Popular Music without Glee

Exactly what it says on the tin.

I once heard Todd in the Shadows say that Glee was my generation's (the millenial generation) MTV, in how it helped popularize certain songs. That, of course, got me to thinking. If Glee was never made, how would the charts look like? What songs wouldn't have gotten popular without Glee? How would popular music in general look like. Also, how would pop culture be effected?
 
Maybe girls wouldn't be so fond thinking of gay guys as angsty teddy bears?

I don't know. Every person I knew who liked this show was usually a theater chick in it more for the romantic pairings than the music.

I avoid those people now.
 

Heavy

Banned
I suppose the obvious victim would be Cee Lo Green, because much of the success of "Fuck You" can be attributed to the really quite awful version Gwyneth Paltrow performed on Glee. That's pretty much his only major hit at this point (unless you count the Gnarls Barkley song "Crazy") and if Glee isn't about to help popularise the song among younger audiences I'm not sure if he'd even have that.

"Somebody That I Used To Know" probably wouldn't be too badly affected, because its video was fast becoming a YouTube sensation when Glee got around to covering it. The success of "We Are Young" can largely be attributed to its use in a highly visible Superbowl advertisement rather than its presence in an episode of Glee.

Musically, Glee is a spent force at this point. It's gone from having three of its soundtracks reach number one on the Billboard 200 in the space of a year to just about scraping into the Top 40. The novelty seems to have worn off.
 
Glee as the Millennial generations MTV? this person must have some pretty bad depth perception. The Millennial generation pretty much had MTV and maybe VH1 from the late 70's to early 2000's.
 

d32123

Banned
Maybe girls wouldn't be so fond thinking of gay guys as angsty teddy bears?

I don't know. Every person I knew who liked this show was usually a theater chick in it more for the romantic pairings than the music.

I avoid those people now.

Pretty much this. If Glee is to be our generation's MTV it needs to have a much broader audience.

I'd argue that Youtube is the MTV of our generation.
 

NothingNow

Banned
Glee as the Millennial generations MTV? this person must have some pretty bad depth perception. The Millennial generation pretty much had MTV and maybe VH1 from the late 70's to early 2000's.
Yep. Also, There's youtube, which has the best claim to succeeding MTV as it was (VH1 being the nostalgia channel, and MTV having turned to crap right around 2000.)

Glee, in the wider context of pop culture is, and always was nothing.
 
I wouldn't go so far as comparing Glee to MTV. It doesn't showcase the massive amount of music that MTV did back in the day. Maybe comparing the role of MTV in the past to the role of YouTube and music sites would be more likely. I don't think there's quite the same centralisation, because you can now pick and match things to your tastes so much more, instead of having one neat place tell you what's new. However, things nowadays become popular by word of mouth, blogs, media exposure, youtube, etc.

If you're asking about the role of Glee in trend setting, then I'd have to say that it is there. I personally dislike the show as much as some of the people here do, but it's a bit ridiculous to deny that it's not important at all. It may be in decline -- although it still has a reasonably solid viewer base, it just doesn't get as much media hype -- but during its run it has influenced charts and the musical culture of its viewers. I'm talking especially about the demographics that is now in its teens, as that seems to be age group that still watches Glee and can bear the terrible story lines. ;) I think many people at that age wouldn't really know "Don't Stop Believing" (for example) if it hadn't been featured on Glee. At least, most teenagers I know seem to have been introduced to older music through the show, and to an extent the fact that some of these artists got some airplay, youtube views, and more sales after being featured on Glee does say something. Some more recent songs have also ended up benefitting from their Glee exposure, which works both ways: the show gets to show off how they have such varied choices of music (or whatever) and artists get some extra exposure. I'd definitely agree that Cee-Lo's "Fuck You" is an example of this phenomenon in action.
 

Heavy

Banned
I don't know how far Journey's resurgence can be linked to Glee; their first album with Arnel Pineda on lead vocals was a reasonable hit and it was released a full year before the programme was broadcast. Further, a year before that, "Don't Stop Believin'" made a significant appearance in the final episode of The Sopranos, so that might have been a factor.

However, it's likely that Glee had a role in Journey's newfound international popularity, particularly in Europe.
 
I don't think removing Glee would change much. I suspect all it really did was make the indie revolution come a bit earlier. Without Glee, Gotye probably still would have had a major breakthrough, but maybe not the biggest hit of the year like he did OTL.

Cee Lo Green would be absolutely screwed, though. It's honestly kind of improbable that his song got popular to begin with; it's a big catchy pop tune with a Carlin-level profanity as the crux of it, and the radio edit ruins the whole joke by making the replacement (Forget You) actually fit the meter of the song.
 
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