Kurt's Singing Voice

I love the idea of Chris/Kurt singing "Grenade" and "Take On Me". Anything by Michael Jackson is something that I'd love to hear (especially "Dirty Diana" and "Beat It"), but sadly, they've already done the MJ episode.

There is an older Adam Lambert song that I think Chris would sound so sexy singing...it's called "What Do You Want From Me"...actually, I think it's spelled "Whataya Want From Me", but that looks weird. Anyway, I'm not sure what the context would be for that song, but I like it! I would kill to hear Kurt sing this song to Adam! And actually, I think all of the lyrics to that number fit his and Adam's situation now, with Kurt being hurt in the past and hesitant to trust again.

I wonder how Chris would sound singing "I'm The Only One" by Melissa Etheridge. I know it's a female pop song, but Chris said it was his go-to karaoke song years ago. I'm disappointed that they gave it to Mark.

Thank You for another insightful and interesting review of Kurt's song Glorfindel! And I don't think you were at all too harsh about Carmen's characterisation.

And thanks again pointing out that Chris does have amazing set of lungs on him. I hate it when the breathing isn't top notch on some of the songs out there. As a former choir member I can stand behind on you that getting the breathing right is one of the hardest things to do when singing. When to take it, remember to take it before it runs out and what part of the verse.

I sucked at remembering lyrics without notes but found it even more harder to remember the precise moments for air. It was actually quite funny when twenty-odd people choir were tired at practises and didn't focus on the breathing, it sounded like a bunch of elderly walking up a long set of stairs and getting out of breath!

With Chris I can't really hear any of that. Of course you hear him take breath because taking a full lungful does make a sound, but during the actual verses.

And I find it somewhat annoying that some reviewers out there do not talk about how technically well Chris sings, maybe it's because he sings so little now or that his part in duets and group numbers are toned down in the edit? I don't know. I always get exited when someone outside the fandom itself list Lea, Chris and Matt as the best singers of the show, because I see them looking at the small details of the process of singing.

Thank you for another lovely and insightful song review, Glorfindel. I fully agree with you that Carmen's illogical criticism of Kurt's NTBND performance and later actions ruined the 'Being Alive' performance to some degree. Ah well, at least Kurt didn't make the song about Blaine, so thank goodness for small mercies.

*Starts waiting for the review of 'Bring Him Home'*

Because of this realisation the 2nd time the verses are sung the pronouns are different. “Someone” changes into “Somebody”, and “you” changes into “me”. Instead of talking in general, in theory, as he believes it ‘should’ be (“Someone to hold you to close.”), Robert starts talking about himself, how he got hurt, but how he also still needs someone (“Somebody hold me to close.”). Those changed pronouns are essential to the change and realisation Robert is going through.

Forgive me for being the most annoying nit-picker who's ever nit-picked, but I just want to point out that 'to close' should be 'too close'. I just want your nearly flawless review to be completely flawless

Finally our Kurtsie prayers were answered and Kurt had drunken sex with Rachel sang a male Broadway song.

Glorfindel, your Hummelberry fantasies are showing

Now it’s Chris portraying Kurt portraying Robert, with a lot of Kurt’s own emotions mixed into it as well (as Carmen wanted), giving this song a multilayered depth that I, as a musical theatre nerd, can appreciate very much.

I love how you've picked up on the significance (to the narrative) behind Chris's choice of singing the song in the original key. Yes, this is not just Chris singing as Kurt, but Chris singing as Kurt singing as Robert. There's more complexity to this song than I had imagined.

Therefore not only did Kurt have to show Carmen he could sing a song with more depth and soul and less surface, he also had to do it without any props to distract us and Carmen-a-reknown-voice-coach-who-apparently-could-not-see-the-depth-and-soul-of-NTBND-because-Kurt’s-golden-pants-made-her-lose-focus. On second thought: who can really blame her for that?

Haha, this shall be my new head canon from now on, thanks to you. Of course Carmen was too distracted by Kurt's golden pants to make a proper judgment of his vocals and emotional delivery of NTBND

Delight wrote:*Starts waiting for the review of 'Bring Him Home'*

Tsk, never a moment's rest.
(Psssst: I already started writing it. At least this time the narrative didn't ruin the song. )

Forgive me for being the most annoying nit-picker who's ever nit-picked, but I just want to point out that 'to close' should be 'too close'. I just want your nearly flawless review to be completely flawless

No forgiveness needed: I appreciate it when people point things like that out in my reviews. I hate those typos (I'm a perfectionist).
So thanks and.....fixed it.

Finally our Kurtsie prayers were answered and Kurt had drunken sex with Rachel sang a male Broadway song.

Glorfindel, your Hummelberry fantasies are showing

Isn't that what we all want?

I love how you've picked up on the significance (to the narrative) behind Chris's choice of singing the song in the original key. Yes, this is not just Chris singing as Kurt, but Chris singing as Kurt singing as Robert. There's more complexity to this song than I had imagined.

That's the multi-layering that attracts me so much to musicals: stretching the acting muscles, so to speak. And I'm sure Chris loves that about musicals too: acting through song. Adding even another character into the mix must have been like candy to him.

Haha, this shall be my new head canon from now on, thanks to you. Of course Carmen was too distracted by Kurt's golden pants to make a proper judgment of his vocals and emotional delivery of NTBND

It created a serious handicap for Kurt, imo. Nothing could beat those pants when it comes to.....ah.....uhm.....exposure.

Just so you know, Marie, I get the Hummelberry thing. I was afraid I was going to be the only secret Hummelberry shipper on here (but there are a ton on Tumblr and FF.net) but I'm glad to see this is not the case!

I can't wait for the "Bring Him Home" review, but no pressure!

AAAAAANNNND I'M BAAAACK!!!

After a long leave of absence I hope to be able to start writing and posting reviews again.
I have had a really busy (work) schedule for many months up till Easter, and after that I needed to take it a bit slowly for a while to recover from the stress. So these reviews had to wait.

But I'll be honest: besides the work load I also had to stop writing my reviews for some time because I was so fed up and angry at Glee in season 4 that everything I wrote turned into long vicious rants. And I don't want my reviews to be full of rants (well, not too much anyway, lol). I want to celebrate Kurt's singing voice in my reviews.

Having said that: the next review won't be rant free, I'm afraid. It's the 'Come What May' review, and when I started writing it in earnest a few weeks ago I discovered so many things that made me angry I knew I couldn't make the review without mentioning them, and calling RIB out on their shit.
It being a Klaine ~duet doesn't help either. That's why I want to get this particular review out of the way first.

Another warning: it's looooooooooooooooooooooooong.

I'll start posting the review now. It'll take some time, because I have to put in links and gifs and bolded text, and all kinds of other things. But I hope to have it posted within half an hour.

REVIEW: Come What May (CMW).

