Singing with glee

When done right, however, it can be downright moving. On their last album, the Dears enlisted Every Kid Choir, made up of children as young as five, to sing with them on their song Saviour. When the kids, members of the music project organized by the Montreal City Mission and St. James United Church, joined the indie rockers on stage during a show last January, Natalia Yanchak, the band’s keyboardist, had a tough time keeping it together. “They sound imperfect, but that’s what makes it so beautiful and touching,” says Yanchak. “There’s no pretension to it. There’s no ulterior motive.”

While this untarnished sound is big right now, Alan Cross, host of The Ongoing History of New Music, a syndicated radio show heard across Canada, says all sounds and approaches are cyclical. “Over the last two years, we’ve seen a lot of children’s choirs included in rock arrangements since nobody had done it for a long time,” says Cross. “So we’ll probably see it disappear for a while. Otherwise, it’ll sound like we’re listening to Sesame Street records on the radio all the time.”

One thing that isn’t showing any signs of going away is Glee. Having hit a nerve, the show about nerdy teens with killer voices is everywhere these days. The cast sang the national anthem before game three of the World Series. A concert tour is planned for next summer. And the success isn’t just reserved for the Glee kids. Artists who lend their music to the show are also seeing their download sales spike—the original version of Rihanna’s Take a Bow rose 189 per cent after being covered on the show. So it’s no wonder musicians, most recently Madonna, are lining up to have this group of outcasts belt out their songs. The show’s success is, in some ways, a product of the American Idol-ization of society, one that now seems as happy to listen to an unknown singer making a classic pop song their own as they are hearing the original. And, despite all the backstabbing high school drama, Glee is one of the happiest hours of TV. That goes a long way with audiences during these tough economic times. There’s also the notion that this interest in a more innocent sound—be it real or fake—is a reaction to the frequent raunchiness of modern music. Call it a sweet rebellion.

Whether the Glee effect has boosted choir enrolment, however, is tough to quantify. Following last month’s gig with Dead Man’s Bones, “a whole bunch of football players didn’t join the choir or anything like that,” says Agyeman. That said, playing alongside a Hollywood heartthrob earned her and her choir-mates plenty of cred from classmates.

As for the general fanfare around choirs these days, Fenger says there is a risk that the sound of kids’ less-than-perfect singing voices may itself become commercialized. “Soon you’re going to get professionally trained children’s choirs to sound like children’s choirs that are not professionally trained,” laughs Fenger. “Or a Canadian Idol choir contest.”