Critics Notebook: Glee sings to a forgotten generation


Journey, Young MC and Cyndi Lauper. The show grooves to the 80s while turning stereotypes on their head. Finally, the music of tail-end boomers is heard.
still till she asked who did the mischief; and then he would tell, and there would be nothing so good in the world as to see that pet model catch it. Glees first season has included such musical blasts from the past as Aerosmiths Dream On, performed by series lead Matthew Morrison, left, and guest star Neil Patrick Harris. Glee allows this particular sliver of between-generations a nostalgia that is, for once, neither borrowed nor assigned.Foxs musical comedy hit Glee has revolutionized TV in many ways (including the fact that TV critics can now write the term musical comedy hit, and who thought that would ever happen?). But watching the recent Safety Dance episode, it all came together: Here is a show celebrating popular music and there isnt even a whiff of boomage.

Those of us who had the misfortune to be born in the first half of the 1960s are truly a lost generation. Not quite boomers, not quite Gen X, we came of age as the Carter White House succumbed to the Reagan years, when women rediscovered shoulder pads and men wore penny loafers with no socks, when everyone found the conceits of Bosom Buddies and Threes Company racy and hilarious. Our musical taste, as I remember it, was eclectic – yes, there was Bruce Springsteen, Aerosmith and Genesis, but there was also Duran Duran, the Go-Gos, Stray Cats, Wham and Men Without Hats.

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