A Comfortable Distance.

So I may have accidentally watched Glee. I may have also been in an emotionally fragile state, jittery after three consecutive cups of tarry, super strong coffee and in crumpled pyjamas, but that's probably a poor excuse. I may have seen something on Glee that may have elicited an emotional reaction that wasn't simply derision or disdain. I may have shed a tear; a tear that didn't spring from my eye thanks to the mind splintering flat tones of auto-tune last seen on Cher in the nineties, but from a genuine, instinctive (is emotion instinctive or is it affected?) responsive feeling.

And it was caused by Lea Michele. Michele is undoubtedly an accomplished performer with a rich, powerful voice, but her character and sheer ubiquity within the Glee franchise (?) does tend to grate, as does the lack of variety that has been introduced into her Glee repertoire (although that's to be expected, I suppose, on a show intent on gaining such a wide mainstream audience). My weepy wallowing was provoked by one particular moment; getting up, yet again, in another Glee meeting, to perform what I thought would be yet another preprepared, predictable and saccharinely 'Musical Theatre Earnest' piece plucked from 'The Fame', much to the chagrin of other more neglected characters, I was, as a smug cynic tends to be, pleasantly surprised. Going all Sinéad O'Connor and losing a single, crystalline tear- potentially over the lack of Brittana action and general lesbian representation present within the series, frustrating alternatively orientated women around the world longing to hear scissoring mentioned seriously on major network television and not solely from the mouth of Sue Sylvester - over the tentative euphoria she feels over sensing the first thrill of love course through her, standing on the precipice of the greatest happiness or disaster to come her way in life, I was, as a bitter, heartless harpy, swept away.

Despite the sentimental montage of her walking down the locker-lined hallway, sheltered in the baseball-blazer clad arms of her tall, gentle jock in a blaze of electric, slo-mo sunset, it the song picked to convey this burgeoning, terrifying ecstasy, and accompany the syrupy montage, that caught me. The first few chords chimed so sweetly that I thought it was the work of Chris Martin, some Coldplay ballad about how you need Parachutes if you're a Scientist Viva-ng La Vida (of triteness), but it was not. It was Paramore. It was beautiful. Hearing the original for the first time only reinforced that opinion. Subdued, doubting but hopeful, understated but euphoric, a melody lilting but refusing to swoon (?). I'm not going to try and write something inaccurate, snobbish or generalising about the band or their music, or how this particular song fits into a wider context of their other material. I just wanted to put it on Shiny and New because it is such a gentle, well crafted, loving song and we've never really written about Hayley Williams on here, despite her prominence in music at the moment, her talent and her vocal singularity.

(And her amazing hair.)