Best Closing Song
The Best I’ve Seen highlights the very best in a cappella, as seen in the admittedly biased and limited view of the author.
This time, we share the best closing song to an ICCA set.
To those who have read Mickey Rapkin’s Pitch Perfect Brigham Young’s Noteworthy may come off as villains. At the least, they serve as dramatic foils for Divisi, one of the groups on which the book centers, and, as history would have it, one of the top groups for Noteworthy to overcome en route to the ICCA Finals.
But for those of us who didn’t have such a story cast on the performance; for those of us who were experiencing the all-female juggernaut out of Utah for the first time that Saturday night in 2007, the ladies were nothing short of awe-inspiring.
Don’t get me wrong, because the group’s whole set was fantastic. But where the group went from great to simply sublime was on their barn burning, turbo-charged, never-forget-me closer, belting out Stevie Wonder’s “Signed, Sealed, Delivered.”
Earlier that night, the Binghamton Crosbys had physically owned the stage with their Man medley, and The Amherst Zumbyes had pushed all their chips to the center of the table with “Thriller,” complete with the full dance routine from the music video. I point out these prior accomplishments so as to demonstrate just how good Noteworthy was, dominating the stage with unparalleled confidence, complete with a stomp routine and lift to leave absolutely no question they were the masters of movement.
Though it was the visual aspect of the presentation that may have stood out most, you can’t ignore just how tight the song was musically, or just how high octane the soloist was to wrap up the twelve minute set. When group can both be this good, and look like its having as much fun as these ladies world you have something truly special—in this case, a performance that sealed the deals on securing Noteworthy its well-deserved first ever ICCA championship.