Saturday night at Town Hall in New York, the Nor'easters of Northeastern University in Boston were crowned national champions at the International Competition of Collegiate A Cappella (ICCA), the entirely real battle dramatized in last summer's surprise hit Pitch Perfect.
On the same night, the organizers announced from the stage that 19 Entertainment, which produces American Idol, was creating a reality series following the groups through the competition. And NBC has announced that it's bringing back The Sing-Off, its a cappella series that was previously believed to be dead. Thus, the Saturday night competition took place while this style of music is having a bit of a moment, from which its advocates didn't shy away — "This is the real Pitch Perfect," went the on-stage introduction.
You should know, though, that there is a big lie surrounding college a cappella.
The big lie, perpetrated by the movie — aside from the fact that nobody wears precisely matching sparkly costumes like that — is that college a cappella is dominated by mobs of twee goobers standing around singing cheesy '80s/'90s music with enormous grins on their faces. This is not the case. In fact, after hearing the first seven songs, I turned to the friend who attended the show with me and said, "So at this point, the most upbeat song has been 'Cry Me A River.'"
The evening had opened with the runners-up from the previous night's high school competition, a group called Forte from Centreville, Ohio. (The winners: Vocal Rush, from Oakland, also performed.) Forte performed "Blown Away," a Carrie Underwood song about child abuse, death, and a natural disaster. (You can see them perform it here to get an idea, but please, I beg you: never judge the actual quality of a cappella singing by YouTube videos; a cappella particularly needs decent audio quality and mixing for you to have any idea how well constructed it actually is.) So "Blown Away" was very intense.
Then, the stage was turned over to the Chordials of Cornell University, who gave us covers of "Plain Gold Ring," most recently made popular by Kimbra (very intense); "Lies" by The Black Keys (very intense); and "Too Close" by Alex Clare, which you might know from various commercials. (Also: very intense.) In all three of their arrangements, one person really and truly suffered and wailed while everyone else sang very sad or angry backing vocals.
Next up were the Beltones of Belmont University (an ecumenical Christian university in Nashville), who performed a somber, river-centric set featuring Delta Rae's "Bottom Of The River," the Civil Wars' "Barton Hollow," and a medley of the traditional "Down To The River To Pray" and "Cry Me a River" (the Joe Cocker version of the standard, not the Justin Timberlake one).
It was somewhere around here that I began to realize guiltily that if a group of identically dressed women in what appeared to be flight attendant uniforms took the stage to perform "The Sign," I might welcome them for the good cheer alone. "This whole scene has gotten a lot more into sad music since I was in college," I said to my pal.
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