With Grammy Awards, multiple number 1 albums and songs across the globe and over 10million fans across social media life’s pretty good at the moment for a cappella group Pentatonix. Scott Hoying spoke briefly with bc’s resident fan Ronnie Cheng about success, those videos and life on the road.
Pentatonix, currently on tour to promote their self-titled fourth album and performing in Hong Kong on the 22nd September at AsiaWorld-Expo, or PTX as they are known by their fans first rose to fame in 2011 by winning the third season of NBC’s The Sing-Off which earned them $200,000 and a recording contract with Sony owned Madison Gate Records.
The a cappella group only formed a few months before entering, but the 5 piece – Scott Hoying, baritone; Mitch Grassi, tenor; Kirsten Maldonado, mezzo-soprano; Avi Kaplan, bass / vocal percussion; and Kevin Olusola, beatboxer / vocal percussion – were pretty confident going in that they had what it took to win. Quitting school, not something they advise their many young fans to do, to pursue their dream.
After winning Sing-Off, we knew there was going to be this long period before the album came out so as we love singing we started covering and re-interpreting and releasing some of our favourite songs on YouTube explained Scott. The videos including Gangnam Style (PSY) and We Are Young (Fun) went viral, a modern version of the gigging and touring that bands used to have to do, created a massive and expectant fanbase before the release of their debut album PTX-I. Why were the videos so successful? “What they do is they show our personalities, they show other sides of us that fans can connect to beyond the music”
“It has been quite the rollercoaster, so many ups and downs” Scott continued on the difficulties they faced as an a capella group “Without YouTube we probably wouldn’t be where we are now”. PTX’s video view numbers are massive their Daft Punk medley has over 207million views while a cover of Christmas classic Little Drummer Boy has almost 85million and that’s just those measured on their official page.
After four big selling EPs PTX-1, PTXmas, PTX-II, PTX-III, That’s Christmas to Me and two platinum albums of a cappella covers the band in early 2015 informed their fans that were going to write and record original music. The result the eponymous album Pentatonix debuted at Number 1 on the US Billboard album charts in October 2015.
On tour to promote the album Scott said “There’s a lot of effort pre-tour, it’s hard to pick the songs for the tour everyone has a favourite and putting together ‘a killer set list’ will never please everyone so it’s balance. And then it begins. From there it’s just a whirlwind, from city to city to city – it’s non-stop”. Scott continued “We have wonderful fans and putting faces to names we only know as comments on social media is great. They’re so generous and creative. It’s their support that 100% got us to where we are, so we’re just grateful and happy to be able to see them in person and perform for them – though sadly just aren’t enough hours in the day to say hello to everyone”. In closing Scott said “It’s humbling that we can inspire and bring such happiness to so many people”.
Pentatonix
Date: 8pm, 22 September, 2016
Venue: AsiaWorld-Expo, Hall 10
Tickets: $788, $588, $388 from HKTicketing