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Counting Down The Warblers: We Rank All Their Performances

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Posted by Rae Votta on 03/24/2011 at 11:00 AM News

The Popdust Files: glee

Glee will release an all-Warblers compilation CD on April 19. The album includes the 10 songs performed by the Dalton Academy singing group-slash-cash cow that have already appeared on the show, and a few extras. Trying to rank Warbler performances is like having to pick favorites between my adorable, non-existent gay babies, but when PopDust asked me to try I did my very best. These rankings are the result of a calculus that’s related to the musical performances, the way the songs fit into the plot, and the emotions the combination of the two stir inside me.

10. “Candles”
I get what Glee was thinking. Let’s see what kind of bump we can produce for a sort of little-known song by an artist on our label on our big show of original songs. This Hey Monday song is getting rebooted three years after its original release… but the Warblers’ vocals absolutely do not work on this song. They were actually worse within the context of the show than they were on the recorded version, despite past evidence that Chris Colfer and Darren Criss can make beautiful music together. Why throw them a strange song that isn’t actually a duet? In fact, if I already didn’t know “Candles” was a Hey Monday tune, this track could have easily slotted in as one of the kids’ meant-to-be-funny attempts at writing their own music (a little better than “Trouty Mouth”; not as good as “Hell To The No”).

9. “Hey, Soul Sister”
Last year, you couldn’t escape this Train number and Glee was part of the pile-on, resulting in me knowing every lyric to the song despite my best efforts to avoid the original. (The long Christmas break for Glee was a dark time, and I had to cling to every track I had.) In the context of the show, this performance was just as lackluster, with the Warblers wandering around the Sectionals stage. It’s a wonder (and a plot device) that they managed to tie for Sectionals with it.

8. “Animal”
When Neon Trees was just breaking into the scene, I fell in love with their album. But where other pop songs flourish and grow when you turn them into acapella, “Animal” flounders. Darren and Chris’ voices are weak, and the sound is bad-cheesy, not fun-cheesy—like when groups on The Sing Off try to get too ambitious. In the context of the show the song worked better, with the joke of Kurt’s inability to make a sexy face distracting from the actual track, and the foam party distracting from everything else.

7. “Raise Your Glass”
The Warblers’ Regionals showpiece is much more high-energy than their Sectionals outing, with the group learning how to throw some actual dance moves into their typical “wandering back and forth across the stage” routine. (We know these guys can do back flips—why won’t they ever pull them out at competition? Is there a rule?) While I’d much rather have any Pink song stuck in my head than something from Train, and Darren Criss’ hammy facial expressions and literal choreography are a joy, the overall package doesn’t raise itself higher than the middle of the pack.

6. “Silly Love Songs”
The cheesiness inherent in acapella works perfectly for this Wings track, hitting a sweet spot of harmony and catchiness that New Directions’ tracks never really reach. Knowledge of the performance, which was a lovely cap on the Valentine’s Day episode, makes it hard not to smile even when just listening to it. Episode-ending songs are usually some of the most emotional songs on Glee—this also explains my fondness for “Dog Days Are Over.” The only downside is the way that Darren Criss’ voice sounds strained.

5. “Blackbird”
The sheer fact that Chris Colfer sings lead earns this song points, since Kurt’s character is sorely underused in this way. This track serves as both a eulogy for his beloved warbler (a bird, not a groupmate) and Blaine’s “aha” moment as far as realizing his love for Kurt (“you were only waiting for this moment to arise”). Colfer soars on Beatles tunes; his unconventional take on “I Want To Hold Your Hand” earlier this season is a personal Glee favorite. Source-material-wise, it’s almost unfair to let a Beatles song compete with today’s pop, but who said this countdown had anything to do with fairness?

4. “Misery”
A lot of fan speculation went into how this song would work into the plot, and everyone seemed to forget that Glee loves teasing its use of songs that sound like they might deal with a plot point but wind up not being about anything more complicated than dancing. Fans were predicting that “Misery” might be about Blaine’s eventual heartbreak, but the writers instead used the song to display his stranglehold on the group’s spotlight. “Misery” is exactly the kind of song where an acapella arrangement thrives; it’s showy but not too complex, and it’s pop enough that it allows for dancing.

3. “Bills, Bills, Bills”
Once I found out the Warblers were performing this Destiny’s Child classic, I became obsessed. Would there be some sort arc about money woes? Sugar daddies? Matching hot pants? Of course, the real motivation came from the writers trying to slot a Warblers performance into the Super Bowl ratings-bait episode. Still, I spent a lot of January and February screaming “trif-fil-innnn‘” and “baller” at odd moments.

2. “Teenage Dream”
You never forget your first time, and I can’t divorce my love for this track from my first out-of-context glimpse, which came in a preview where finally—finally!—Kurt looked happy. Throw it into a much-talked-about episode, and you’ve got big-selling, starmaking history. The song’s well-produced, and Katy Perry’s annoying, grating aspects are smoothed out by the acapella arrangement; also, the lyrics are transformed into something sweet and hopeful, given that they’re about actual teenagers, instead of adults foolishly wishing for their teen years again.

1. “When I Get You Alone”
“Teenage Dream” might serve as the overture to the Kurt and Blaine storyline, but “When I Get You Alone” was the first time a member of the Warblers who wasn’t Kurt got to sing their actual emotions out. Sure, Blaine’s feelings are a bit misdirected (oh, the anguish of a thousand fangirls when they learned he’d be singing this suggestive song to someone other than Kurt). But this song represents the first time Blaine expressed any character depth beyond the White Knight role in which Kurt had placed him. And this Robin Thicke track is actually a lust song, not a love song—and while it’s easy for something like Glee to get a pat on the back for depicting teenage boys in love, lust is much more difficult to get across in song, not to mention to portray between two teenage boys on network TV. The excerpt of the song that Darren Criss sings is heavy on the suggestion and light on the emotion—and, as a bonus, it advances the plot.

WILD CARD: “Somewhere Only We Know”
This Keane cover is the only song on the album that hasn’t been placed in the context of an episode yet. (Two other tracks—”Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?” and “What Kind Of Fool?”—are one-offs.) It’ll likely be used in the context of Kurt’s eventual transfer back to McKinley, and the strain the move places on his blossoming relationship with Blaine (“This could be the end of everything / So why don’t we go? So why don’t we go?”). Or it could very well be used in the context of a filler scene! But I’m hoping for the former, which would at least give me a starting point for the next countdown.

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