After campaigning for it for almost 2 years the Klainers got their wish: the Moulin Rouge duet ‘Come What May’. Chris himself has expressed several times that he considers it one of the most beautiful love songs, for the first time I think in this interview (at 1.00) and again in the BTS of ‘Girls and Boys on Film’:


What little could Dalton’s Kurt guess of what lies ahead for Klaine 2 years down the road. The long anticipated romantic ‘Come What May’ became a bittersweet Klaine song in the end, as Kurt reminisces in a day dream of what could have been if the reality hadn’t been that Blaine cheated on him. And so Kurt cried after waking up in that reality, while watching Moulin Rouge on the couch with his new beau. Well, when Kurt cries I cry, and we all know he got ample reason to cry, but if we consider the parallel we can draw of him with poor Moulin Rouge’s Satine (who dies of consumption) I think he still got the better deal in the end.
Speaking of parallels: many fans thought that Kurt getting ‘cast’ as Satine seemed to be a given after he first expressed the wish of singing CMW on the show. There is something that can be said for that, but the way the ~duet was eventually done on the show does raise some question marks and eyebrows for several reasons, which I will touch upon later.
But let’s do the real analyzing of the song first.

The song:

Come What May, Glee version:


Come What May, Moulin Rouge, film version:



The lyrics:
(Klaine = bolded, Kurt =italic and red)

“Never knew I could feel like this, like I’ve never seen the sky before.
Want to vanish inside your kiss.
Seasons may change, winter to spring,
But I love you until the end of time.
Come what may, come what may,
I will love you until my dying day.

Suddenly the world seems such a perfect place,
Suddenly it moves with such a perfect grace.
Suddenly my life doesn’t seem such a waste,
It all revolves around you.
And there’s no mountain too high, no river too wide,
Sing out this song and I’ll be there by your side.
Storm clouds may gather, and stars may collide,
But I love you (I love you)
Untill the end of time.

Come what may, Come what may,
I will love you, I will love you.”


Klaine duet?

As is quite obvious from ^above lyics, Kurt didn’t really get to sing much in this Klaine ~duet. The Klaine ~duet is 3.25 minutes long, and Kurt does not start to sing untill 1.50, which is after half of the song is already over. On top of that from thereon he only gets to harmonize with Blaine (as his 1 measly solo line isn’t even a solo line but part of an echoing harmony).
Let’s face it: this ~duet was basically a Blaine solo with Kurt as his back-up. Yes, I’m pissed about that, and I’m not the only one. So, as not to mistake this for a real duet, I will use the “~” everytime before “~duet” when I’m referring to the Glee version of CMW in this review. Because I can.
I’ll get back to this, but first….. the harmonies:



The harmonies :

Unisono in octave :

”Suddenly the world seems such a perfect place,
Suddenly it moves with such a perfect grace.
Suddenly my life doesn’t seem such a waste,
It all revolves around you.”

These lines are sung in unisono, but it’s a unisono in octave, meaning Chris is singing one octave higher (same note but higher up in the scale) than Darren. Chris sings these lines completely in high register, up to an E5, which is just below his ‘Defying Gravity’ high F, but by now we’re so used to it and Chris has trained his voice so thoroughly that this is no big deal anymore.
Glee has used this form of harmony with Kurt before, for Klaine, but also for Furt (in the Journey songs), and if you’ve read my reviews you’d know that I don’t think it’s a good harmony form for Klaine. I’m actually not sure whether I like it in CMW or not.
On the one hand Chris sings the Nicole Kidman parts flawlessly, he has no trouble reaching the notes (btw: the song has not been transposed: there was no key change necessary for Chris to sing the Nicole Kidman parts), and because we have heard CMW as a male/female duet before and these lines are exactly the same as in the original it sounds familiar.
But on the other hand there’s the weakness of the harmony itself: an unison in octave harmony is quite ‘hollow’ in itself, and the Klaine dynamic can’t handle big gaps between their voices very well, so the result is quite thin. In the original this is no problem, because the mix of voices is better, as Nicole’s higher voice is firmly supported by Ewan’s voice, and a woman singing one octave higher than a man is a widely accepted harmony listeners are accustomed to.

I would have preferred it if Chris and Darren both had sung this verse on the same height: still as a unisono, but without the octave. Chris would then have sung in his low register, just like Darren. It would have sounded quite different than the original, but imo more intimate/together, and it wouldn’t have trapped Chris in the female part right from the start of the song.
An other alternative would have been to let Chris sing most of this verse as it is now (like the original), but with more of his low register mixed into it (now it was completely in falsetto). All but the 3rd line can be sung easily in low register. On the 3rd line (the one with the highest notes in it: “Suddenly my life doesn’t seem such a waste”) he could have switched one octave lower, so Chris wouldn’t have had to sing that high E5 (as high notes don’t work well in a Klaine harmony).

Of course: the best option would have been, imo, to let Chris sing this verse alone, as a solo, just like Satine did in the pop version. He could have done it in the low octave (the way Darren was singing) or even in the higher Satine octave: both would have sounded really good.
Although I think the lower octave would have been the better choice here, not because I think Chris sounds better when singing low (because I don’t), but because it would have been more fitting in the song. Chris sounds fine singing female songs as a countertenor in a free-standing solo and when he’s singing a duet with a girl or a deeper voiced man (a baritone), but in this case I think the 2 ~duetting voices are too far apart to sound rich enough (due to the bad Klaine soundmix).


Real harmonies :

1) And there’s no mountain too high, no river too wide,
2) Sing out this song and I’ll be there by your side.
3) Storm clouds may gather, and stars may collide.”

This is where the real harmonies start. Darren keeps singing the main melody, while Chris sings the same second voice that Nicole sang in the movie. The melody is low and Chris is singing mostly in low register, with some higher notes in falsetto. I doodled again (making these diagrams is turning into a nice, soothing mandala making kind of hobby for me, lol ) and this piece of art was the result:


The first line is mostly third intervals, Chris singing only a third higher than Darren, and this is usually a good harmony dynamic for Klaine, as Chris does not have to sing too high while Darren sings low enough to support Chris’s slightly higher voice, and Chris is even singing a lot in low register. To me this is the best part of the song.

In the following lines (#2 and #3) we have a lot of fourth, fifth and sixth intervals, even sevenths, which keeps the 2 voices further apart, although it’s still within the Klaine marges, imo, especially when Chris is singing in his low register.
The sixth interval is still a relative strong interval (being the ‘reverse’of the strong third), but the fourth and fifth intervals are ‘weaker’ in a harmony, and if 2 voices do not fit a harmony build from these intervals can fall apart. In the last half of the 2nd and the 3rd the harmonies are therefore weaker and ’hollow’, especially when Chris goes to falsetto (and as a result his voice becomes much more different from Darren’s).
On top of Chris having to resort to falsetto in the higher notes in lines #2 and #3, Darren also sings quite high notes in his vocal range here, so he can’t support Chris properly with a deeper/darker timbre, and this weakens the harmony even more, and the harmony becomes thin and unraveled.
This overall thinner harmony is somewhat corrected by the music arrangers who edited Darren’s voice louder than Chris. Sound familiar? If not: see the Perfect review.
To add even more to that: Darren is singing the lead melody in this harmony, and Chris the 2nd voice, and a lead melody usually is more prominently featured than the 2nd voice anyway.

If this had been another song, or a solo, Chris would have sung most of the notes in these few lines in his tenor voice (his low register), except for a few high notes he would be more comfortable singing in falsetto (although they are also not impossible to sing in low register).
And here is where being forced to only sing a female part in an original male/female duet starts to bite him in the butt:
Chris is sort of ‘trapped’ in having to sing the higher notes in falsetto, even when he’s able to reach them in low register. Because if he had belted these higher notes more forcefully in low register (up to a C5), like he voice wise could have done if the song had been (re-)constructed in another way, it wouldn’t have fitted that well in the song’s style, especially not after he already sung in falsetto in the first verse. Belting these lines on this height at this moment in the song wouldn’t have sounded romantic (it would have been too loud and rough instead of soft and smooth). So Chris had to continue to soften the high notes by singing them in falsetto.

