Billie Eilish ProfileOn October 21st, Disney announced the much anticipated reboot of Ryan Murphy’s hit – yet controversial – series Glee set to return streaming on Disney+/Hulu under the production of 20th Century Studios.
It has been over a decade since the much beloved characters of the highly satirical and somewhat problematic series ended. With each successive season exploding with a creativity that veered on the side of unrealistic (then again, what is realistic about musicals? Can we really expect everything on television to be confined to the box of naturalism, honestly?) many speculate whether the reboot will inspire a revival of the early seasons or go all out bonkers like the latter seasons.
In spite of the shows on-air and off-air controversies Glee won 6 Emmy awards and was nominated for 40 in total with 207 songs on the Billboard Hot 100 and to this day attracts 4.1 million monthly listeners on Spotify for the various Glee covers.
With rumours circulating that Lea Michelle is likely to reprise her role as Rachel Berry and the possibility of Chris Colfer, Darren Criss, Jenna Ushkowitz, Heather Morris, and Chord Overstreet potentially all making a return the show that reigned from 2009 to 2015 has a lot to answer in a reboot.
Will we see a new ensemble of high-schoolers? (and will the cast be determined in a brutal The Glee Project way?), how will the show address and handle the passing of three original cast members since the show concluded? And how will the show's specific satirical style of comedy land in the political climate of the 2020s?
All those questions we will leave to Ryan Murphy and the streaming gods of the media conglomerate of Disney, today let’s take a look at 10 songs we think should be covered on Glee that were released after the initial series concluded.
Bad Guy – Billie Eilish
The late 2010s saw the meteoric rise of super pop star, Billie Eilish. With the powerfully angsty and release of WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO?
One track that could be covered and given new life to any number of teenage situations, or even address the real life bullying allegations and redemption of Lea Michelle, would be Bad Guy. While this might feel tasteless and vulgar there is absolutely no way it isn’t hitting the writer’s room as ideas are generated and popular US-driven sync opportunities fly around at meetings in LA wherever major record labels go to dine with television executives to spike streams and preserve a copyrights lifespan through a new master.
This would be controversial enough to get both fans and critics listening and talking about it, creating the perfect storm of user-generated content on all social platforms to relaunch the new series.
It’s been a good seven years since Eilish's debut album launched and so a boost in royalty revenue from old material could also see a reinvestment into another world tour or album from Eilish, and the ability to take new risks in their career as they approach their 30s, so really is Bad Guy and the controversy that could accompany it really all that bad for everyone whatever stance they decide to take in their TikTok video essays?
drivers license – Olivia Rodrigo
It is without any doubt that Disney favourite, Olivia Rodrigo, will make an appearance in Glee – be it in a special guest role or through her catalogue of songs.
As fans in Australia eagerly await to hear her announce Australian dates for her latest album, a sync opportunity through Glee could be the financial motivator to get a five capital city Australian tour on the map for 2027.
Whilst Rodrigo has produced three stupendous pop albums that will likely feature many tracks across a renewed season of the show it would be remiss to avoid the obvious and return to the 2021 SOUR album that saw Disney stars speculatively feud across releases (Remember Joshua Bassett’s EP and Skin by Sabrina Carpenter?)
drivers license is the perfect teen breakup song that could slide into a diegetic remix and introduce us to a new teen ensemble. Whilst songs like deja vu directly reference Glee suggesting any of the above named artists could potentially be invited for a messy reunion they couldn’t turn down as superfans themselves, this would be another controversial production element in line with the Glee spirit of being able to do something risqué enough that you just cannot look away.
Of course, with Expectations being remixed with Chappell Roan so recently it isn’t the only route Rodrigo’s team could go with the writer’s room over at 20thh Century.
Good Luck, Babe! – Chappell Roan
Speaking of Roan, we know the queer icon herself is primed for a Glee remix. Her 2023 album The Rise And Fall Of A Midwest Princess even geographically aligns with Lima, Ohio where the fictional William McKinley High School is set.
Whilst Pink Pony Club is touted as a Kurt Hummel song that feels a little dated given a decade has passed since the character has gone onto coming into his own and likely doesn’t need to experience that queer coming of age storyline further.
However, in adapting to the changing tides and sensitivities of our current era it would be in good-faith for Glee to spotlight other queer relationships that both could use the visibility, representation and positive comedic softening that gay men have received across the years.
This is where the offering of Good Luck, Babe! would allow a human approach to creating storylines that are both empathetic, juicy and well-rounded for femme, non-binary or queer relations to form and fall.
