Glee is great fun for all ages – well, mostly the singing and dancing. The rest of Glee will give some parents pause, especially more mature topics like teen pregnancy and alcoholism. Well, there’s now a solution for that. 20th Century Fox has released Glee Encore, which is essentially music videos from the Glee TV series.

With Glee Encore you get 34 musical numbers, none of the drama and you can safely leave your kids with the DVD player.

Here’s the song list:

“On My Own”
“Don’t Stop Believin’”
“Gold Digger”
“I Say a Little Prayer”
“Alone”
“Somebody to Love”
“It’s My Life/Confessions Part II”
“No Air”
“You Keep Me Hanging On”
“Defying Gravity”
“I’ll Stand By You”
“Don’t Stand So Close to Me/Young Girl”
“Lean on Me”
“Imagine”
“True Colors”
“Smile”
“Don’t Rain on My Parade”
“You Can’t Always Get What You Want”
“Gives You Hell”
“Hello”
“Vogue”
“Like a Virgin”
“Like a Prayer”
“Fire”
“One Less Bell to Answer/A House is Not a Home”
“Beautiful”
“Run Joey Run”
“Total Eclipse of the Heart”
“Jessie’s Girl”
“Rose’s Turn”
“Bad Romance”
“Beth”
“Faithfully”
“Any Way You Want It/Lovin’ Touchin’ Squeezin’”

Buy Glee Encore DVD set.

The world’s favourite new musical TV series is back, and this time they brought along Madonna. An early episode of Glee featured Madonna’s Papa Don’t Preach. Now there’s a whole episode with nothing but Madonna songs. No real Madonna, but there’s a cool video of Vogue featuring Sue Sylvester as Madonna.

Here are the 7 songs featured in the episode.
1. Express Yourself (Glee Cast Version Featuring Jonathan Groff)
2. Borderline / Open Your Heart (Glee Cast Version)
3. Vogue (Glee Cast Version)
4. Like A Virgin (Glee Cast Version Featuring Jonathan Groff)
5. 4 Minutes (Glee Cast Version)
6. What It Feels Like For A Girl (Glee Cast Version)
7. Like A Prayer (Glee Cast Version Featuring Jonathan Groff)

Buy Glee: The Music, The Power of Madonna.

While we’re on the subject of hit TV show Glee, a DVD is already out for pre-order. The DVD (Glee, Vol. One: Road to Sectionals) will be released Dec 29th, 2009. The first 13 episodes of Glee document the start of the New Directions glee club of McKinley High School, and their subsequent fate at the sectionals.

Spoiler after the jump.

On the way to the sectionals, we experience teen angst, teacher rivalry, peer pressure, vocal showdowns and lots of great music. The music of Glee is something else; they go from the 50s to the current day.

New Directions will win the sectionals, and in the next installment they will go to the regional glee championships, where they will face arch rivals Vocal Adrenaline.

Buy Glee, Vol. One: Road to Sectionals

Glee looks to be a runaway hit on TV, and on the music charts. The show just wrapped up its “winter finale”. If you enjoy the show, I’m sure you like the music. The first Glee soundtrack received great response and now they have released Glee: The Music Volume 2 soundtrack.

Here’s the track listing for Volume 2:

1. Proud Mary 3:41
2. Endless Love 4:22
3. I’ll Stand By You 3:49
4. Don’t Stand So Close To Me / Young Girl 2:26
5. Crush 3:20
6. (You’re) Having My Baby 2:45
7. Lean On Me 4:17
8. Don’t Make Me Over 3:24
9. Imagine 2:23
10. True Colors 3:34
11. Jump 3:55
12. Smile (Cover Of Lily Allen Song) 3:14
13. Smile (Cover Of Charlie Chaplin Song) 3:01
14. And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going 4:06
15. Don’t Rain On My Parade 2:45
16. You Can’t Always Get What You Want 3:27
17. My Life Would Suck Without You 3:31

Buy Glee: The Music Volume 2 soundtrack.

I have to admit that I have both soundtracks, and they are in heavy rotation. There’s also a great cover version of Last Christmas, sung by the Glee cast. Get it from iTunes :

Here is Rachel’s version of Don’t Rain on My Parade, which she performed in the sectionals (Season 1, Episode 13).

If you don’t celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah or Kwanzaa, this is the holiday for you. Actually, even if you do celebrate any of those, this is the holiday for you, too. You need to have a Festivus pole, follow several traditional practices including the “Feats of Strength” and the “Airing of Grievances”, and believe in the occurances of explainable events being labeled “Festivus miracles”

Here’s the famous scene from Seinfeld where we learnt about Festivus for the first time:

To find out even more about Festivus, buy Festivus: The Holiday for the Rest of Us (the book).