Barry’s kind of neat because he’s a bit of a musical novelty. I mean, really, who else out there can do what he does? Granted, he’s not as much of a freakshow as Jeff, but we’d wager that basses¾ you know, like, actual, honest-to-goodness-this-is-really-my-most-comfortable-range basses, aren’t exactly easy to come by these days. Or any day, really. Talk to your average high school choir director, for instance. She’ll tell you about bases all right.

Fun fact: He has two first names. Like Billy Joel. And Scott. (Actually, Scott has three, but who’s counting, really?)

Mine is the Kingdom of Shafted: Eliot Kerman--

Once upon a much brighter and even more beautiful time, I used to sing. Not well, maybe. Not so that anyone would be interested in listening. But sing, I did. At the beginning of my short and moderately illustrious career as a singer, there was bestowed upon me the Ultimate Curse by a high school music teacher. By her mighty hand, I was deemed "alto." And this, my friends, is why I love Eliot Kerman.

We, the altos and baritones of the world, no nothing of melody. We have no concept of lyrical accuracy. We, relegated to the back rows and crowded middle sections of choirs and singing groups everywhere, live in musical Neverland. We ba da do, ooh wee ooh, and echo those silly, attention-hogging, spotlight-hungry sopranos and tenors until our atonal hearts burst. And still no one loves us. El, my love, I know how you feel. Clowns to the left of me. Jokers to the right. Here I am. Stuck in the middle while You Know Who gets 27 bars of high-soaring solo nonsense.

Story: One Christmas, my grandparents asked me to lead a "sing-along" of carols around the tree. No dice, kids. Sure, I know Christmas carols. The harmony parts, anyway. Ask me to tell you the words to Carol of the Bells. No, ask me. Answer: I have no idea. It's "ding dong ding" all the way through, as far as I'm concerned.

Me and Eliot Kerman: Bitter, Party of 2.

Or not. See, we Musical Middle Children have a little secret between us that I'm going to let the rest of the world in on: We secretly really like what we do. In fact, and this is something that's typically only discussed amongst our own kind, but we're generally very aware of how utterly necessary and cool we are. We are kitsch cool. We are obscure cool. We are cool because we muscle through the hard stuff while those other singers just get the boring, simple melody. We are a part of the underbelly. And frankly, the world is a boring place without us.

I'm telling you, I'd wager goodly amounts of cash that of all the guys in Rockapella, Eliot has the best CD collection, the hipest clothes, the most enlightened world outlook, the most compassionate soul and the best conversation skills. I bet, once you scratch the surface a little, he's even cooler than Barry. No kidding. And he has all of that without diva tendencies and soprano/tenor baggage. You know the kind. The Please Love Me and Applaud Me kind. Why? Because he's a baritone. That's why.

And as if all of that wasn't enough, he's got the most endearing little gap between his front teeth that's grounds enough to want to marry him all by itself. And he can scat. Not just scat, mind you, but scat. Do uncool people scat? No sir. They do not.

Like a Virgin: Kevin Wright--

Oh my word, look what just floated down out of the heavens, ringed with light and emoting the purest human sound ever recorded! It's Kevin Wright. He's a Botticelli. He's gilded. He's the boy Sarah Brightman. Kevin has one of these voices that the music critics drag out the word "awesomely" for. Awesomely pure. Awesomely virginal. Awesomely awesome.

He does indeed have a lovely, floating, willow branch of a voice, but I wonder if some of those metaphors come from the fact that his tenor-in-crime, Scott Leonard is… well… kind of a musical slut by comparison. (Thanks for the shovel. I'll start digging in a second.)

Kevin's voice reminds us of everything unsullied and soaring in our souls. Scott gets us off. Crude? Yes. Real? Very. It makes for a pretty fun musical dynamic, in fact. That whole shocking musical contrasts thing. Scott and Sean, may he rest in the fiscally irresponsible peace of power-popdom, were a bit like Slut A and Slut B in their vocal dynamic. (Don’t get us wrong. The Scott/Sean vocal dynamic was truly kind of gorgeous in its own right, but for the sake of this argument, it won’t due to play it up much.) Now Scott and Kevin, they represent the complex and far more accurate duel nature of (wo)man. They are the light and the dark, the devils and the angels, the Jeckylls and the Hydes in all of us. Aw. Let us pause for a moment and bask in the warm flickering glow of our Rockapella enlightenment.

But yeah, we like Kevin a lot. He gets gold stars for having particularly great hair, for bearing the title of New Kid with ample amounts of grace, and for at least attempting some sort of hip rock star posturing with the leather pants. (We're not sure how we feel about this. Putting the rock star pants on the Virginal One ventures into the territory of Mixing Genres, but that's another article all together. A+ for effort though.)