If you know lesbian drama, and it has some of the best, wildest, couldn’t write it if it wasn’t real kind of plot-twists ever, then you know the realm of Glee and its absurd season arcs fit perfectly to mould of any whirlwind WLW (women loving women) drama you’ve heard over a cocktail on a Wednesday night. Good Luck, Babe! would have been the perfect hit for Santana in the original Glee, which brings us to the next song…
Call Your Mom (feat. Lizzy McAlpine) – Noah Kahan
This one is to address that the show, to its credit, did approach the real-life death of Cory Monteith rather sensitively. Glee also chooses to tell stories for several minorities and people who are vulnerable to mental health issues across their lifetime.
With Noah Kahan’s rising popularity and a trajectory that is anticipated to continue growing with his songs featuring on the Sunrise Of The Reaping soundtrack, it’s time to visit a song that will bring the mood down for a moment: Call Your Mom.
This song touches on the kind of support and raw elephant left in the room with a former cast mired with tragedy and complex topics that satire and comedy cannot encompass or tackle in isolation.
Pair the 2023 Stick Season album track with its feature artist, Lizzy McAlpine, and you have the potential to create a duet or ensemble number that can draw those skeptical to the show's history in with a level of maturity and growth that may be unexpected from production.
Kahan’s work is intrinsically deep and thoughtful which would add a nice tonal shift for some things that the original series may have treated too lightly in the initial run and with Kahan’s popularity among folk and country lovers Glee could capitalise on that growing market as it booms through the 2020’s.
Girl, so confusing – Charli xcx
Speaking of duets, why not throw the 2024 infamous Brat album remix into contention. Charli xcx and Lorde ooze the kind of tension, messiness and redemption that Glee thrives on and no better song can we see this in than Girl, so confusing.
With a cast where Mercedes and Santana were constantly at odds with their frenemy Rachel Berry it seems only natural that as the reboot ebbs and flows we see character growth and progression where working out who we are in relationship to others can be utterly chaotic and help us realise that we, too, create the problems with others in our heads just as much as we do in reality.
Television thrives on drama, but if that drama fails to resolve then we might as well just watch the news on TikTok as that lacks as much of a payoff as poorly written fiction. Brat also is universal in its marketing, look at how Kamala Harris and the Democrats attempted to incorporate it into their campaign in 2024, so it has plenty of room to be referenced and played upon within the zeitgeist.
How adults co-opt youth culture and use it to relate to younger generations is a fine tension point worth exploring with a returning cast that meets a newer, youthful cast full of Gleeks that will most likely believe they are the proprietors of cultural currency, Brat creating generational tension across the characters may even open us up to an even more obvious generational pain-point: 6-7.
I’m The Man – ADÉLA
It may be too close to call, but with the recent Laneway Festival line-up announced don’t go writing off seeing the catalogue of ADÉLA make an appearance in a Glee reboot. Whilst we only have the 2026 PRIMA album to work with and two songs charting heavily across the zeitgeist in this moment: Ain’t In LA and Nicole Kidman, there is a chance for one of the B-side tracks to find new life.
Presenting, I’m The Man, a track that could easily be taken out of its original context and used for brilliant comedic affect to address the manosphere or any number of personality disorders that have been diagnosed by the armchair therapists of the internet in this era of human history.
This song presents sex appeal, class division, status, sexual fluidity, and myriad other elements, lyrically and tonally, to be exploited for the purpose of satire and it would continue to raise the pop star's prominence in the musical landscape as she comes into her own as an artist.
Given Glee’s history of getting creative with their covers of other artists works this isn’t too great a stretch to speculate on with a modern pop number that has the potential to raise eyebrows on either side of the political spectrum, making ADÉLA prime Glee content that could leverage the actual artist herself to a far more sustained career in the music industry.
Rush – Troye Sivan
We would be remiss to not include an Australian in this line-up, but there had to be one that rose to international fame at the right time and carried the ever-evolving status of gay men where they can be celebrated and critiqued fairly for their place in the world post-Obama’s America.
Glee celebrated, if imperfectly, diversity and the series will feature gay men, there is no denying that inevitability. Cue Troye Sivan’s 2023 album Something To Give Each Other.
In its 32-minute runtime the album explores queer male sexuality for everything it can be both internally and externally touching on rhythms that speak to our wounds, like in One Of Your Girls, to the more bacchanalian pleasures found in the case for Rush.
