Last night’s Glee kind of annoyed me. The show’s been very hit-and-miss all along, but especially so this season.
The one thing they’ve usually gotten right is the music performances. So it was distressing to see them do “Make ‘em Laugh” from Singin’ in the Rain and “Nowadays/Hot Honey Rag” from Chicago, more or less exactly as they were done in those movies. (Only not as good.)
And then at the end, they did a great mash-up of “Umbrella” and “Singin’ in the Rain.” Except, I figured out this morning that Jamie Cullum already did that combo. He recorded “Singin’ in the Rain” on his 2003 album Twentysomething and at some point combined it with Rihanna’s song. Here’s a 2008 performance (and another from a little earlier that same year). Embedded below is a 2009 performance.
“Umbrella” came out in early 2007 and was an immediate hit. Much like “Crazy,” the Gnarls Barkley song from 2006, all kinds of people did cover versions, both amateurs and professionals. One common kind of arrangement was to do it in a more folksy manner, as Marié Digby demonstrates.