This week’s prompt is a very good excuse to talk about a concept (or two) that’s been on my mind. My two choices for mashups that Glee could have done are both for Brittana and both partly a reprise of one of their former songs. Both of these mashups already exist, courtesy of Nick Pitera/ Megan and Jaclyn Davies respectively. I recommend checking the songs out as you’re (hopefully) reading this, and I also just made another post where I go more in-depth with the line distributions. For this post though, here’s how I see these scenes going down in Glee and some reasoning behind my choices.
Dancing On My Own/I Wanna Dance With Somebody
Some of you might know that Brittany was going to sing Robyn’s Dancing On My Own in the episode 4x13 “Diva” and Heather Morries even recorded the song but it was ultimately never filmed and thus cut. As a fan of this cover I’ve always been bummed about that but when I heard this slowed-down mashup I knew this was what I truly needed from “Diva”.
So imagine this: after having witnessed Sam and Santana’s dramatic auditorium sing-off and being torn about her own feelings, Brittany starts her sad rendition of Dancing On My Own. She loves Sam but she also still loves Santana and can’t help but feel like, well, like what the song describes. But then we cut to Santana, who’s walking around at McKinley, feeling lost and desperately searching for what this place used to make her feel like. She lingers at the choir room door and starts singing her and Brittany’s Whitney Houston song, I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me). But where it was once an energetic anthem to their love, it now rings hollow.
Santana marches on and as she gets to the end of the I Wanna Dance With Somebody chorus, we cut to Brittany also singing that last line in the auditorium. It is now fully a duet as both sing the bridge and chorus of Dancing On My Own, separated physically within the walls of McKinley but feeling the same longing. And as they reach the end of the chorus, it is now Santana who continues singing Dancing On My Own, cut together with Brittany reminiscing about and singing I Wanna Dance With Somebody as she looks around the auditorium and, like Santana did, remembers what it used to be like. As she finishes the last chorus, Santana also switches back to her original song and arrives at the auditorium just as this sad, mashed up reprise of what was once their upbeat dance love song ends.
Ideally, I would have loved for Brittany to get one last solo and get to do Dancing On My Own on her, well, on her own as was intended. I think it would have been a much-needed Brittany POV moment that expresses how she feels through music and dance. But I also fell in love with this mashup when I heard it and I think it’d be a great musical shorthand to show how disconnected Santana and Brittany feel, and yet how even in that moment they are actually in sync, just in a tragic, “we both know that this isn’t working gonna work” kind of way. It still allows Brittany’s POV space while setting Santana up for leaving Lima behind, for real this time - as well as Brittany. If Mine wasn’t an official breakup, this combined with their as-canon auditorium talk would be.
Landslide/Everywhere
But fear not, we’re jumping ahead a season and reaching the next Brittana milestone - and I’d sell an even bigger portion of my soul for this mashup. I’ve had discussions about the original Landslide cover in 2x15 “Sexy” before and how I firmly believe Holly was needed there, that it shouldn’t and indeed couldn’t have been a pure Brittana duet. It was the very first step for both of them, particularly Santana towards realizing just what they mean to each other and it’s poignant and beautiful in such a personal way I’d find it hard to put into words. And it makes perfect sense that the girls needed Holly to be there as an anchor and a buffer. But that said, I can’t say I wouldn’t love to have a Brittana duet version on Spotify and even when I had this discussion I pondered that I think they should have redone Landslide instead of Valerie in the 100th/101st episode. (Valerie is also a good scene but you know, if I had to pick one.) And then I discovered this amazing mashup and, like with the previous one, I knew this was it.
Let’s set the scene: Brittany kissed Santana with churros in their mouths and Britt has now invited her to the choir room. Just like when Santana asked her to come here before turning Mine into a breakup song, only now the room is filled with lilies, the lesbian of flowers, and instead of breaking up Brittany is here to ask Santana to get back together. She takes a page out of Santana’s book and tries to tell her how she feels through song, because sometimes words just aren’t enough and this is the room that showed them that.
Landslide begins playing and Brittany sings the words they once sang with Holly Holliday. Santana’s unsure but Brittany’s smiling in that playful yet sincere way of hers and this is their song so, tentatively, she joins in. Santana grows more and more confident in the song until the chorus begins and Brittany lets her take lead, lets her sing on her own. Because she could do that two years ago but now wants to sing as loud as she used to in the privacy of her bedroom. Santana would now be ready to do it all without Holly there and even though the New Directions aren’t here to witness it all, it’s still a moment of reflection to think about how far they’ve come The chorus ends and Santana smiles but Brittany has another surprise up her sleeve.
Before the second half of the Landslide chorus can begin, Brittany mixes in another Fleetwood Mac song to mark this new milestone in their journey. She sings “I wanna be with you everywhere” and continues with this Christine McVie song. Just as Songbird was another Fleetwood Mac-related step, they’re coming full circle in their journey. Santana catches on and sings it with Brittany by the end of the first verse. And then, it’s back to Landslide for her, back to those words that’ve been etched into her heart as Santana returns to the Landslide chorus and Brittany continues with the Everywhere one.
Eventually, they’re both singing the Everywhere chorus; a reassurance from both parties. It doesn’t matter if it’s in Lima, New York, Lesbos, Hawaii, they can be together anywhere and everywhere. They want to be, because then Brittany also switches back to Landslide to sing the final verse and remind them both of how far they’ve come, for good measure. They finish the outro together and the lilies scene begins. And now we’re all crying but that’s okay. Children get older but they wanna be with each other everywhere. No more running away and drifting apart.
So, those are my two choices, two mashups to mark milestones in the Brittana relationship. The third, of course, being Hand In My Pocket/I Feel the Earth Move. Well, I do have an idea for yet another one but next time.
