Warning in a that this week I am probably kind of hating. My head is in a very different space musically this week compared to where you seem to be with this top list, it is like all pop and that is just not the space I am in right now. Also it is all listened to from iPaid speakers, so it really isn't fair on the songs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ob5UJS2WwQ8Collabro
I think this probably gets my vote musically I guess? It isn't that I am super attached to it. It isn't terrible delivery but it also doesn't feel amazing, but I am also not really all about Les Mis as a musical either. I like the story and the melodrama and think it is technically very interesting, but it isn't my favourite thing ever either.
Those shoes are pretty fucking terrible though and I really can't support that kind of fashion. The shirt the guy in the middle is wearing is pretty bad as is the guy on the left's jacket. The only reason these five guys don't look the most like a bunch of Ken dolls straight out of their blister packs this week is because that is literally the point of Pentatonix film clip.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2a5zTTYaNl8Ailee
I like a lot more of the fashion here (because Korea doesn't give a fuck and just goes all out over the top ops with infinite different outfits). The song is just kind of a pop song though. Verse, chorus, rap bridge, kind of eh.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HPpLKO-_nIDash Berlin & Jay Cosmic
This felt like pop Teflon. Easy listening acoustic track of a guy and a girl. It washed over me and I barely noticed it was there
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsIHw8Bsyw4FEMM
Thiiiiiiiis was pretty trashy. Trashy in the way I usually like even, but it just couldn't get into it. Maybe in the few months following Turn Down For What you need to really bring your a game for that kind of thing to really register again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rrsV2w0qVYCrayon Pop
This feels like a group of 14 year olds trying to sound like the 80s without the cocaine. Cocaine is what made the 80s what they were. I dunno, maybe it translates in a way that works better, but it feels really tame and cheap. If you are going to sound like something from the era when you could get away with sounding like a 8 bar Casio electric piano beat on loop you had better dress like a drag queen, have an eye patch and have the rest of your band featured as a human maypole.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScDIkNcqZjEPentatonix
To be honest? I am not sure if it is because I didn't get to hear nearly as clean a sound source as usual, but this felt like some of the weakest Pentatonix stuff I have heard. Mixing in Lindsey Stirling felt like appeasing to fan bases and not actually doing much musically interesting. It leaves Lindsay having to leave production in someone else's hands pretty much, so it is just her instrumentally without her production, which is fine, but it just means she is a violin track here over the top of a band impressive vocalists. But hey she is playing along with their cellist. Which unfortunately is what kills he Pentatonix component. Two instruments hitting different chunks of the audio range leaves them with sod all to work with. The bass and into the baritone range is covered. Between the lead and Violin part most of the upper register is covered. So the other three members of the band feel like a human drum kit really. It is just all together the whole being significantly less than the sum of its parts.
The video is creepy as fuck too. The make up is kind of ick honestly and a lot of the visual effects are cheap to the point of pushing uncanny valley effect for me. I would have preferred a cheaper look than they went. Embrace the low budget.
Haters gonna hate though. I have been in a week full of wanting metal or funk. Both of those together makes me want Tom Morello guitar lines, so lots of RATM and Street Sweeper Social Club. That really pushes me away from Pop, especially modern pop.
