Kenji Lloyd - 09/07/2011
Volume Six of Glee's soundtrack CDs is quite possibly their best yet, featuring eighteen brilliant tracks from the show's second season. It proves to us listening to it that the McKinley High glee club shows absolutely no sign of slowing down whatsoever - unless, that is, it's for a show-stopping slow anthem like the penultimate track, Pretending.
What's different about this sixth volume from all but one of the previous volumes of the show's soundtrack CDs is that it contains original songs written specifically for the show: As Long As You're There, Pretending, and Light Up The World. For a show that's not even two years old, to be performing original music of such a high calibre that is so well written and so well sung is truly very impressive. Despite the show's cast being predominantly very young stars, they are all incredibly talented, and their vocal ability really stands out in this volume especially.
But of course, it wouldn't be glee club without plenty of cover versions, and they've picked some excellent songs to cover this time around. We're treated to a cover of Adele's Turning Tables, featuring the wonderful actress/singer Gwyneth Paltrow, ABBA's Number 1 signature song Dancing Queen, and Fleetwood Mac's classic Go Your Own Way.
The ability to cover songs like these well, when they're already so popular, is a very tricky thing to do, and yet the Glee cast make the songs their own. With Fleetwood Mac's Go Your Own Way, for example, they choose to raise the tempo of the original and transpose it up a key, giving it an even brighter feel than the original that you wouldn't think possible, until you hear their cover.
They also take on Fleetwood Mac's other popular singles Dreams, Songbird, and Don't Stop very well, as well as Stevie Wonder's classic song Isn't She Lovely. Not only do they cover these classics though, they also give themselves the challenge of covering what has only just become popular with Lady Gaga's Born This Way. Doing a new version of a song that is already very new in itself is a big task, but they somehow manage to do an extremely talented rendition of Lady Gaga's single, maintaining the song's sing-a-long feel whilst injecting their own Glee flavour into the song.
Throughout this sixth volume of the show's soundtrack, the singers show that there is a very, very good reason for why the show has become so popular. The songs are incredibly catchy, they are brilliantly performed, and the choice of songs covered is always spot on. We can no doubt look forward to a seventh volume of the soundtrack in the near future, and until then, I highly recommend this CD to satisfy your Glee addiction.