I actually appreciate that Chris sang the first line and parts of the 2nd and 3rd line in his low register, even though in the original version Nicole Kidman sang those parts a lot ‘lighter’. Chris simply could have copied that, but he didn’t. Singing those lower notes in chest voice creates a richer sounding harmony with Darren than if he had sung them in falsetto. It balances their voices out more, plus it adds a little ‘masculinity’ to the song (although I have come to hate that word to describe a voice’s timbre, due to season 3).
If they would let Chris sing more as a tenor when he’s singing with Darren the Klaine dynamic would improve a lot. It’s a waste that Glee has firmly locked itself into their own stereotyping with this.



Switching roles :

”But I love you (I love you)”
”Untill the end of time.”

The version of CMW they used in Glee was the movie version (see video at the top of the review). The Glee version follows the movie version almost exactly, by having Blaine sing the Christian parts (Ewan McGregor’s character) and Kurt the Satine parts (Nicole Kidman’s character)…. except surprisingly for the “(But) I love you” lines.
In the movie Christian sings “But I love you” first and Satine echoes her “I love you” back to him. However: for some reason they changed that in the Glee version, having Kurt (‘Satine’) sing the “But I Love you” first, and having Blaine respond, and the same goes for the “Untill the end of time” lines. Why?
An argument can be made that changing only these lines (and nothing else!) fits in the narrative, as Kurt is the one having the fantasy, contemplating his relationship with Blaine and clearly still hurting from Blaine’s betrayal. Therefore Kurt singing “But I love you” fits with his mindset. It could also simply be because they wanted Kurt to say “I love you” first. But I don’t know: both of these reasons seem a bit too trivial to take all that effort for. Because believe me: it took a lot of deliberate effort to switch these lines.
However: the only other reason I can think of for going through all this effort is that switching these lines made the singing more difficult for Chris, but actually a little easier for Darren (as he doesn’t have to go quite low now at some point, and it reduces a big jump between 2 lines for his part). I really doubt though that they went through all that trouble just for 2 or 3 notes Darren would find hard(er) to reach.

So by lack of a better explanation I’ll go for the added “But” of Kurt, and the scene seems to support that (see the following paragraph ‘Kurt’s POV’). If so, the music arrangers went through a lot of trouble just to add the word “But” to Kurt’s lines. The much easier solution would have been to just add a “But” to Kurt’s response as Satine, and maybe even leave Blaine’s “But” out in the beginning. Honestly: I don’t get it, unless there is more truth in changing those lines for Darren’s sake than I actually think there is.
Whatever the reason, Glee switched the “I love you” lines (lines #4 and #5 on the diagram, the ones I underscored with a lighter color red and green). This little switch of 2 lines seems simple, but it creates several music technical problems in the song:


In the previous lines (#1, #2 and #3) Chris was singing a high female part, and Darren was singing a lower male part, but now (lines #4 and #5) they switch places, so you’d expect that Chris gets the lower male part and Darren the higher female part. Except that they don’t do that. Chris doesn’t get to sing these lines in the same octave that Darren was singing in (the lower male part), but he has to sing them one octave higher!, even though he is as much a tenor as Darren is and those lines in the original octave would not have been a problem at all for him. But Darren isn’t required to sing higher as he switches to the female part, although that makes more sense as he can’t sing that high the way Chris can anyway.
The result is that the “But I love you” line, which is almost a ‘spoken’ line, is much higher up in Chris’ vocal range than Kurt’s usual speaking voice (which is higher than Chris’s btw), making this line sound odd for a boy and out of place. I love Chris’ voice high and low, and he has no trouble reaching those notes, but just like his “What?!” in ‘It’s All Over’ his “But I Love You” in CMW sounds a bit off.
And although Chris is still able to put all the emotion in them that they need (combined with his acting in the scene), these important words in the song lose momentum because of the unusual high pitch for a man, what Kurt still is after all, and I personally find it grating.

The rest of the song I can (grudgingly) live with, but arranging his “But I love you” so high up in Chris’ vocal range is a bad choice from an acting/emoting angle and also music technical wise, and it’s so obviously a bad choice that the Glee music arrangers should have noticed that.
Besides the nasty implication this entails that Kurt really is ‘the girl’ in this relationship and therefore should strictly stick to singing as a girl in a Klaine ~duet, even when he could have easily have sung this particular line as a tenor, there cannot even be made a convincing argument that jumping down to Christian’s voice height after singing in Satine’s height would have been music technically a more complicated thing than jumping an octave higher (to stay in Satine’s regions of vocal range)! Because it isn’t: it would have been easier to have him sing that line in the lower octave:
If his “But I love you” had been sung one octave lower (the normal tenor height) Chris would only have to jump 3 semitones up (in the diagram: the blue lines with the 3 in it) to the next line (“Untill the end of time”). Now he has to jump a more sizable 6 semitones lower (the red line with the 6 in it).

And then there’s this (I’m sorry if all of this octave jumping talk is getting confusing: I’m doing the best I can explaining it all in a clear way) :
The #5 line (“Untill the end of time”) is also arranged one octave higher than the original (the Christian part). But when Darren sings his “Untill the end of time” line right afterwards they conveniently arranged it for him on the Christian height/octave, even though Darren could have sung it on Satine’s height too!
Arranging the first line for Darren (“I love you”) one octave lower I can understand because if he had sung it on the higher octave his voice also would sound way too high in comparison to Blaine’s speaking voice (just like Kurt’s did now). But the line “Untill the end of time” Darren could have easily sung in the Satine octave, as the highest note is only a G4. And yet they also lowered that line one octave to a more ‘masculine’ part of his vocal range.
So Darren was allowed to stay in the Christian/male part vocal range, whereas Chris was not allowed to go to Christian’s vocal range. Kurt was denied singing the only legit male part he got of this original male/female ~duet!
Now that’s not fair, is it?

And besides of Chris having to sing line #5 (“Untill the end of time”) one octave higher, he also had to sing it almost completely (except for the first and last note) in falsetto again, when it normally would have been more logically for Chris to sing this in his low register (as his highest note is also a mere G4). To compare: “Untill the end of time” is lower(!) than his earlier “And there’s no mountain too high”, which Chris did sing in low register.
This is becoming a pattern: again Chris gets trapped in the ‘female’ role. As it was now, with the octave higher “But I love you” preceding it, if he had sung “Untill the end of time” completely in low register there would have been a very audibly difference between the 2 lines, so singing in higher register was again the better option.


