Pentatonix is arguably the most successful a cappella singing group in pop music history. But the road to stardom has had plenty of high and low notes along the way.
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00:00Pentatonix is arguably the most successful acapella singing group in pop music history,
00:05but the road to stardom has had plenty of high and low notes along the way.
00:10Growing up in Arlington, Texas, future Pentatonix founders Kirsten Maldonado and Scott Hoying
00:15met when they were just 9 years old.
00:17As kids, both were entranced by musical theater and became friends while participating in
00:21local theatrical productions.
00:23It was through theater that Hoying met Mitch Grassi, when they were both cast in a production
00:27of the musical Annie.
00:29All three attended the same high school and became good friends, bound together by their
00:32shared love of music.
00:34Hoying told Entertainment.ie,
00:36"...we've been best friends our whole lives."
00:38The story of Pentatonix began in the high school choir room.
00:42That's where the three learned to blend their voices and create harmonies.
00:45Then a unique opportunity presented itself, a local Arlington radio contest in which aspiring
00:50singers were encouraged to submit a recording of a performance, with the winner getting
00:54to meet the cast of the Fox musical TV series Glee.
00:57The three friends formed a trio and taped themselves performing a rendition of the Beyoncé-Lady
01:02Gaga collab, Telephone.
01:04They didn't win, but they didn't give up.
01:05As Maldonado told Sweetie High,
01:07"...we ended up singing at a choir concert and it got a lot of attention so we just kept
01:11doing it."
01:12Video of that performance, and the group's stunning three-part harmony, was posted on
01:15YouTube back in 2010 and has since racked up more than 1.4 million views.
01:20After that overwhelming response, Hoying got the idea to form a small acapella combo with
01:25some big voices, telling USC's Daily Trojan,
01:28"...they thought it would be cool to have a little group where we could go and belt
01:31it out, unlike most groups that have around 16 people."
01:34It was the seed of the idea that would eventually become their five-person acapella act.
01:39After graduation, the three singers went their separate ways, but in 2011, Hoying heard about
01:44The Sing-Off, an NBC singing competition for acapella groups.
01:47He reached out to Maldonado and Grassi, who agreed to audition, but they were two singers
01:52short of the five required to compete.
01:54On a recommendation, Hoying recruited Avi Kaplan, who sang bass.
01:58Eager to add a beatboxer to the mix, Hoying and the others discovered an online video
02:02of Kevin Alusheler effortlessly beatboxing while playing the cello.
02:05"...my friend had showed me Kevin's video and I knew he was the missing piece to our
02:10group."
02:11Hoying told the Daily Trojan,
02:12"...we thought he was unbelievable.
02:13His musicianship was unreal."
02:14And then there were five, but they needed a name.
02:17"...it's normally pentatonic scale, we added the X to make it cooler."
02:20"...because we're futuristic, X is always futuristic."
02:24There wasn't much time to rehearse their song, Telephone, before the audition.
02:27Maldonado recalled,
02:28"...the day before the audition we all got down and were able to sing through the song
02:32and it honestly was just amazing how well it flowed together."
02:35They were right.
02:36Their audition landed them a spot on the show, and as the competition progressed, the five
02:40members of Pentatonix began to gel, both musically and personally.
02:44As they advanced through round after round, the idea that they might actually win the
02:47whole thing, which included a record deal with Epic Records and a $200,000 prize, was
02:53becoming more real.
02:54Then came the semifinals, for which they planned to perform Florence and the Machines' The
02:58Dog Days Are Over.
02:59As Hoying remembered,
03:00"...our dress rehearsal was a total disaster, but in the actual performance, everything
03:04came together and it was the most magical moment.
03:06It was our best performance on the show.
03:08The audience went wild and I knew we were going to the finale."
03:11Congratulations!
03:12You are the Sing Off champions!"
03:16Judge Sara Bareilles offered high praise for the group in an interview with Billboard,
03:19saying,
03:20"...I think they're innovators, pushing boundaries in the right ways.
03:22They have an incredible chemistry."
03:24Winning the Sing Off put Pentatonix on the cusp of a successful music career.
03:29During a press conference after their win, the group was asked about what was on the
03:32horizon, to which Hoying replied,
03:33"...We're going to just do some gigs and do press, and hopefully put an album together
03:37and just become recording artists.
03:39Hopefully we can make our music transfer over to the mainstream and be the first mainstream
03:43acapella group."
03:44"...We would like to be seen as a regular band that just happens to use our voices as
03:49our instruments."
03:50With their epic records contract and $200,000 in their collective pocket, the group decided
03:55to strike while the iron was hot.
03:57That meant leaving college and relocating to L.A.
03:59It should have been an exciting, happy time, but speaking with Civilian about those early
04:03days, Maldonado shared,
04:05"...It was so hard and I wasn't at all ready.
04:07All of a sudden it was like a whirlwind of things were happening.
04:10For a moment it felt like it was all going to happen."
04:12But their overnight success turned out to be more ephemeral than they imagined.
04:16While they were preparing to record their debut album for Epic, the group got bad news.
04:21The label dropped them, reportedly because the Pentatonix wasn't a fit for the direction
04:25the label was heading.
04:26They were discouraged, but once again, the singers didn't quit.
04:30Instead, they recorded acapella covers of popular songs and posted them on YouTube.
04:34It worked.
04:35These creative arrangements attracted legions of viewers to their YouTube channel.
04:39Some of the videos went viral in a big way, such as the group's cover of Goethe's Somebody
04:43That I Used to Know, which racked up more than 75 million views.
04:47Clearly, their music connected with a vast audience, and Pentatonix seized the moment,
04:52using the power of YouTube to reach fans and take their career to the next level.
