Glee: The Music, Volume 2 - Album Review

The second installment of tunes from the happy go lucky sitcom, "Glee," is a collection of 17 cover songs that are good enough to quench the thirst of Glee fanatics until the show returns in April.

The album maintains a good variety of up-tempo tracks like, "Proud Mary," and, "My Life Would Suck Without You," to slower ballads like, "I'll Stand By You," and, "Smile."

Among the top tracks are a beautiful rendition of, "Endless Love," and a good enough cover of a great song in, "Imagine." The best song of the album is easily, "Lean on Me." It hovers around, but doesn't cross the line of cheesy, and easily displays the most emotion on the album. This version of the popular song is definitely a homerun.

The rest of the album is rather forgettable and a little slow moving. "Don't Stand So Close To Me / Young Girl," is the most creative cover and an interesting mash up, but fails to deliver the "wow" punch and leaves you feeling just ok.

Positives

A good variety of songs that is sure to please Glee fans

Good crisp production quality with perfect pitch vocals

Negative

Aside from some homeruns, the album consists of mostly ok songs in which the original versions are much better.

Can't help but notice how crisp all the vocals are. This can be a good thing, but a little too crisp and the obvious use of auto-tune is shown. The overproduction takes away the true feeling of the songs and emotion is really lacking.

Summary

Glee: The Music, Volume 2, is an album that puts an interesting spin on popular songs we all know and love. Although not a collection of original songs, the album still plays very well with somewhat of a unique take on some great hits.

Overall, it will have lots of commercial success due to the show's popularity, but at the end of the day, it's a collection of unoriginal songs. Some of the songs are covered well with a few standouts like, "Lean on Me," and, "Imagine."

When it comes to cover albums, I look at how unique the songs are covered, but yet maintain the same flavor that made the originals so good. For the most part, I would rather listen to the originals. This album gets a 3.5 out 5.

Glee: The Music, Volume 2 - Album Review - 3.5/5

Comments/Inquiries: danrozakmusicman@musician.org