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PROVO — This year marks Vocal Point's 25th anniversary, and alumni and current members of the popular a cappella group joined together to create a mashup music video that was released Thursday.
Vocal Point was born in 1991 when three Brigham Young University students witnessed some east coast glee clubs making instrument sounds with their mouths, according to the group’s artistic director, McKay Crockett.
“They thought it was so interesting and so cool when they saw it on the east coast that they wanted to bring an experience like that back to BYU,” Crockett said. “So they drew up fliers with Sharpie markers and photocopied them and put them up all around campus, and they held an audition and that’s kind of what started Vocal Point.”
About three years after it was launched, it became officially affiliated with the university.
“Ever since then it’s just been kind of a great adventure and we’re honored to be along for the ride,” Crockett said.
The group has accomplished some amazing feats, such as performing at every Olympic venue in 2002 and winning the Varsity Vocals International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella in 2006.
The group also made it to the top 5 on NBC’s “The Sing Off,” and some members of the group have been on “The Voice,” Crockett said.
Vocal Point videos such as its Newsies Medley and its cover of Pharrell Williams’ “Happy” have received more than 1 million views.
In their latest video published Thursday, the group sings 25 pop songs from the last 25 years. “Singing 25 years of pop music into a cohesive four-minute mashup might sound easy, but it’s definitely not easy,” Crockett said. “And so that took a long time to put it all together. But once we put that together, we sent it out to the alumni and encouraged them to learn it and ... when they got here for the ... anniversary celebration, we put them all in a gym ... we taught them choreography and put this crazy huge undertaking of a mashup music video together.”
The video — which was shot in one take — is set in a small town in the 1950s and it features a woman who is supposed to be a Hollywood star trying to pick her leading man, according to Crockett.
