#they outsold artists with covers of their songs!!! they had power over the charts!!

[tuiyla]

Something that I still find insane with Glee is just how much professional content was put out about it, both during and after the show. They had the actual show, the concert tours, the (3D) concert movie, the reality show specifically to get cast on Glee (two seasons of it which is one more than most shows even get now), the billboard charting songs/albums, the cast podcasts, and the recent fucked up docuseries. Not to mention the insane number of "Glee Audition" YouTube videos and other fan-created content like SimGM, fanfics, covers, GIFs, etc. I genuinely cannot think of a single other show that has ever had that much going on around it. No matter where you looked or what kind of content, you'd likely run into something Glee related. I first learned about the show because my classmates would singing "Don't Stop Believing" on our bus all the time, like the entire bus would sing the entire song. No one and no where was safe.

Also books and other merchandise iirc?

It's truly an insane scale. I think there were similar properties, but not at the same intersection of teen media and music as Glee was. Music really elevated it above other TV shows, in terms of revenue as well, I'm sure. I mean, what other show I could do as something as unhinged for as the singing database? They just produced so much content, and to think that the cast had to not only learn their lines and do the acting but record their songs AND learn choreography and do talk show appearances and other promos on top of that is already wild. Add to that the tours and musical appearances? It gets to a level that I'm pretty sure should have been illegal. Like, for real, the Glee cast was so infamous for being crazy overworked that it shouldn't have been allowed. Hard enough to film 22 episodes a year and that's without all the extra stuff.

And the fan stuff! That can be a tremendous amount even if the property itself isn't as accomplished as Glee was but you're right, that was - and continues to be! - impressive too. Again the scale of it, organized events and forums and popular videos like SimGM. You really couldn't go anywhere without Glee content.

I think I've mentioned this once or twice before, but I heard Landslide for the first time through the GCV. I didn't search for the Glee version; I had just read The Perks of Being a Wallflower and I wanted to know what the tunnel song sounded like. This is September of 2012 btw. So I typed landslide into youtube and the very first result, probably the second and even third, was the Glee version. So that was the one I listened to for years, exclusively, even though I had zero to do with Glee at that point. I'm sure there were other GCVs that sneaked into my life and certainly the mainstream, too. The show itself had a stranglehold on pop culture but the music was a whole new level. Glee was a machine producing so much content and I can only assume making an obscene amount of money. Idk what the cast got paid but I'd be willing to bet it wasn't enough.

Through godawful documentaries or in more positive ways but Glee's still part of the public consciousness because that kind of omnipresence doesn't just go away. Fascinating. Kinda terrifying. But very very interesting.