Why? :

But why did they do this strange up and down jumping and switching of octaves for both of them to begin with, especially if it creates more problems than it solves? Heck: most of this song is arranged in a way that practically forces Kurt in the female role, from the unison in octave in their first verse together, to the high E5 in the next lines, to the switched “(But) I love you”.
I have some plausible theories, but I don’t know which one is true, although I have my own favorite. It’s probably a combination of 2 or even all 3 of them:

1) Kurt wants to sing only as Satine.
I could make a feeble argument why Kurt would want to sing as Satine throughout the entire song: CMW being his fantasy after all and his history with singing female songs and considering himself an “honorary girl”. Although I can easily make a stronger counterargument by pointing out that Kurt never wanted to be a real girl, and he wanted to be a male lead (e.g. by auditioning as Romeo, and wanting to be Tony in WSS, not Maria). I’ll come back to this later, when I talk about Kurt’s POV (point of view).
Although I don’t think that canon Kurt would want to be only Satine in his own fantasy, the problem is that I think that RIB might think that Kurt would want it that way. After all: this is not the first time they went down that path (just look at the bigger half of season 3). They have chucked Kurt in with the girls numerous times, in ND, and in his relationship with Blaine.

2) Kurt cannot sing lower than Blaine.
A very ugly theory, connected to the first one: if Chris had been allowed to sing this whole segment (lines #4 and #5) in a lower (tenor) octave, he would have sung lower than Darren had sung in CMW so far, and also lower in their harmony together on that specific line. But since this is Glee we can’t have feminine Kurt sing lower than his man, now can we?
I wouldn’t have believed in this theory in season 2, as warbler Blaine sang a few times higher than Kurt (‘Baby It’s Cold Outside’ and ‘Candles’). I thought there was some merit in this theory in season 3, with all the “not being able to pass” crap that never got followed up on. After listening to all the harmonies Klaine sang together in season 4, I see no reason not to believe it.

3) Kurt really is a box with no more than 4 sides to him.
If I choose not to believe in RIB deliberate enforcing the veiled boy/girl dynamic of Klaine in their harmony dynamic, the only other reason I can think of is that TPTB simply got caught in their own habit of not being able to value their actors’ singing capacities beyond the tiny limiting boxes they have put their characters in over the years. They were the ones who linked Chris’s trademark countertenor voice to Kurt’s effeminacy very firmly in season 3 (when in reality a countertenor voice has very little to do with being effeminate), and now they find it hard to see him and his voice anymore as the versatile singer he was allowed to be before (back in the day when Kurt still sang frequently ).
They sometimes forget now that Chris has a beautiful tenor voice as well (untill it suits them, that is, e.g. when they get stuck with certain songs due to a tribute episode, like Stevie Wonder’s ‘Wonder-Ful’: then they don’t mind dumping a difficult song on Chris, putting him to the test with those low notes, knowing very well that he is one of the few ones who still manages to pull the more challenging songs off). I haven’t forgotten how Chris had to ask/beg to sing Kurt’s “man song” ‘Being Alive’ in its original male key, as they automatically had put it in a female key for him.
It could very well be that the thought of Kurt singing on the same height as Blaine in ‘Come What May’, either by sharing the male part and/or re-arranging the female part, never even crossed the music arrangers’ minds. They switched the “(But) I love you” lines, but failed to really switch the roles for the singers, because TPTB never were able to make that switch in their heads themselves.


This is exactly the reason why I was never a fan of ‘Come What May’ as a Klaine duet. Besides that I just knew they would almost automatically give Kurt the Satine part without even thinking about the implications, the song’s harmony dynamic is problematic by its own nature as the structure of the song itself makes it a bit awkward as a male/male duet, ‘trapping’ Chris in a girl part more than ever.
What’s baffling to realize is that it was even engineered like this on purpose. Instead of trying to negate or solve the problems of the nature of a male/female duet, they let themselves and the singers get pulled in and locked in even deeper. There were several other, more logical options for the music editors to arrange this song. And all those options would have not left the smell of effemiphobia and forcing heterosexual old-fashioned standards on a gay couple.

If they really found it so important to switch the “I love you” lines, why didn’t they make it easier by switching more lines up right from the beginning of the song? Give Kurt a few Christian lines in the first half of the song, in the same vocal range as Ewan McGregor and Darren.
With some more variation in the harmony and if they had already given Chris a few lines in low register in the Christian solo part, there would have been no need for Chris to sing an octave higher all the time. It wouldn’t have changed the meaning of the song, nor the meaning of the fantasy scene and Kurt’s feelings in it. And it would have made this farce of a ~duet a something the description “duet” worthy.
Glee wasted an opportunity to make this song into what it should have been: a genuine male/male duet.

Oh, and changing the “I Love You” lines (but not the first half of the song) also means that the argument that “Glee wanted to stay true to the original” doesn’t fly anymore, as RIB were very willing to change lines when it suited them, and they did. The ‘tribute’ (aka shameless copying) to ‘Moulin Rouge’ in this movie episode was already violated by this: so a few more shared lines wouldn’t have made a difference. And this wasn’t the only thing that was not like the original at all.




The ending :

”Come what may, Come what may,
I will love you, I will love you.”


After switching parts in lines #4 and #5 Kurt and Blaine switch back to their original roles again. Blaine sings the Christian part and Kurt the Satine part. The harmony starts with wide sixths intervals, but soon gets into the comfortable range of third intervals, something Klaine can do well when the notes are not too high. This time the notes are reasonably high, but their harmony stays away from the red zone, imo. The repeated “I will love you” at the end even allows Chris to sing in low register.
The only really jarring harmony is the high note in the 2nd “Come what may” (line #6), when Darren jumps upwards to sing a belted A4. This is jarring because Darren really has to shout out that note to reach it, and therefore this note is much ‘rougher’ and louder than Chris’s smooth falsetto there. What adds to that jarring feeling is that the interval on that note is a first interval, the most jarring intervals of them all by nature: it’s meant to create some tension, to then quickly ‘dissolve’ into a more easy on the ears harmonious interval. In CMW this first interval also quickly ‘dissolves’ in a better harmonizing fifth interval, but Darren’s (too) powerful belt unfortunately puts an unnecessary emphasis on that dissonant interval.

And notice: Chris’ high notes on the “Come what may” lines are only a few semitones higher than Darren’s belted A4. Chris could have belted his part too, but again the (original) arrangement/style of the song forces him into falsetto.

The ending is quite different from the original, which ends in a big orchestrated finale. In the movie version there is an instrumental break at the end, right before the big finale (at 3.16), and that’s where the Glee version ends, with adding one “I will love you”.
Maybe they did this because they didn’t want the last words in a romantic song of an ‘endgame’ (ugh, I really hate that word) couple on Glee to be “Untill my dying day”. Maybe they wanted Kurt to slowly come back from his fantasy to real life (sitting in front of the tv), instead of rudely ‘waking up’ after a big bang finale chord which would have rattled his teeth. Maybe they simply didn’t know how or if to put a choir into the fantasy scene.
Anyway: the way they ended the song now sort of leaves an open ending: as if the song is cut off abruptly. The final line “I will love you” feels unfinished, as if the song is ending too soon, even if you never had heard the original before.
Part of this unfinished feeling is created by ending the harmony on a fourth interval, a quite ‘hollow’ interval. Most of the time duet harmonies at the end of a song end on a solid third or a sixth, or even both singing the same note (unisono). Ending it on a fourth however kind of creates a question mark instead of a firm exclamation mark.
The big build up in the last lines before the ending (the repeated “Come what may”) whithers, instead of blossoming into a grand ending: the build up needed more ‘cooling down’ than it got now, so to speak. I find it a bit clumsy, and there would have been better ways to end the song, imo.
As the Duke would say:




”They wanted to re-enact ‘Come What May’ like it was in the movie”:

I’ve read this explanation for why Glee chose to record CMW the way they did about a hundred times after the song was released. And it’s true that the audio of Klaine’s ‘Come What May’ was, but for the differences I already pointed out, mostly a direct copy of the movie version. Out of the 3 versions (2 in the movie, 1 released as a pop track) the movie version is the only version that has the male role Christian sing solo half of the song. The finale version in the movie has Satine singing the most, and the pop version has an almost equal share of the lines.
So when it turned out that Klaine’s CMW ~duet was, ironically just like their joined ship name, mostly Blaine, the justification of some people for this was that Glee used the movie version and not the more popular pop version because they wanted to “pay tribute” to the original song in the movie, as an ‘hommage’, and unfortunately(?) in the movie version Christian has the lion’s share, so therefore Blaine needed to have the lion’s share in Glee’s version as well, if they wanted to stay true to the original. This nice theory however is based on absolutely nothing.

