Sound Advice: Yoko Ono’s “Open Your Box”

Yoko Ono gets a bad rep. I think it has something to do with her involvement with the Beatles or something.

Few forget that she was a groundbreaking, madly genius (or genuinely mad?) musical artist who introduced free-associating performance art to pop music. Composed of deconstructive beats and graced by her one-of-a-kind vocal stylistics, the art of yodeling and shrieking was elevated to shocking and sometimes hilarious effect. Although ridiculed and vilified for the greater part of her musical career, she had influential admirers who adopted her style and brought its elements forward. In particular, the Icelandic chanteuse Björk has been most remembered in recent years as the primary advocate of using the primal scream in pop music. Much of her performance art and musical recordings were focused on channeling baser mortal desire and suffering through song. It doesn’t have to be verbalized, she argued, it just has to be communicated.

Perhaps no one single piece of music has so summarily captured the art of Ono’s music as her 1971 single, “Open Your Box”.

Dream Mash-up: Glee and Björk

Dear producers of Glee:

You have so far given us the Madonna special, built an episode of self-empowerment around Lady Gaga, and gave us a quietly powerful interpretation of Fleetwood Mac’s seminal Rumors album. You are clearly into doing themed episodes and next season you may be looking to do more. I know you’re on summer hiatus, which is precisely why this is the perfect time for me to write this to you, so that you can have time to create the plotline and clear the rights.

My humble suggestion to you is to structure your next themed episode entirely around the music of … BJÖRK.

Yes, Björk.

Think about it. Her music, being so over-the-top and unusual, requiring such complex and unorthodox instrumentation as vocal beat-boxing, Inuit throat-singing, drum machines, triangles and full-scale orchestras, are ripe for choral treatment. It would be the ultimate challenge for your show!

Yes, I know you and she tried negotiating rights for a song of hers to be used in the past but it didn’t work. But still, why not entice the pop iconoclast with an entire episode around her music??? And I LOVE that you tried.

The visceral, violent imagery in Björk’s music is perfectly suited to the uncontrollable emotional diarrhea of the characters. The music is so far removed from conventional musical arrangement and experimental that it would certainly make for some of the most innovative music you’ll have ever produced thus far. Plus, think of just how confused Middle America would be by having you dedicate an entire episode around such an unusual concept, but it would also help them expand their musical repertoire.

Just think of it as Tina and Mike having a weird dream about her when they went out for dim sum and ate too much chicken feet, watched a marathon of Ms. Swan clips from Mad TV, and fell asleep. They wake up, tell everyone about their “weird dreams”, and voila! Mr. Schue gives them all copies of her collected works that he had in high school (which his shrewish ex-wife won’t let him play or listen to, natch) and chooses them all to pick one. Or it’ll just be a bizarro episode like that one black-and-white Felicity episode from 1999.

Here are some brilliant suggestions for each character to sing, and the signature line from each song that would be truest to each character’s essence.