, after all, she's engaged to Russell Brand and he can't blow his nose without giving Daily Mail readers an aneurysm. Then again, she's no stranger to shock tactics herself, thanks to her faux-lesbian antics in 'I Kissed a Girl' and her homophobic debut single 'U R So Gay'.

As the daughter of a pair of ministers, Katy grew up singing in church and attending Christian summer camps. Although she started out singing gospel, by the time she was ready for the big-time, Katy had ditched the religion (as well as her real last name) and was courting a decidedly secular audience. Hardly surprising given that she grew up delighting in rebelling against her parents' conservatism.

Unfortunately, she may have discarded some of her inhibitions but she decided to hang on to the hypocrisy of fundamentalism. A couple of weeks ago she took to Twitter to critique the new Lady Gaga video, commenting "Using blasphemy as entertainment is as cheap as a comedian telling a fart joke." Apparently not everyone approves of videos that equate religion with fascism.

As soon as the news media picked up on Katy's condemnation, she promptly backtracked, telling an interviewer that people think she's "a very hypocritical person ... Spirituality and sexuality are two separate things. When you decide to put it into the same subject, it gets interesting for some people. Everyone knows... I've said 100 times on my Twitter: I'm one of the biggest Lady Gaga and Madonna and Russell Brand fans..."

Of course, the interesting post-script to all this talk of controversy is the fact that Katy has also managed to upset people this week, with the debut of her new video for California Gurls. Katy may dance around in the video in a ridiculous cream-cake bra, but it's one particular guest appearance that seems to have people upset with the blue-haired banshee.


Katy is joined by a troop of dancing Gummi bears, a couple of whom decide to flip her the bird - perhaps they had to sit through one of her live performances of 'Waking Up In Vegas'. The brand manager for Trolli (who make the chewy ursine characters) issued a statement saying "Those are definitely not Trolli Gummi bears in the video because Trolli Gummi Bears would never be that rude. Trolli bears would extend their chubby little arms and give Katy a big old bear hug and whisper, 'Everything is going to be alright'." He may think that sounds cute, I think it's pretty creepy.

Having already perverted people's memories of those lovable Gummi bears, it'll be interesting to see what impact Katy will have on the similarly themed Smurfs when the movie adaptation hits screens later this year. As she told MTV: "My mother thought that Smurfette was a little bit slutty, being the only female in the village. And now I've shown her. I called her up and said, 'Guess what, ma? I'm Smurfette!'" Maybe mother had a point...

The Vagina Monologues

God bless celebrities. When they're not shielding their faces from the paparazzi or claiming 'press intrusion', they're more than willing to hitch up their skirts and invite the world to have a nosy.

If you think a lady garden is somewhere Charlie Dimmock spends her weekend, you might want to look away now. Because this week, a couple of celebrities decided to tell the world a little more about their downstairs activity than anyone wanted to know.

After a whirlwind romance, bandy-legged bird's-nest Russell Brand decided to make an honest woman of Katy Perry and proposed to her on a trip to India. The media were quick to jump to the conclusion that Russell had done more than kiss the girl (and like it), and that Katy was expecting a a little bundle of hairy joy.

Keen to nip these rumours in the bud, Katy handled the story with customary discretion, Tweeting "ur gonna make me cry, maybe that's my period tho. THAT'S RIGHT I'M BLEEDING. Face. Better luck next month peepz."

Anyone still wondering whether or not Katy had the painters in, would have found their curiosity sated once and for all thanks to the addition of a charming anime illustration of a girl menstruating a torrent of smiley animals.

Continuing the theme of figuratively baring all for one's art, Jennifer Love Hewitt appeared on the talkshow Lopez Tonight on Tuesday, to plug her new book and presumably draw attention away from her breasts for a change.

Now, this may sound old fashioned, but I thought that when women go through a break-up they get together with their friends to cry, comfort eat, and test the limits of what they will or won't drink.

When she split from her last boyfriend, Jennifer did get together with a pal, but instead of ordering a pizza and attacking the Chardonnay, they got a little more creative: "After a breakup, a friend of mine Swarovski-crystalled my precious lady. It shined like a disco ball so I have a whole chapter in there on how women should vagazzle their vajayjays."



There are so many questions to be answered here - Don't glue-guns get hot? What else was on their to-do list? Did the friend arrive fully prepared, just in case? Who the hell calls it a 'precious lady'? Do the Swarovski shops provide a drop-in service?

I'm all for celebrities becoming more open and accessible, but surely some things are better left unsaid (and unbedazzled).