Pentatonix, the inexplicably successful a cappella group known mostly for its covers and medleys, is a pack of vultures.
They scavenge off of other successful pop acts, greedily gobbling up fun beats and choruses and spitting out overproduced, silly nonsense. They deliver their bastardizations with a ridiculously sanitized earnestness — anyone claiming to be a fan of them and not Kidz Bop is lying to themselves, because the only difference is that Pentatonix has supposedly hit puberty.
All right, that’s unfair — baritone hat wearer Avi Kaplan is clearly an adult. You can tell because he’s the deep bass to the others’ baby-smooth harmonizing. Lead blonde guy Scott Hoying sounds like the latest boy band clone to escape the factory, and little glasses man Mitch Grassi sings like a lost member of the Jackson Five.
Their videos, many of which go past tens of millions of views on Youtube, reflect the worst of their middle school sense of aesthetic. Their early videos feature them sitting in neat rows, and it’s hard to think of anything worse than when they smile and stare sultrily at the camera, like they're seducing me by making "dum dum dum" noises with their mouths.
Like I said, it’s hard to think of anything worse, but somehow, their music videos manage. The “Radioactive” video is a masterclass in tryhard, absurd seriousness as the Pentatonix crew tries to look convincing wearing full steampunk regalia and strategically placed smudges of dirt.
“But they’re vocally talented!” screeches the 7-year-old subscribed to their Youtube channel. Yes, but with great power comes great responsibility, and Pentatonix is the equivalent of Spider Man spraying web in old ladies’ faces. Their clear talents make their overproduced, overblown and overcooked covers even harder to bear. And while their mediocre original pieces are mostly harmless, they insist on taking the rest of pop music down with them. They take bad songs and make them worse, and take good songs and make them obnoxious.
They do it by squeezing out every bit of subtlety and replacing it with sputters, boops and too-smooth harmonies. It’s like taking a dinner and replacing every course with bubble gum — at a certain point, it becomes oppressively cute.
Pentatonix is ridiculously successful, so whatever they’re doing is working for them. But when they stare into my soul and hum their way through music that was, once upon a time, listenable — that’s when they go too far.