Entertainment Weekly today offers a video preview of Gwyneth Paltrow's guest appearance on Glee, featuring the actress/singer/bowel-elimination expert rocking New Directions as a substitute teacher. The clip showcases Paltrow delivering the family-hour version of Cee Lo Green's "F*ck You" to the group, all pink tambourine and primo sass. So why doesn't it work?
We've already established that Paltrow's appearance should yield a good creative and commercial payoff, up to and including her take on Cee Lo's original, radio-unfriendly hit. That may yet happen for her and the episode -- but not with this song. I'd maybe annotate the video if the retrograde monkeys at EW let anyone embed it, but let's just break down the dynamics of why "F*ck You" works as well as it does, and how Glee basically misses the entire point. First, though -- the NSFW original! Live!
So, seriously:
The song cannot be sanitized
I feel like an idiot just writing "F*ck You" (I really gotta talk to our standards and practices department about that). True, Cee Lo has found some success with the scrubbed-up title "Forget You," which, of course, is the quasi-epithet employed here by Paltrow and Glee-mperor Ryan Murphy. But the fundamental motivation behind the song is abject, bitter fury -- the kind you can't censor, choke down or take back. "Forget You" doesn't convey that; it's the dull edge that church kids and, well, glee clubs default to when they know they're forbidden to keep it real.
And those lines "Ain't that some sh*t," "Oh sh*t, she's a gold digger / Just thought you should know, n*gga," and "I really hate your ass right now, woman" aren't really negotiable here. They're signifiers of class rage, emasculation and heartbreak.
The song is not unisex
Come on, this much is obvious. Would a woman who saw some skank driving around with the "guy I love" say "F*ck you"? Sure, probably, and a lot worse. We relate, ladies! But would she say the change in her pocket wasn't enough or compare herself to an Atari? No. We're not talking about "This Girl/Guy's in Love With You," which Herb Alpert and Dionne Warwick switched up in the '60s and took to No. 1 and No. 7 respectively. We're talking about a very specific, contemporary male angst. You wouldn't ask Brad Pitt to interpret female lust and "vertigo sticks" while covering "Bad Romance," right? It's the same thing. And no, I haven't forgotten about the back-up singers, because...
The song is off-limits for white people
Unless! Unless you really want to match Cee Lo sound for sound. First off, the soul-pop package doesn't mitigate this song or its message; it mainstreams it. It's subversion on steroids, and watered down to high-school pop it's about as subversive as Reader's Digest. More technically, I guess there's nothing keeping Paltrow from actually rhyming that "if I was richer/I'd still be wit' cha," (hello, Amy Winehouse!), but her whitening of the phrase is kind of... well, disgusting. Let's face it: Gwyneth Paltrow singing any variation on "F*ck You" is like Pat Boone singing "Tutti Frutti," and maybe even worse: At least he didn't have to dance with Cory Monteith and Chris Colfer.
The song is not a duet
The Mercedes/Artie segment is inspired for its ethnic implications if nothing else; there is not enough Aleve in the world to soothe this throbbing in my brain. But ultimately, a song about black male romance-and-class angst split up and harmonized all smiley-time by a white dork in a wheelchair and a woman who could just as easily be Cee Lo's original "F*ck You" target (or it could be just as easily be Quinn! This part is not off-limits to white people) is just tone-deaf.
Lea Michele gets it
When all else fails, just stand on the sidelines and glower. See? She does have standards!