First of all: there were 8 songs in ‘Girls (and Boys) on Film’, all movie songs. Of those 8 songs only 1 other was an exact copy of the movie the song was from (You're All The World To Me, originally from [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsoYyDlYU8M ]Royal Wedding[/url]), and that wasn’t a direct copy either because it had Jayma in there (audio and scene) besides only Matt: so the onlyother direct copy of the movie the song was in changed its solo to a duet. (btw: I love that scene)
There were 2 other songs that had scenes which somewhat resembled the original movies they came from: ‘In Your Eyes’ and ‘Unchained Melody’, but they were more loosely based on a very visual prop of their original scenes (the boombox and the pottery wheel). The other half(!) of the songs were simply choir room or stage performances, with just the costumes and some basic moves linking them to the movies they appeared in.
All songs had alterations in the music itself, and all but one song added more singers when they originally were solos: ‘You’re All the World to Me’ became a duet, so did ‘Diamonds’ and ‘Shout’. The others were group numbers, and one was a mash-up.
So why would ‘Come What May’ be the only song that rigidly should hold on to the original?

The simple fact is that Glee’s CMW did not stay true to the original at all. I’ve already pointed out the 2 differences in the music arrangement of the Glee version, and now I will point out another one in the scene.
In Kurt’s fantasy we see a rooftop with lights and neon letters on other buildings, and a beautiful lighted canopy/baldachin with roses and golden drapes:



Now, this is a screencap from the actual movie ‘Moulin Rouge’:



Wow, they are so similar, right?
Ha, nice try, but nope. The above pic is from the scene in the movie when Christian and Satine sing ‘The Elephant Love Medley’ (TELM), not ‘Come What May’. Glee used the music of the movie version of ‘Come What May’ and pasted it on the scenery of an entire different scene and song in ‘Moulin Rouge’. They even mimicked the scene of TLEM, with Christian chasing after Satine while she initially fends off his avances and walks away, instead of trying to re-enact part of the real CMW scene in the movie.
There never was a direct copy/tribute of CMW on Glee at all, and therefore also no need to copy the song’s lyric distribution directly from the movie. They chose to have Blaine sing more simply because they wanted him to sing more (and Kurt less), nothing more and nothing less.



Kurt’s point of view?:

Using the scene set-up of ‘The Elephant Love Medley’ for Glee (instead of the real CMW scene) also lead to a difference between the original CMW and the Glee version that had a serious repercussion when it comes to the storytelling that was intended on the show: it messed up Kurt’s fantasy, his so needed POV in it all.
‘Come What May’ was Kurt’s day dream he had when he was watching ‘Moulin Rouge’ with Adam, Rachel and Santana at the loft as they were snowed in. However, people who had not read the spoilers (which I estimate to be 99% of Glee’s viewers) only found this out after the song was over. Keep this in mind: nothing indicated that Kurt was having a day dream before or during the song. Kurt and his snowed in comrades were talking about ‘Moulin Rouge’ right before the song as an intro to the scene, but in the first seconds of the CMW scene Blaine appears: Blaine who supposedly is in Lima singing songs of movies for the assignment of the week.

Getting into detail here, so bear with me:



(0.00)
The scene of CMW starts with Blaine entering a rooftop of a building that could be located in New York, or it could be an elaborate decorated stage at McKinley (especially in season 4 it has not been unusual to have costumed imaginary fantasy-like performances at McKinley that stretch the reality of a poor ND club’s fundings for costumes and staging quite a bit).
Blaine starts singing about never knowing he could feel like this and how he wants to vanish inside a kiss,….. and they simultaneously show Klaine flashbacks. Those Klaine flashbacks are directly linked to what Blaine is singing, and the conclusion is very easy to make that Blaine is remembering them, not Kurt, because hey: 99% of the viewers can’t possibly know that Kurts will even be in the scene, as Kurt is not in Lima with Blaine, and Blaine is not in New York with Kurt, unless they used a transporter.
Remember that before GOBr spoiled us that CMW was Kurt’s fantasy a lot of fans assumed/speculated that it was Blaine’s fantasy, and this was quite a discussion topic in the spoiler tags weeks before. With Blaine entering the scene I bet most viewers at this point in the scene assumed the same, as the scene shows Blaine singing while there are Klaine flashbacks prompted by his lyrics, and it goes on for half of the song.

In the actual movie scene of CMW, when Christian is singing his solo part Satine is looking at Christian most of the time, and she is in the scene from the beginning on, so Christian is singing directly at her. But in the Glee version Kurt only literally came into the fantasy halfway of the song, untill after Blaine’s solo is done! Therefore Blaine was not even directly serenading Kurt and Kurt did not watch him sing, not even unnoticed by Blaine, e.g. standing hidden behind a corner.
By not having Blaine serenade directly to Kurt during his solo they made those solo lines all about Blaine instead of what they were supposed to be about: them both, as a couple (like Satine and Christian). In the movie Christian sings those lines to Satine to comfort her, to take away her doubts, to strengthen their love, but without Kurt being present in the scene to sing to Blaine’s solo turns into him singing solely about his feelings. The powerful message of CMW in ‘Moulin Rouge’ (a song specifically written by Christian to sing for and with Satine) was taken away by setting up the Glee scene like this. Now it unfortunately became what 90% of the Klaine break-up has been: only Blaine’s feelings, his POV. I think this was Glee’s biggest mistake with CMW.

How are we even supposed to assume that this is Kurt’s fantasy, when the first half is all about Blaine? And more importantly: how can we possibly get Kurt’s point of view (POV) as he’s fantasizing about him and Blaine and what they lost, if he’s not even featured in half of his fantasy? If we can’t actually see him looking at Blaine during the song? If we can’t see his face and guess his thoughts? If we don’t even know he’s going to be in the bloody song in the first place? How on earth was this Kurt’s fantasy?
They should have showed us Kurt looking at Blaine from the beginning of the scene. Then we would have been aware that CMW was Kurt’s fantasy and that they were giving us Kurt’s POV, even when Blaine was singing a solo. For 2 seasons now we have watched Kurt watching Blaine sing, sitting on a stool or do-wopping in the background. And then, in the one scene that it actually made sense for Kurt to watch Blaine sing he is MIA half of the song.
The way it was done now Kurt’s POV could only start when the song was already halfway over, and even then the set-up of the scene (loosely following the original scenario of ‘The Elephant Love Medley’ scene in ‘Moulin Rouge’) still did not clarify that this wasn’t Blaine’s fantasy.