04:56In an interview with the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Grassi shared,
04:59"...It's still such a new concept to my brain, but the proof is in the pudding."
05:03That pudding, as of early 2024, consists of more than 20 million subscribers, with the
05:08group's videos receiving more than 6 billion views to date.
05:12The massive following Pentatonix garnered on YouTube didn't go unnoticed by the music
05:16industry.
05:17Their social media success spurred the release of the first Pentatonix EP, PTX Vol. 1.
05:23Then came a holiday album, PTXmas, followed by PTX Vol. 2, all of which were released
05:28through a small label, Madison Gate Records.
05:31Their albums were so successful that executives at Sony, the parent company of Epic, who'd
05:35dropped them, decided to take another look.
05:37In the meantime, Pentatonix won the 2014 Grammy for their track, Daft Punk, in the Best Arrangement,
05:43Instrumental, or Acapella category.
05:45Soon, Pentatonix was signed to RCA, Sony's flagship label.
05:49This time, the group was able to negotiate much better terms than those afforded to winners
05:53of a TV singing competition.
05:55Hoying explained to Cincinnati Magazine,
05:57Honestly, it was the best possible scenario.
06:00In a graceful statement to Billboard, the group said,
06:10Pentatonix's self-titled debut album, their first release on a major label, hit No. 1.
06:16The album took a while to come to fruition, but that wasn't necessarily a bad thing.
06:20Speaking to Time in 2015, Grassi explained,
06:28because it's not an easy thing to tackle.
06:30Since then, they've earned five Grammy nominations, with three wins, been on the road since 2012,
06:35and released several successful albums.
06:38Pentatonix's success defied conventional industry thinking.
06:41Acapella groups haven't traditionally made much of a splash on the music scene.
06:44In a 2015 Rolling Stone interview, Hoying explained,
06:58The group proved their point, and more.
07:00In the collab department, they've worked with a bucket list of superstars, including Miley
07:05Cyrus, Backstreet Boys, and Reba McEntire.
07:07They joined Stevie Wonder to perform That's the Way of the World during the 2016 Grammy
07:12Awards and, in a peak moment, recorded a cover of Dolly Parton's classic Jolene, Parton herself
07:18joining them on the track.
07:19A thrilled Maldonado told Oklahoman,
07:28I've ever met in my entire life and, like, amazing.
07:31So we've been really, really blessed."
07:34There was no bigger sign that Pentatonix had entered the mainstream than the group's cameo
07:37appearance in Pitch Perfect 2.
07:40They're featured in a brief scene as a Canadian singing group, putting an acapella spin on
07:44Journey's Any Way You Want It.
07:46The film's vocal producer, Deke Sharon, explained in a behind-the-scenes featurette that including
07:50Pentatonix in a movie about an acapella competition was a no-brainer.
07:54I think it's really important for a lot of fans of acapella because as one of the groups
07:58at the forefront of the modern acapella movement says we're not just paying homage to what's
08:02going on in acapella right now, we're incorporating it into the movie.
08:06In 2015, Pentatonix On My Way Home, a documentary about the group's 2015 world tour, was released.
08:12According to Arvie Kaplan, the film offered fans an authentic glimpse of life on the road.
08:16He also had good things to say about the directors' choices, saying,
08:19I love how it shows the silly part of all of us.
08:21Each person has a moment of showing that aspect of themselves."
08:25Fans were shook by a May 2017 post on Facebook, announcing a major shift in the universe of
08:30the group.
08:31Kaplan announced,
08:32I've decided to take a step back from Pentatonix.
08:35Kaplan admitted the increasing demands of recording and touring had become too much
08:38for him.
08:39In October of that year, Hoying announced that Matt Salih would be joining the group
08:43to sing bass.
08:44As fans will attest, Salih instantly fit in and continues to contribute to the group's
08:48ongoing success.
08:49Six years after joining Pentatonix, he told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that he wasn't
08:54officially hired by the group until he met with Kaplan and got his blessing, saying,
08:58I'm still pinching myself.
08:59It felt like a true passing of the torch.
09:02Just weeks before he announced his departure from the group, Kaplan released his first
09:06solo single, credited to Avril and the Sequoias.
09:09His debut EP arrived not too long after.
09:12In 2019, Kaplan announced his first solo tour and in 2022 released his first full-fledged
09:18The other members of the group have remained in the fold while also branching out on their
09:22own.
09:23Olu Shulla was the first member of the group to dabble in solo work.
09:26The result was The Renegade, a five-song EP that combined his two musical loves, beatboxing
09:31and classical cello.
09:32He explained to The Hollywood Reporter,
09:33I don't want people to say it's beautiful.
09:35I want them to say, wow, it's artistic, interesting, and it doesn't cheapen the instrument.
09:39Maldonado released her debut solo single, Break a Little, in 2017, followed by her first
09:45solo EP, titled Love.
09:46The following year, she fulfilled a long-held dream when she made her Broadway debut, starring
09:51in the musical Kinky Boots.
09:53It's actually the show that I've seen the most on Broadway, not because I was going
09:57to be in it, but just because of the show and the people that were starring in it that
10:00I wanted to go see.
10:02In 2021, Grassy also went solo with Roses, his foray into indie electronic music under
10:07his extracurricular musical persona, Mesa.
10:10Finally, Hoying launched his solo musical career in 2023 with the release of Parallel,
10:15a seven-track debut album.
10:17Hoying told the Associated Press,
10:19I have always been a little bit scared to be vulnerable and kind of put myself out there
10:22as a solo act, and I feel like this timing is just so perfect because I'm entering this
10:26very beautiful era of my life, like producing and making music and being more motivated
10:31than ever."
10:32It seems that together, or solo, the members of Pentatonix have nearly unlimited musical
10:36talent to showcase.