Glee is one of my new favorite shows.  Sure, it’s not covering a lot of new ground when it comes to subject matter (high school, relationships, cliques), it does have a sort of irreverent humor that I enjoy.

Oh, and they sing. A lot. I like singing.

So far, some of the songs that have been covered on Glee have been fairly recent and very popular songs. Likely to have been heard on the radio and/or on music videos (they still play those on TV somewhere, right?) in the last few years.

Now, the variety of music available to us today is staggering, what with iTunes, Amazon, Rhapsody, Pandora, last.fm, et al. (not to mention illegally downloading from peer-to-peer networks). Yet, in the mainstream music media (radio mostly), the playlists for the Top 40/Hot 40 stations are very limited and repetitive. Teens and young adults still listen to radio quite a bit, at least where I am from, and as such, are only exposed to that which radio deems worthy of airtime (which, in my opinion, is mostly shallow, formulaic, meaningless pop music with very little substance).

I’m not entirely sure of the demographics for Glee, but based on some limited internet research, it would seem that at least some teens and young adults are watching. And, in the process of watching, unintentionally, their musical horizons are being broadened, because the a good number of the songs that Glee is covering reach beyond the scope of recent pop music and into great older songs, and musicals.

In the pilot episode alone, they would have heard “Where is Love” from the musical Oliver!, “On My Own” from Les Miserables, and “Leaving on a Jet Plane” by John Denver, just to name a few.

Does watching Glee actually expand one’s musical horizons?  I’m not sure. But it could. At the least, it reminded me of a great old song that I will leave you with:

Tags: glee, tv