(1.50)
Even after Kurt walked into the scene the point of view in the storytelling still mostly stayed on Blaine for a while:
Kurt enters the rooftop and starts singing along, but he has no solo lines: he simple joins Blaine. We see Kurt approach Blaine with hardly any expression on his face and part of the scene he has turned his back towards us. OTOH we see how Blaine looks at Kurt surprised, happy and hopefully: so we’re still focusing on Blaine’s feelings.
(2.05) Blaine then approaches Kurt and they dance shortly untill Kurt walks away. This is the first time we actually see a flash of Kurt’s feelings, but then he positions himself with his back towards the camera, while Blaine is the one who’s moving around and walks after him to the baldachin.
(2.25) The camera follows Blaine chasing after Kurt and shows us his face, while Kurt’s face stays hidden. Tell me: how can this be Kurt’s fantasy with Kurt’s POV if he can’t even see what the person he’s having the fantasy about is doing half the time, because his back is turned to him? And how can the audience know this is Kurt’s fantasy and get his POV if we can’t see his face due to the camera angle?

(2.40)
But then something changes, both in the music and in the scene: this is the place in the song where the singers switch roles: Kurt starts singing “But I love you” first instead of Blaine, and finally we get some proper focus on Kurt while the boys start circling around each other. (And Chris’ acting in this scene is stellar: you can see Kurt’s pain, the betrayal, the love that lingers, the doubt)
Kurt is also the one who starts hugging Blaine, and we see his (hurt) face as the camera pans out, to reveal only then that it was Kurt who had done the fantasizing all along, and not Blaine. So now most viewers had to do a double-take and reassess their earlier assumption that CMW was a fantasy seen from Blaine’s POV, in order to look back on the scene from Kurt’s eyes this time.
In the last 40 seconds of a 3 ½ minute song that in canon is Kurt’s fantasy his actual POV is shown. That’s about 20-25% of the entire song. It was his fantasy, but his feelings weren’t focused on in appr. 75% of the scene. Someone explain to me how that is in any way good storytelling?
Bottom line is that this wasn’t really Kurt’s fantasy, because the writers never committed to making it so. It may have been a Kurt fantasy in canon, but in execution it was not.

To bring this back to the music (which is my ‘job’ in this review after all) :
It’s typical (but in no way coincidental imo, as Ryan Murphy meticulous-on-the-details himself directed the scene) that as soon as the roles of the singers switch in the song (when Kurt’s starts singing Christian’s lines and Blaine Satine’s) the focus also switches in the scene. It is as if Ryan needed that role switch to concentrate on Kurt from there on, as it almost seems that Ryan only reluctantly gave Kurt the bare minimum he needed to make CMW plausibly be his fantasy in the canon.
Blaine was cast in the role of Christian (the male hero of ‘Moulin Rouge’), he was the first to enter, the only one who got (plenty of) solo lines and the one getting the most focus camera-wise.
It wasn’t untill Kurt briefly took over that role of Christian (the male role, although Kurt kept singing on a female height), that Kurt got the focus he should have gotten right from the start.
Make of that what you will.

The simple conclusion is that CMW was not put in the show to service a storyline, let alone Kurt’s. It was put there only because it was coveted by the Klainers for a long time, and RIB fed off of their fandom instead of making up their own ideas. LBR: it was fan pandering and nothing else. A ‘Moulin Rouge’ duet for Klaine, and indeed this entire storyline of Kurt fantasizing about CMW as a Klaine wedding duet, would not even have entered RIB’s minds if it hadn’t been them listening to fans again and giving them what they wanted come what may, albeit with a cruel twist when the romantic duet turned out to be very bittersweet for Klaine.
CMW was awkwardly shoe-horned in an episode when Klaine was not even together, and they had to fabricate a dream sequence to fit it in so the song wouldn’t have any canon consequences. They even needed an explanatory comment from Santana to make the storyline at least remotely plausible. On top of that the writers then neglected to give proper attention to the actual canon reason for the song even having its right to exist in the show: to finally give Kurt a greatly needed POV by the means of a clear fantasy.
Screw continuity and the chance of dedicating screentime and a song to something really significant, like actual a decent Kurt POV or fleshing out his real boyfriend on the show. (and no: I’m not a Kadam shipper, but I g*ddammit wanted some decent Kurt focus for a change instead of the same one-sighted Klaine dance of season 4).
Well, at least they didn’t give another potential fatal disease to one of Kurt’s family members this time.

DrSheBloggo (Glee episodes reviewer):

“The episode's strongest scene goes to Kurt and his new beau Adam, in a refreshing conversation intended to cut the bullshit. I love when characters decide to cut the bullshit! We had to wade through some BS to get to this point, though, naturally. See, Kurt gets all weepy watching Moulin Rouge because he always dreamed he'd sing "Come What May" with Blaine at his wedding. Adam notices, Santana spills the truth tea, and Kurt tries to hide the feelings. I don't think these story elements are all that bullshitty (except for maybe Santana knowing what Kurt and Blaine want to sing at their wedding) - but the musical number was. It's one thing if Kurt watches Moulin Rouge and fantasizes about singing the song with Blaine. But with the way "Come What May" actually happened in the episode, it felt more like Inception than Moulin Rouge. As in, they decide to watch the movie, we cut to commercial, and when we're back, Blaine is wandering on top of a rooftop wistfully singing to the night sky. Kurt is nowhere to be seen.

I'm sorry, but aren't we in Kurt's fantasy? Why did he not even bother showing up for it until it was time for the harmony? Couldn't we at least have him watching Blaine sing, like Marley watched herself confuse her love interests over the potter's wheel? As it stands, we have a Kurt fantasy that doesn't even seem like a Kurt fantasy because it's not even from his point of view. And the writers tried to cover that up by sticking a commercial between Kurt's POV and the actual musical number, to break it in two. You can't fool me, show! I have DVR! I fast-forwarded through the ads! Honestly, the whole things smelled like a reason to give Blaine most of the song, with the nasty side effect of completely marginalizing Kurt from his own POV and also confusing the hell out of the audience. It was like a fantasy within a fantasy within a fantasy. But look - slow dancing and twinkly lights! How romantic.

Sorry. That was the BS that set the scene for Kurt and Adam's BS-cutting interaction

DrSheBloggo




More Kurt’s POV, and some of that alpha male/effeminate crap :

Now, I’ll be honest here. Although I have given valid music technical reasons why Chris practically was forced to sing in falsetto throughout most of CMW, and this had the unfortunate effect that it suggests that Kurt is the ‘girl’ in this original male/female ~duet, it is very well possible that Chris had no problem at all with this. He might even have liked and preferred it that way, as Chris always loved strong women and singing their songs. After all: Chris deliberately kept training his high voice (by singing scales at the age of about 12-13) when he expected his voice to change due to puberty, so he could keep singing those female Broadway songs he loved so much. I don’t want to even pretend to know what Chris was thinking back then or now, but I think it’s safe to say that he can easily identify himself with female roles and has no qualms singing their parts in a duet.
I can imagine him wanting to sing strictly the female parts in a song he loves very much, just like he once said he wanted to sing Christine in ‘Phantom of the Opera’. He would find nothing inferior about that, and he would be right: there is nothing wrong with a boy in a same sex (or even a heterosexual) relationship singing a female part in a duet like CMW if he wants to.
But Chris is not Kurt.
Kurt has his own canon characterisation and history on the show. Considering his canon development I don’t think in this case and situation the female part suited Kurt narratively speaking (although it suited him fine voice wise). Nor do I think that it was a good idea to deliberately apply an original male/female song dynamic to the Klaine relationship.

