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Glee cover of Teenage Dream hits number one



The cast of Glee has finally hit number one on the Billboard charts. Having turned nearly every pop song cover on the Fox series into a chart single, the Glee gang made it to the top Thursday night with last week's rendition of the Katy Perry tune Teenage Dream.

Glee's cover was downloaded 214,000 times in its first week, thus eclipsing its previous high, a cover of Journey's Don't Stop Believing, which was downloaded 177,000 times when it was released in May 2009 (it peaked at number two). The Teenage Dream episode was Glee's response to the It Gets Better anti-gay-bullying campaign. Suffering relentless harassment from a macho jock, Kurt (Chris Colfer), a glee club member and William McKinley High's only out student, visits a private all-boys school to spy on their singing troupe. While undercover, Kurt witnesses a seemingly impromptu performance of Katy Perry's song led by Blaine (Darren Criss), a dashing and, yes, gay member of Dalton's glee club. As the clip shows, Kurt is gobsmacked - not only by Blaine's rather obvious overture, but also by the respect Dalton's glee club commands from the student body.

As for the cover version itself, it's blatantly inferior to Perry's original, which is easily one of the best singles of the year. For one thing, it's been transposed down to suit a male singing range, thus losing some of its euphoric quality.

Tell me if I'm wrong.



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