And he smiles when he sings. Let me tell you, a little of that goes a long way. It says Look at Me! I am Having an Intense Musical Conversation With You, My Beloved Audience!

Oh, and Kev, honey. A word to the wise: It's filcher. With an I. Anyway…

Great Scott!: Chuck Leonard--

You know… I… well… I don’t even know where to start.

How about right here. My mom saw Scott Leonard on TV and said the following: I knew a girl in high school named Jeanette who used to look like that.

All right, then. Thanks Mom, for the nod of support. I truly appreciate your sincere investment in learning about the things that I enjoy so that you may more fully partake in my life and so that I won’t have self-esteem issues later on down the road. Thanks for the bonding time. I love you. And Scott Leonard is my husband, boyfriend, the father of my babies and maybe even my illicit secret lover, OK? We’ll be over with Scott Jr. on Saturday so brace yourself and put the water on for tea.

Maybe it’s the songs. Hey! Look at me, I’m Scott Leonard and I will write dozens of big stupid love songs that will make you die on the floor for all of their sweet longing. I don’t care that you’re not really a girly girl who’s into that sort of thing. You will listen. You will fall under the spell. You will start swearing off dating men under the age of 30 because they "just don’t get it." You will start planning your wedding. You will pick out baby names.

Maybe it’s the hair. That whole yellow-headed popstar demigod shtick is kind of appealing in a general sense. Maybe it’s the fact that he wears clothes really well. (No. He really does. It’s a hips-to-shoulders ratio thing.) Maybe it’s the fact that in addition to being this lovely, sensitive arty musician type, he’s kind of a jock too. Because you know he’d be like, the nice jock who runs track and is kind of despised by those other slovenly football jocks for his stunning musical talent and because the chicks dig him. Maybe it’s the fact that he busts his groove thang on stage and almost entirely avoids looking like a dork in the process. Maybe it’s the fact that he’s got a first-class-seriously-attractive-woah-my-holy-goodness posterior. Not that we looked.

Oh. Maybe it’s the voice. Riiight. Maybe.

He soars. He levitates. Glass shatters. Veins pop. It’s great fun to watch. Heck, we’d keep him around the house just so we could ask him to randomly do that thing that he does at the end of "Ellie My Love" over and over and over…

Surprise! We love Scott Leonard! Maybe even when he was in that scruffy ick longhaired bewhiskered phase that, thank the heavens, didn’t last long.

Just Like that Guy in the Fat Boys: Jeff Thatcher--

The Ultimate Test of Coolness: If you do something in your life that assuredly would have gotten you hanged if you’d been born a couple of centuries earlier.

Think about it. It’s 1679. Salem Village, Massachusetts Bay Colony. All of the weary, toiling Puritan farmers and their sons and wives in the fields sweating over their neatly planted rows of corn, praying for good harvest so their babies will have food enough for winter. Their lives are hard, colorless, devoid of all amusement save the hymns of thanks they sing while they work.

They’re singing in unison, something dull and plodding and particularly worshipful, when all of the farmers begin to hear a sound, some unrecognizable thumping coming from somewhere… from… yes… row #15A… the Thatcher row. All of the farmers stop, straighten up their permanently hunched frames to gawk, to stare at the boy who’s still bent over his row, obliviously accompanying the farmers with some crazy phat beats. Only the sound is coming out of his mouth, Lord save us all.

Word gets out in like ten seconds. It’s all over town. Suddenly, all of those pretty, bored little teenage girls stuck at home baking bread and darning socks start shrieking and pointing fingers. (The more things change…) "The boy has bewitched me!" they scream.

That’s it. Book him on 25 counts of Spectral Impersonation, Creating Unnatural Bodily Sounds and Communing with the Dark One. Get the kids and bake a pie, because we’ll be stringing him up on Saturday. Or maybe pressing him with stones, because that’s so much more fun.

Critical Thinking Questions: Do you think Jeff was really popular as a kid in the 80s when having beatbox skills would have won you some really hip breakdancer friends? Do you think he wore an Adidas sweat suit and busted some rhymes in the parking lot after school while The Sugar Hill Gang played on the ghetto blaster? Or, do you think he was a white kid from suburban New York who took a VP class at Berklee and thought it was kind of cool? Do you get overly, inappropriately curious about things, like whether he’s a good kisser or not? Do you think he probably is? Yeah. OK.

Footnote: Maybe I’m still really new to this whole Rockapella thing, but the abbreviation "VP" still throws me a bit. I see it in front of or after Jeff’s name, and I still think… Wait… what’s he the Vice President of? I don’t remember reading that anywhere…

Also: Jeff is so wicked cute.

Oh God: Sean Altman--

Um… yeah.