Pentatonix spurs a cappella revival
Quintet emerges as sleeper musical sensation of the holiday season The Sing- Off Dec. 17, NBC
Maybe you stumbled across their CD in your mom’s car. Or maybe you’ve noticed the name is popping up everywhere lately. And maybe you have one simple question: Who or what’s a Pentatonix?
Allow us to introduce you: Pentatonix is an a cappella ( or unaccompanied vocal) group that’s been around for several years but has recently become inescapable with a hugely popular Christmas album.
The group’s That’s Christmas to Me debuted at No. 9 on the Billboard 200 in October and has steadily racked up sales and streams since.
Near the top of the Amazon, iTunes and Spotify charts, and in clips all over Facebook and other social media, the album sold 227,000 units in the first week of December alone — placing it at No. 2 on the Billboard chart with 408,000 total copies sold, Nielsen SoundScan says. ( Expect that to increase as the holiday season marches on.)
Yahoo notes it’s the highest- charting Christmas album by a group or duo since Mitch Miller & The Gang topped the chart in January 1962 with Holiday Sing Along With Mitch.
How did this happen? Thank reality TV, of course. Pentatonix ( a quintet of vocalists Scott Hoying, Mitch Grassi, Avi Kaplan and Kirstie Maldonado, along with beatboxer/ singer Kevin Olusola) broke through on NBC’s underappreciated reality show The Sing- Off.
For many listeners, it was their first exposure to Pentatonix, and certainly their first exposure to contemporary a cappella singing, complete with hiphopstyle vocal beatbox. Pentatonix helped make a cappella cool again.
And Pentatonix won’t be slowing down anytime soon, thanks to some cool NBC corporate synergy: They have appeared on Today, Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and the recent Christmas in Rockefeller Center tree- lighting. And of course, they’ll be back where it all began: The Sing- Off holiday special, which airs Dec. 17 on NBC.