22 April 2010
In a world where Ben & Jerry’s had an ice-cream called Black and Tan, and Kia once named a prototype car the Provo, it’s clear that international creative agencies don’t have little ol’ Ireland on their market research to-do list. Still, I like to amuse myself by thinking that at least one Irish person, long on divilment and short on conscience, was in the room when Glee’s publicity team went with the branding above: “Lads: you know what’d work brilliantly for all territories and target audiences? Combine ‘Glee’ and the loser sign as G-finger-E-E! No, not laughing, just hay fever.” What a legend.
I didn’t watch Glee, though I’m familiar with the broad lines of it, so I can’t tell you if the series was as entertaining as this inadvertent Irish marketing howler. Picking itself up and dusting itself off like the plucky average everyday losers of its Hollywood-telegenic cast, Glee was the worldwide hit TV show of 2010. Feelgood teen drama-comedy was good escapism for our recession-mired early ’10s, High School Musical and jukebox stage shows were already successful, and I wonder if like Fame in 1982 we were also attracted by its exotic Americana of ‘glee clubs’ (which surely have their own saucy local meaning somewhere like Amsterdam or Berlin) and high schools with their own Broadway-standard show budgets and production design. Also like Fame, Glee’s musical content became successful breakout hits and handy marketing collateral: 38 tracks credited to the Glee Cast made the Irish top thirty from 2010 to mid-2012, of which this ‘Gives You Hell’ got as high as number one.
I’m posting the in-show performance rather than the audio only, so that you Glee-heads of yore can get a ’10s nostalgia rush. The original by The All-American Rejects is typical to my ears of whiny ’00s US punk-pop bands and their low-grade output, so no one’s authenticity is being desecrated by this TV cover version. Clearly there’s some storyline context here, given the furrowed brows and sheepish looks of those being sung at. Lea Michele, now a Broadway star, jolts it with genuine gusto, the switch from a male to a female protagonist takes the edge off the original’s whiff of brattish misogyny, and the teen-huff energy is undeniable. Still, behind my head I feel the unwelcome waft of jazz hands.
Now if you’ll excuse me, today’s my first day as a marketing design consultant and I’ve just had a brilliant idea for my first big client, America’s no. 1 customer service platform Arise.