It is the latter which gives us something cheeky, fun, and high-octane energy that can set up a great dance number, reference points from the original artist and address adolescent themes in the new streaming iteration of Glee that the prime-time television series could not quite touch.
Sivan’s also got cultural currency in 2026 with his latest album She’s The Best going even further into the evolution of queer identity and how it expresses itself inter-personally, although at times rather explicitly in a way that Glee may not be able to adapt, so there is room to mark growth in how we represent queer identities in satire from the 2010s to the 2020s.
A Glee cover for Sivan could see him sustain a career as long as Madonna or Kylie Minogue’s if done well and done right, perhaps he then could rise to be as iconic as his own idol, Nicole Kidman.
TEXAS HOLD 'EM – Beyoncé
If there’s one character that won fans over and yet always felt like the underdog it was Mercedes Jones. This diva had the voice to belt out powerfully emotive notes and reach angelic qualities as she embodied her inner-Beyoncé and that’s exactly why TEXAS HOLD 'EM comes into play.
Now, before asking why this track when Lemonade and Renaissance both exist post-Glee too, let’s remember Glee’s potential to exploit a song, and a demographic, out of context. Beyoncé has enough albums and enough of a legacy to probably have an episode dedicated to her alone the way Lady Gaga, Britney Spears and Madonna all once had in the original season.
Cowboy Carter, however, came with its own fair share of controversy when it was released in 2024. An album that challenged genres, identity, and who gets to participate in those genres and identities or adapt them. Texas Hold ‘Em has enough lyrical context to be misshapen to play into a storyline that fits the current politics that the U.S is going through at the moment, and the song has the kind of upbeat tempo that would allow for these themes and topics to be explored in the tone Glee is known for.
It is camp, it is vocally powerful and it draws opinions out of people without hesitation. Another track off the album that could play into the controversy is Beyoncé's cover of Dolly Parton’s Jolene. This cover, whilst permitted by the late Parton, also drew criticism and so to cover it again under a Glee rebranding would double-down on the irritation of critics, whilst serving a storyline of a character who chooses to not take the high road when cheated on.
Think of the shared and earned media that would be generated out of utter spite for this cover of a cover? It’s basically free advertising from the people who disagree with you and very on brand for the show runners of Glee.
thank u, next – Ariana Grande
Without diving back into Wicked, as most musicals predate Glee, running off its relevance to both Glee and its cinematic release would suggest that Ariana Grande’s prolific catalogue is a safe bet for the reboot.
Another teen star turned pop diva (Nickelodeon instead of Disney, however), Ariana is a real-life Gleek through and through, and she has the sense of humour to laugh at herself if her SNL skits and appearance on Don’t Look Up stand testimony to her character.
With a history of famous escapades and minor controversies that came with them she blends heartbreak with empowerment in a way that an overly confident Glee character would relish in. thank u, next leans into that self-aware but not self-actualised antagonist arc that has the potential to give us our favourite anti-hero that will be re-clipped in fan edits on TikTok for years to come in nostalgia content.
If there was ever to be a return of the character Gwen this would be the growth we could expect to see from her, and given that there’s dark and difficult issues to explain away with Puck if any characters related to him reappear this could be an easy-out that preserves the story and protects it from the actual reality of the late actor.
Don’t Start Now – Dua Lipa
Speaking of empowering breakup songs from the pop girlies, Future Nostalgia was released during the height of the pandemic in 2020 meaning almost everyone was listening to it whilst binge-watching Tiger King between Zoom calls from their boss.
Don’t Start Now can be played either through the new teenage ensemble or to explain a gripe between the original cast in their reunion. Not only would it provide ample and meaty opportunities for the plot it’s going to give us the dance numbers we have come to expect from Glee, where the high school budget is as blown out as the fact that every kid at school seems to be in the auditorium supporting the arts despite throwing slushies in their face a scene later.
Dua Lipa’s sample album deftly sits within the realm of controversy that Glee exists within with copyright infringement cases plaguing the artist over her song Levitating (all three cases were dismissed by their respective judges). This could see that particular track omitted from an episode in the franchise to avoid legal repercussions but if the show runners were to tackle bigger problems facing society in the 2020’s it would be delightful to see Boys Will Be Boys tastefully incorporated into a storyline that tackles the ever-growing rise of extreme misogyny that does plague high schools at the moment.
This would be a moment for an anthem to really reclaim the title of tackling controversy in Glee’s stylised satire and framing it in a way that leaves the audience empowered to start those conversations at the dinner table and have a wider impact than receive a cheap laugh that will be criticised online in the years to come.
