123 million views.

Alright, I'm prone to overthinking insignificant and unimportant things. I actually like that about myself, in contrast to pretty much everyone else. But being a musically inclined person myself, I just can't let this video by Pentatonix go. You've probably seen it:

1

Every one of their faces annoys me. Perhaps that's a result of association, I'm not sure.

2

All their clothes annoy me. You've got the girl with the boobs on the right, which is basically serving as a distraction from their average singing capabilities, and the rest combine in a total mismatch of contrasting styles from the hipster, gangster, nerd and... I'm not sure what the tall guy fits into, one of those California types. It just doesn't suit the nature of the video... Or, it definitely shouldn't.

3

The name is called 'Evolution of Music'. This is probably why I'm annoyed in the first place because not only am I passionate about music, but evolution too, having written numerous series of blogs right here on Steem on the subject.

I have another issue with the title, I'll get to that later.

4 - Ok, time for the actual music

Now, the video is 4:28 seconds long. Obviously, it's very hard to ram 1,000 years of music history into such a short space of time, but astonishingly they managed. How?

Well, let's break it down. Starting in the 11th century, they move to the 1600's, then the 1800's, and then 1910.

How far has the video progressed over the last 800 years?

25 seconds!

The entire history of music up to the 1900s whittled down to 25 seconds. But we still have 4 full minutes to work with, whatever else is there to sing about to demonstrate the extent of evolution throughout the history of music?

Well, moving through by decade now, we go from Danny Boy, Old Man River, some Johnny Cash and a bunch of other white people music until we get to 1960.

The video spends a full 33 seconds in the 1960s!

33 seconds for a 10 year period. 25 seconds for an 800 year period. Amazing.

They then spend another 25 seconds in the 1970s, but it gets worse.

Skipping despairingly through to the 2000s, I find they spend almost an entire minute on this decade.

55 seconds.

With classics such as 'Hey-ya', 'Hips don't lie', 'I kissed a girl', 'Bad Romance', I gotta feeling' and of course to kick off the 2010's, Justin Bieber's 'Baby'.

In total, 4 minutes were dedicated to 100 years, and a full 1/3rd of that video was from the last 13 years. (Video released in 2013)

Forgive me for asking but, how much has music actually evolved in the last 18 years? Is 'Hey-ya' somehow intrinsically different to 'Hips don't lie'?

Here's my theory: The mismatched group of probably recently-graduated students decided to prove their knowledge of music, but the closer it got to their generation of music, the more they couldn't decide on what songs to choose, and started going through those YouTube gatherings where everyone insists on showing each other rad songs and videos and the five of them are like 'oh yeah this would be sick! Oh man we def gotta do this one, iss' lit!'

By the end, the video is just a reflection of their brief acknowledgment that western music was a thing in the past, and otherwise their own personal taste in music.

Perhaps they were a bit more strategic and actually considered what songs would get the most clicks, which would explain why they blasted through the entire actual evolution of music, from the Renaissance to Classical era music.

I mean, Renaissance - literally 'rebirth' - was a time of explorers, inventors, artists, and music. With the Church in control, there was a deep divide between religious and secular music. Religious music was only just breaking out of the limits of monophonic (One sound), Gregorian chants into Polyphonic (many sounds) choir in which numerous melodies interact and wrap around each other. The Catholic church actually hated this because musicians were starting to focus more on the music and less on the message; how amazing God is. More emphasis on God or else!

Literally, they were on the verge of banning Polyphony before musicians made some more Homophonic alterations.

In the meantime, Secular music became madrigal and instrumental. With crazy adventurous musical inventions such as the Crank-powered Hurdy Gurdy and the bizarre accordian-violin Nyckelharpa coming to light, word-less music was becoming common, and the public had more freedom to create popular and enjoyable performances, free to write about subjects other than God; war, love, stories and so on.

But hey, let's just cram that into 5-6 seconds. No need to really discuss the Baroque, Romantic or Classical eras, they're basically the same old posh violin crap. Oh, other than that sick-assBeethoven song! ... Not the full song, just that bom bom bom bommmmm bit everybody likes.

The rest of the world?

I would have called it 'Different examples of modern, western pop songs'. Not quite so click-baity, I suppose, but the emphasis on their own personal Spotify list does nothing but emphasise how we've allowed garbage music to perpetuate, drowning out the sounds of beauty like shipping lanes cutting through Endangered whales' breeding grounds, confusing and blacking out their mating calls until there's no whales left to breed.

Where's the actual history of American music, from the field hollers of African slaves based on various African spiritual music, literally evolving into blues and Jazz, with Spanish influence over in Havana, Cuba and American influence in New Orleans, mixing together into a whole range of Latin-American music?

The entire world of Western music would be an entirely other Universe to what it is now if not for the contributions of African music, unfortunately often appropriated (in the true sense of the word) by the white folk in power (you can literally watch photos of Jazz bands get progressively whiter as time goes by).

Where's all that? I can understand omitting things like Balinese traditional music and otherworldly stuff nobody has ever heard of because it has little to no relation to what people on YouTube typically understand, but the actual roots of American music? Just gonna skip over that with Old man river, a song backed with movie-composed western classical music?

Fascinating.

My suggestion

I think it's an easy fix.

• Change the title to 'Medly of songs that I like in the last 100 years'

• Remove the first 25 seconds, just cut to the chase. This makes it easier on the black guy too, who was clearly only there to be the stereotypical beatboxing gangster, rather than a representative of his immediate ancestors' contributions to the world of music we all enjoy today - unbefitting of the first half-minute

• Start from the 1900s but cut that century down to 15 seconds tops.

• Now you can spend a full 4 minutes or so mashing your Spotify lists together into something you actually like without the pretense of being interesting.

• Wear all black or at least some kind of matching theme. Christmas Sweaters would have been fine. Give me some consistency! You're set up like Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody but forget about the class and effort, instead only focus on trying to be impressively cool in your own individual fashion choices.

There, you have yourself an honest YouTube video.

Conclusion

Overall, the video just stinks of self-important posturing, a desperate attempt of seeming musically informed and talented while each individual eagerly tries to get their own personalities known to the masses above the other 4. Though I do happily admit their singing/beatboxing is, well... fine, and the medley itself must have taken some time to perfect, it would be a better world if they had just not bothered.