”I’m a guy” :
Although RIB definitely sometimes tried to push the Klaine dynamic in a traditional male/female way, I never got the impression that Kurt saw himself as the ‘girl’ in that relationship. Inferior and undesired at times, yes: he had to cope with Blaine being seen as the overall accepted alpha male while he was the rejected effeminate ugly duckling (ugh). But that never came across to me as Kurt thinking he was the damsell in distress who needed protecting and resqueing from his man to feel better and overcome those adversaries : Kurt always could take care of himself really well. (not that girls can’t take care of themselves, but this is Glee and well….. they have a quite…uhm… old fashioned view on women and their roles in a relationship)
So why would fabulous, more-independent-then-ever-in-season-4 Kurt put himself in the vulnerable Satine position in his own fantasy? Why would he picture himself as the girl being romantically courted and comforted by the guy, if he had sent that guy away himself for cheating on him?

Christian and Satine :
If CMW really was to represent Klaine in their current state/mindsets wouldn’t it have been a lot more logical if Kurt had been Christian and Blaine Satine? See the parallels:
- In ‘Moulin Rouge’ Satine was the one who was doubting their relationship and who was willing to sleep with the Duke (and therefore cheat on Christian) to get his attention so he would finance the play she would star in, while Christian was the one who composed CMW to declare his undying love for her and assure her that their love would survive “come what may”.
- In Glee, before they broke up Kurt kept assuring Blaine they would be alright even when they had to be in a long distance relationship for a year, and Blaine was the one who needed more attention and cheated.
If the writers had put some effort into the lyrics and symbolism of CMW in the movie, instead of focusing on recreating a romantic scene of an entirely different song, then they wouldn’t have made both song(-distribution) and scene this way. But if they then still wanted Blaine to have the lion’s share of the song, they could have used the finale version of ‘Come What May’ in the movie, in which Christian starts walking away after feeling betrayed by Satine, and she begs him to come back and to “forgive everything”. But then Blaine would have been Satine and Kurt Christian. This version would even have left a more positive spin on a possible reunion of Klaine in the future, imo, because it actually deals with Klaine’s current problems of betrayal and forgiveness (both asking and giving).
Basically everything of CMW as it is now in Glee should have been reversed.

“Only the most talented member of the Glee club: myself” :
Why would Kurt not use his own fantasy to indulge his season 3 long wish to be seen as equally a star as his duet partner for once? Why would Kurt imagine his own wedding song being sung 75% by Blaine?
Did he become that insecure and beaten down by his experiences in season 3 that he could not even imagine that a duet with his once assumed to be husband on their wedding day would be equally divided, both in lyrics and in (traditional) status, narratively speaking? He had some insecurities even after being accepted at NYADA (demonstrated by the dance room scene with Adam in ‘Sadie Hawkins’), but Kurt had no problem challenging Rachel and her sycophants in ‘Diva’, plus he never was shy of singing and stealing the show before. Why would he refrain from doing that in his own fantasy?
Answer is: he wouldn’t.

Weddings and bowties :
As said: this scene was set up as Kurt dreaming about CMW being Klaine’s wedding song. Why did RIB feel the need to give another big hint at a more traditional (heterosexual) relationship dynamic for Klaine, by having them both wear a tuxedo but giving Kurt a white bowtie (when Blaine’s was black), to subtly suggest that Blaine is the groom and Kurt the blushing bride? That’s no coincidence, imo, certainly not if you look beyond this episode to the finale 2 episodes of the season, in which Blaine wants to propose to Kurt and asks his father for permission to do so.
Why differentiate those boys with a stupid bowtie even more when you already picked a very unequal version of a male/female ~duet for a male/male pairing in the first place? If you really want those 2 guys to be seen as equals in their (ex)relationship wouldn’t you do your damnest best to level the field out and find a better balance, instead of deliberately treating them even more uneven?

Conclusion :
In CMW the writers created imbalance in 3 different ways:
1) by giving one of them the majority of the song and the focus;
2) by not re-arranging a male/female duet so it would suit 2 males better;
3) by hinting at a traditional heterosexual dynamic through clothing and behavior.
I can understand not being able to avoid all inequality/imbalance in a song like CMW, but what I can’t understand is then taking deliberate actions to emphasize and enhance this inequality/imbalance even more.
Maybe it was done to maintain at all costs on Glee the individual images of Blaine being the alpha male and Kurt the effeminate milkmaid (although those images have been busted a long time ago). Maybe RIB really see Klaine’s (ex)relationship this way. Maybe it is simply the way RIB think when it comes to all relationships, homosexual and heterosexual.
Whatever it was, I really dislike the hidden messages behind it, and the more I can see that they actually do this on purpose, the more I dislike it, and not just as a fan of Kurt, but as a fan of Glee in general.



Final remark :

In this review I did more than what I usually do in these reviews: just analyzing the music and the singing. And to be honest: I didn’t expect this review to turn into what it became (nor that long, lol).
But I figured that although the analyzing of the CMW scene in Glee isn’t a strictly musical technical subject, it does have overlaps with my profession and the knowledge that comes with it. Music is more than lyrics put to melody: music is about expressing thoughts and feelings, and when it’s a musical or movie song it is also about context and meaning. I make reviews about Kurt’s singing voice, and Kurt’s singing in CMW imo was directly influenced by the scene’s context, so I should mention it in my its review. Everything that’s done to a song has its consequences. There were just so many layers in CMW I felt I had to peel.
Ah well, here it is, and I hope you enjoy it.

And while I’m at it: here’s another disclaimer. Although it may seem that I don’t like Glee’s CMW at all (because of my many critical remarks in this review), I do love Chris’s singing in it, and the original CMW is very beautiful. I never could warm up to Nicole Kidman’s singing voice, but I am very enamoured by Ewan McGregor’s singing in ‘Moulin Rouge’ (and I don’t even know if that’s based on vocal coach criteria, nor do I care: I can be a simple fangirl too).
If I could have my way I would make a mix of Ewan’s voice in the original and Chris in Glee. Sadly I don’t have the means or knowledge to do that, but I was able to cut the first half of the Glee version off (sorry Darren) and replace it by Ewan’s original solo just for my own amusement. It’s not perfect, but it’ll do. So if you want that version, or only the 2nd half of the song without Blaine’s solos (so from the moment that Kurt starts singing), PM me and I might be able to assist. Kurt’s not the only one who can create his own Moulin Rouge fantasy.

Is been a while since you did a review Marie, so it took me by surprise this CWM review. And to be honest I wasn't expecting it ,because is a performance that it was deleted it from my mind. But anyways, as usual, you did a good work . But I'm wondering if weren't a headache to analize every line and realize how Kurt was put aside in his "own" fantasy. Speaking of that, I love this gif you put:


I should feel upset, but instead I'm laughing because is so accurate. I've a bittersweet feeling.

