Alan Cumming Sings Sappy Songs

As usual when it comes PBS specials, ones can creep up on us quite suddenly and catch you off guard. Well, recently Alan Cumming did a special for PBS and I decided to do a special new blog post for it. I thought that a full-fledged review would be better than just mentioning it once in a cast update as I’d have no idea when/if it would air in the future. You might see it again on your local PBS channel, see various songs from this on youtube, or find it on DVD. Anyways, here’s the review:

I’m not sure what the first song is. He launches right into it at the beginning of the performance. It will always be weird to me hearing him speak or sing in his natural voice. It seems like a strange song, but he does it weird. That makes it weirder.

The second song is one that I might have heard before, but like many songs, I have no idea what the name of it is, even though it is familiar. The song mentions something to rely on or something like that. He seems to do a powerful version of it. It is during this song where he first addresses the audience and mentions that this is being filmed in Las Vegas.

Before the third song, he talks to the audience some. The next song might also be familiar, but I can’t identify it either. It seems more inspirational than the others so far. You can’t tell from The Good Wife how good a singer he is since that wouldn’t show up in that show.

Between the third and fourth one, he mentions that he was on The Good Wife. He also mentions what all he did while doing that show. He then mentions the show Who Do You Think You Are? This leads to him remembering his grandfather which leads into his version of the Billy Joel song: Goodbye Saigon. It is a different and more energetic version than Billy Joel’s is.

The fifth song has a weird introduction to it that explains more of the song. I’ve never heard of the song before. The real version sounds much nicer than the introduction to it, even if the audience did find the first version funny due to his explanations to it.

Before the sixth song, he mentions hosting the Tony Awards with the actress whose first name is Kristen and last name I can’t spell. I remember her as she’s a weird looking person with a weird sounding name. I think that this song is probably from a musical of some sort, but I’m not familiar with it, as usual. It mentions the word “you” a lot.

The seventh song is called Dinner at Eight. Apparently he was abused by his father, although he can joke about it now. Weird. It is very loud with his performance and it seems like kind of a hate song in a way. But, there might be some goodness to the song.

He then goes straight into the eighth song. I can’t exactly tell what it is. Well, it is actually a medley of different songs. Part of it is Avril Lavange’s Complicated. That’s how it starts out, at least. It then goes into an Adele song that I’m familiar with, but I don’t know the name of. It was on a Saturday Night Live sketch where everyone was crying to the song. He mentions later that it is called Someone like You. It then becomes a mash-up with The Edge of Glory. Then it becomes part of Katy Perry’s Firework for a moment. He does them after a DJ did them all together with him thinking that they are all the same song.

He then mentions Liza Minnelli as he goes into the next song. He tells an interesting story that she said, but then mentions that none of it ever happened. He then sings And So It Goes by Billy Joel. He has a soothing version of it, although I’m not sure how I like other instruments besides the piano being in it. It can be hard liking some covers sometimes, unless it is Celtic Woman doing the cover. I do still like his version for the most part.

He then gets to what really is the last song of the night. He thanks all of the musicians who helped him perform tonight. I’m not sure what this last song is. It does seem like a pretty simple song. It does make for a good finale. Well, the song does get strange towards the end. Maybe this is two different songs at the end. I can’t tell if he’s just making this part up as he goes along or not. But he does mention lots of people in his “I’ll Drink to That” song at the end.

That’s pretty much all there is to the performance. My review here, or whatever you call it, doesn’t do it justice. I hope that you’ll have time to see it and that you’ll like it too. I honestly wouldn’t have missed much by not seeing it, though. All I hope is that I can find out if he does something like this again in the future before a last minute review when it aired at 1 in the morning. (It did air earlier, but I decided to go with a different performance later so that I might not risk missing the whole show entirely.) For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.