This may come as a shock to some of you, but as a normal person in the regular world, I do not break into song every other minute. Ok, that’s a lie. Well, not so much of a lie as an exaggeration. It’s not that I don’t sing along to the radio in my car, at work, in the shower, or whatever, I actually do those things quite often. It’s just, I don’t have a band and a chorus behind me dancing perfect steps and you know…AutoTune.
The two most blatant uses of these types of distortions on Reality TV Shows are Glee and Smash, although there are many, many other reality shows that highlight singing such as American Idol and The Voice to name a few. But to make it simple, let’s stick to just programmed television, and the two shows I absolutely love — because they’re funny, fun, and not to be taken too seriously. I watch them, I download their music, I may obsessively stalk one or two actors (not naming names or anything, but Blaine—as a total nerd, I just love you.)
But folks—I spend hours everyday thinking about these shows. Hours. And while that time could be better spent by — I don’t know…doing my work and writing witty and expert criticisms of pop culture, I usually get sucked into the vortex that is Watching Singing People on Television. Their lives seem so much more interesting and fulfilled than mine. Feeling happy? Dance and sing to I’m Walking on Sunshine. Loving someone from afar? Hello is the perfect song to play spontaneously on a piano in the library with accompanying drummers in the background. Wanna propose? Stage a synchronized swimming dance to We Found Love In a Hopeless Place, probably the last song I would ever choose to serenade my soon-to-be fiancé with.
And so what have I concluded after all my hours of living in fantasy worlds where people turn into iconic figures with wigs and are transported to other worlds while singing?
That life would be better if we were just like that.
Because my life as it is—one as a person who goes to a nine-to-five job every day, who can’t be late, who always pays her own bills and takes out the garbage and is generally, you know, not happy all the time—is kind of a letdown. It’s hard to continuously do the same things, day after day. I need hope that I will find a place in this world where there is happiness and joy in real life. I find hope in every note and every dance, and if people around me—hell, if I were a little bit more like those singing and dancing characters on my screen all the time– I would probably be seen as a crazy person who escaped from the facility. But I’d probably be happier.
And so would you.
I see a future in godmotherhead ahead of you. Go Evie.