And you know, never before I heard the pop version of CWM and you know what, I'd have loved to see this version being performed. Is more equal. But the son of bitches (sorry for that) decided they had to emulate the movie, and they didn't even copy the right scene!

Okay this is genius. It really is. I also was not satisfied by their version. Some people have commented that Blaine sings the 2nd verse with Kurt because Kurts voice is too thin and he needed backup, which is completely untrue. But you're right. This wasn't a real duet. Just like 'How to be a Heartbreaker' by brochel was not a duet either. Rachel didnt even come in until 2/3 of the song was over.

Also, that belted A4 you mentioned literally made my ears bleed. He just sounded so strained! Couldn't he have toned it down a bit? But yes. Someone should figure out how to mix the 2 versions so that Ewan and Chris are dueting. Also, even though I hated the implications behind it, Chris looked really gorgeous in that suit. His shoulders...they just kill me.

I would love Kurt and Santana do "Just Give Me A Reason" by Pink and Nate Ruess.

Santana could do Pink's part.

I really love this song.

Oh the good times. This song basically transformed me in an 'Un-Klainer', Blaine-hater and massive bitch towards Glee. My very first post on this board was about this song.

Thank you for writing and sharing it. It was really informative and so, so right on so many levels. I am still pissed of about the voice allocation. CWM represents Klaine and the bias towards Blaine on all levels.

Glorfindel wrote:Sadly I don’t have the means or knowledge to do that, but I was able to cut the first half of the Glee version off (sorry Darren) and replace it by Ewan’s original solo just for my own amusement. It’s not perfect, but it’ll do. So if you want that version, or only the 2nd half of the song without Blaine’s solos (so from the moment that Kurt starts singing), PM me and I might be able to assist.

Pretty please

I would love to hear Darren replaced by Ewan.

brisallie wrote:But I'm wondering if weren't a headache to analize every line and realize how Kurt was put aside in his "own" fantasy.

Yes, but once I started picking the song and especially the scene apart I couldn't stop till all was revealed. It was like peeling an onion: I discovered layer after layer of more effemiphobia/heteronormative/Blaine ass-kissing crap.
I mean: I was furious when the song came out and Kurt was only singing in half of it, but when I discovered so many deliberate choices they made to give us their 'view' of Blaine and Kurt, I was livid, fuming at the mouth. But now that it's all laid bare I feel better.
At least I did my part, and all the crap of RIB/Glee won't stop me from loving and enjoying Chris' voice in one of my favorite love songs (and I only listen to the version I made myself, with Ewan singing the solo: if I close my eyes and concentrate only on Chris' voice I can then pretend that Chris is singing with Ewan in the duet part).

Lottie2303 wrote:Pretty please

ColferInspired wrote:I would love to hear Darren replaced by Ewan.

As I said: I can't replace Darren in the duet part, but replacing him in the solo by Ewan McGregor is quite an improvement.
I'll send you a PM.

What song do we have to look forward to next, Marie?

Great review, Marie! And I would also be interested in the version with less Blaine and more Ewan, please :-)

I personally would love to know how chris would sound singing the Ewan's part.

ColdFlame96 wrote:What song do we have to look forward to next, Marie?

Bring Him Home.

arina wrote:I personally would love to know how chris would sound singing the Ewan's part.

Heavenly.


*sigh*

Yeah, cannot wait for 'Bring him home'.

Little snark moment, I had true troubles to think of another Kurt song you could cover .

Lottie2303 wrote:Yeah, cannot wait for 'Bring him home'.

Little snark moment, I had true troubles to think of another Kurt song you could cover .

Well there's 'Just Can't Get Enough', the little bit in 'We Got Tonight', 'Big Girls Dont Cry', 'I'll Remember', and 'YATSOML'.

Glorfindel wrote:Heavenly.


*sigh*

So unfair we will never know! Also I wanted to hear Beauty school drop out grease or Maria

Cannot wait Bring Him Home, one of the rare bright moments of the last season.

arina wrote:

Glorfindel wrote:Heavenly.


*sigh*

So unfair we will never know! Also I wanted to hear Beauty school drop out grease or Maria

Cannot wait Bring Him Home, one of the rare bright moments of the last season.

Right? I was so glad he won! don't get me wrong. I think Lea's voice was stolen from angels, but she really overdid it with that song and it didnt sit right with me.

great review marie! thanks for coming back. i thought you have abandoned us.

I think Kurt won fair and square because he actually expressed genuine emotions while Rachel totally overdid it. That is my only complaint about Lea's acting, because I really think she "over-performs".

ColdFlame96 wrote:Well there's 'Just Can't Get Enough', the little bit in 'We Got Tonight', 'Big Girls Dont Cry', 'I'll Remember', and 'YATSOML'.

Ahhm, still a few songs. But I was thinking about S4. I sincerely was at a loss.

Thank You so much for this. I know it's twice as much work to analyse the scene along the music but you brought so much more to your review by including it. Like I hadn't noticed the black and white bow ties.

There have been many moments when Chris' acting of desperate and sad brings me close to tears and that cut in the end of CWM to his crying face is even now too painful to watch. It's a sad reminder of the physical and emotional pain that thinking about Blaine brings to him.

yeah, the thought of blaine brings me serious pain. i wish he will simply evaporate.

Lottie2303 wrote:I think Kurt won fair and square because he actually expressed genuine emotions while Rachel totally overdid it. That is my only complaint about Lea's acting, because I really think she "over-performs".

To be fair to Lea, I think that she does... shall we say embellish... her own normal singing style and push it over the top for Rachel. I think it's a deliberate acting choice because know several people who've seen her sing live and while she does make the "constipated faces" it's not as exaggerated as we get with Rachel. Rachel is, as a character, an over-performer with no sense of nuance in her performance style. She goes totally balls to the wall each and every time. The problem in this case was a song that required nuance and a real sense of the song's context and emotion. Kurt succeeded in translating that into his performance while Rachel turned it into another belting festival.

It would be nice if over the course of the show we would see a maturing of Rachel's style, where she stopped bellowing every song and learned to start dialing it back a little bit. For her to have Ms. Tibideaux tell her to stop screaming at her, and song that should be a gentle ballard doesn't need to sound like Rachel's singing it through a megaphone.

It’s funny, but Kurt and Rachel both started off the show with different flaws in their singing. Rachel had the technique and the power, but totally lacked any emotional connection (something that I remember Jesse pointing out to her at their first meeting). Kurt had the emotional resonance, but lacked the power and technique. Over the run of the show, we saw Kurt’s technique improve and his voice has gotten more powerful at the upper and lower reaches of his range (and he still has the best range of pretty much anyone on the show). Rachel, though, has not improved her ability to infuse sincere emotion into her singing (unless it’s a performance like Cry where she’s matching a song to her own overwhelming emotion).

I admire Lea’s voice (which is stunning), but Rachel (and there is a difference) I find a rather boring performer. Her songs all sound the same. She never really surprises me (except when you get a real clunker like Oops where you’re just thinking how utterly awful it was). Kurt always manages to surprise me. Whether it was how he channels a certain darkness whenever he sings Gaga, to the utterly sublime performance of AIWNSG, to the sheer joy of YATSOML. He always give us that little something special.