The all-singing, all-dancing high school teen dramedy Glee has been a huge success and the last few months have seen many of us become die-hard “Gleeks”. With the songs featured in each episode from the show released on a weekly basis through online music stores, it was only a matter of time before 20th Century Fox wheeled out a full soundtrack.

Volume 1 is 17 tracks covering the first nine episodes, consisting of a mixture of pop, rock, hip hop and showtune covers we’ve come to know and love. The breakout hit cover of Journey’s Don’t Stop Believin’ opens the soundtrack and takes us right back to when the series first burst, rather unexpectedly, onto our screens. This song is all earworm and it’s easy to see why it was a hit in the Australian charts when it was released.

The Glee cast have a knack for making songs damn catchy and with the downright campness of the show, songs you previously hated might become new favourites. Suddenly you find yourself bouncing along to Kanye’s Gold Digger or you’re moved by the cast’s tearful ballad of Avril Lavinge’s Keep Holding On. And who knew Jordin Sparks and Chris Brown’s No Air could be even tolerable?

The classic showtunes keep the die-hard theatre gleeks happy with Broadway star and all around amazing actress Kristin Chenoweth belting out Maybe This Time from Caberet and female lead Lea Michele and Glee’s (suprisingly) only gay boy Chris Colfer performing Defying Gravity from Wicked.

The liberal application of autotuning for some of the weaker singers (most notably the male lead Cory Monteith) at times feels unnecessary and spoils the amateur karaoke feel of the series that makes it so unique. Also, rather unfortunately, the amazing pseudoephedrine-fuelled mashups of Halo/Walking on Sunshine and It’s My Life/Confessions were left off the soundtrack, which is a disappointment as they were two of the best songs to feature in the series so far.

There’s no denying that the soundtrack is for Gleeks and Gleeks alone, however it’s a solid first soundtrack for a show that’s only had 9 episodes. And given the ongoing popularity of the series, along with the news that the producers of Glee have secured the rights to Madonna’s catalog, we Gleeks have a lot to look forward to in future episodes and, inevitably, future soundtracks.

Glee Soundtrack, Season 1 is out now through Sony.

Listen to one of the tracks here: