Gleeks rejoice!
The cast recording of Journey's "Don't Stop Believin,''" featured on the FOX song-and-dance series first episode, has been certified gold, with fans downloading the track more than 500,000 times online.
Following the journey of high school glee club misfits eager to take their school to the local music talent showcase, Glee features small-screen newcomers Lea Michele, Cory Monteith and Chris Colfer, among others. Broadway vet Matthew Morrison and comic Jane Lynch appear as teachers at McKinley High, with Morrison helming the glee club New Horizons.
Performing covers of hits like Kanye West's "Gold Digger" and Rihanna's "Take a Bow" on the show — with full choreography — the Glee cast also records each of the tracks to be sold online after the episodes air.
To date, singles performed by the ensemble cast have been downloaded more than 2 million times, and seven of the cast recordings occupy spots on iTunes' top 200 chart.
"The great thing about our show is that some of the songs that we do sound very close to the original and others are completely re-done and 'mashed up," Michele tells Usmagazine.com. "It's great that we’ve brought these old songs back and we’ve put a new twist to them, while still honoring the amazing songs that they are."
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Adds Morrison, "I feel like we're revitalizing the music industry. The younger generation [of fans] hears songs they never heard before through our show. And I'll be so bold as to say that I think some of the records we're doing are even better than the originals."
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Volume One of the Glee soundtrack hits stores Nov. 3 and new episodes of the series return on Nov. 11.
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