I had wanted to be in the show choir ever since I saw them perform at my elementary school when I was in the first grade.  It looked glamorous and fun, and I wanted to be one of the pretty girls in the shiny dresses and dangly earrings, singing and dancing like they should be on TV.  When I was a junior in high school, I became one of the pretty girls in the shiny dresses.  It wasn’t always all it was cracked up to be–that year, the shiny dresses were made both too short AND too low-cut by the seamstress, which might sound appealing to a 16-year-old girl until she realizes that when her partner lifts her into the air, her boobs will constantly come perilously close to popping out and saying hello to a room full of first graders.  Even with the dress issues and occasional exasperation with my awesome partner who, despite his best efforts, was just not a natural dancer…I loved it.  I loved show choir so much I was incredibly sad when I hung up the shiny dress for good.

When I heard about the upcoming FOX show Glee, the show title pretty much described how it made me feel.  The previews looked amazing.  I couldn’t wait to see the preview episode that aired in May after American Idol.  I counted down the days until it aired, and even then I wasn’t patient enough and I downloaded a screener that I found on the Internet.  It was slightly different from what aired (because of course I watched it again!) but both versions were just SO good.  The show was even more than I had hoped.

I think what I love about Glee, at least in its first episode, is that it captures that rush of being completely immersed in the music you’re performing.  It’s a feeling that is so hard to explain to people who have never experienced it.  I can remember one A Cappella choir rehearsal right before we went on stage to compete at a contest in St. Louis.  We were singing an amazingly difficult piece and we wanted to win it all.  The rehearsal room had high rafters, and we sang that song better than we ever had before, so that the rafters were ringing with the echoes of it long after we were done.  It sounds dorky to say, but it brought tears to my eyes at the time because I knew we were creating something beautiful.

Even more dorkily, the same tears threatened me when I was watching Glee.  Obviously the filmed performances are contrived and likely dubbed over with vocals recorded in the studio, but something in the way they’re acted, something in the way they’re filmed brings forth that joyful feeling, that rush that always made the hair on my arms stand on end when I was singing and I could hear the entire group just click into place.  Glee makes me remember why I love music, and every time I see a bump for the season premiere come on in between episodes of So You Think You Can Dance I get excited about the show all over again.

The cast is also pretty damn amazing–right off the bat I recognized some of my favorite people from other projects.  There’s Charlie from Heroes (otherwise known as Jayma May), Wendla from Spring Awakening (Lea Michele), and Jane Lynch, who I have loved in all her Christopher Guest and Judd Apatow movies.  She is probably my favorite part of the show so far, with her dry wit and spot-on comedic timing.

I’m ready to become a certified Gleek…I just wish they hadn’t taunted me with a single episode months before the actual show comes on!  Glee premieres on FOX Wednesday, September 16 at 8 PM CST/9 PM EST.  But, you don’t have to wait until September to see the first episode.  You can watch it online now, courtesy of FOX on Demand!

Here’s the extended trailer from this spring:

From Amazon’s album page:

Arguably the most accomplished singer/songwriter of his generation, Rob Thomas is one of modern music’s most compelling and commercially successful artists. Between Matchbox Twenty, his solo work, and his various collaborations with iconic artists like Santana and Mick Jagger, his tally now stands at more than 80 million albums sold worldwide.

That makes me want to stab myself on a number of levels.  I can think of plenty of singer/songwriters more accomplished and more talented than Rob Thomas (Ryan Adams, I am looking at you).  Whoever wrote that to plug Thomas’ album is either delusional or going home at night and crying behind closed doors.  The number of albums sold worldwide makes me sad for the musical taste of 80 million people.

The album features introspective sad bastard titles like “Give Me the Meltdown,” “Still Ain’t Over You,” and “Someday.”  Frat boys, get your iTunes ready.  If you enjoy real music, do yourself a favor and pick up Wilco (The Album) instead.