"Dammit, Janet" (Finn and Rachel)
Finally, we may have found the perfect song for Cory Monteith! Finn's dopey earnest confusion works like a charm playing the part of earnestly confused dope Brad. And his voice sounds the least autotuned it's been for weeks, which makes sense if he's only being expected to equal the vocal prowess of Barry Bostwick. Of the leaked songs, this is most perfect fusion between Rocky Horror and New Directions.
GRADE: A-
"The Time Warp" (New Directions)
Chris Colfer can do no wrong in my eyes. His Riff-Raff sounds excellent, perfectly capturing the sleazy rasp from the original. But while Dianna Agron does a respectable Magenta, she doesn't quite nail the same skeezy intonation -- it's a bit like if Feist suddenly sat in with Bell Biv Devoe.
GRADE: B+
"Touch-a-Touch-a-Touch-a-Touch Me" (Emma Pilsbury)
One episode after having two cheerleaders making out on top of each other and casually mention scissoring, and suddenly Glee gets skittish about sex? The lyrics to this classic paean to horniness have been heavily bowdlerized, with Janet suddenly singing that "there's no use getting / into heavy sweating / it only leads to trouble / and bad fretting." What the hell does that even mean??
GRADE: C-
"What Ever Happened to Saturday Night" (Carl)
Eh. I mean, it's fine and certainly not terrible, but after listening to it twice, it quickly flew out of my memory and into the same mental sinkhole where I store old geometry theorems and 19th century Vice Presidents -- it's in there, somewhere, but I really have to concentrate.
GRADE: B-
"There's a Light (Over At the Frankenstein Place)" (New Directions)
Wow, they are really doing just about every song in the Rocky Horror songbook. Prepare to hit the "next" button song when this song comes up on your iPod.
GRADE: C+
"Science Fiction Double Feature" (Santana & Tina)
The gals put just the right amount of breathy sensuality into the show opener, though to be honest I'm not sure exactly which gals are singing. There's conflicting information as to who gets credit, but I think I can definitely hear Santana and I'm pretty sure that Tina's in there rubbing some Asian flavor (as Mike Chang might say) on it.
GRADE: B
"Sweet Transvestite" (Mercedes)
Huh. I honestly can go both ways on this one. Having Mercedes take on Dr. Frank N. Furter's transvestite adds another layer of Victor/Victoria-ness to the pot, and she certainly wails the hell out of the number. But it does strike me as a little bit of a cop-out that of the many men in the Glee cast, none of them were man enough to fishnet it up. And look out for another sanitized lyric!
GRADE: B