fun.: "We Are Young"

In college, I sang alto in my music sorority's a cappella group. As a junior, I started arranging music for it -- personal favorites like Katy Perry's "Hot 'n Cold," the Barenaked Ladies' "Pinch Me," even the estrogen-laden, Grammy-winning Moulin Rouge version of "Lady Marmalade."

If only we'd had their costume budget.

After awhile, "That song would sound great in a cappella!" became one of my patented (and much-teased) catchphrases. I started an iTunes playlist of songs I wanted to arrange someday -- Sara Bareilles and Amy Winehouse, Led Zeppelin and Maroon 5, Lily Allen and Alanis Morissette. I just knew that everything would sound new and interesting and original in our own voices, with our own melodic undercurrents and featured solos and quirky performance gimmicks. ("Let's all start facing the back, snapping, and turn together" was getting pretty fancy, as far as we were concerned.) It was all in good fun, and our weekly, riotous rehearsals were a reminder of why I love making music, especially with friends.

Eventually we graduated, and my copy of Finale music composition software sat dormant, half-finished arrangements of the Beatles and Jason Mraz doomed to languish on my laptop forever.

After college, many of us stayed in the Chicago area, and we've been singing together in more or less official capacities ever since, each fitting rehearsals in between first jobs, graduate school, and settling into our individual metropolitan lifestyles. We floundered for awhile, struggling to find the time to get nine or ten busy people in the same room, but music is what brought us together in the first place, and through sheer will and the luck of proximity, a cappella music has remained a part of our weekly ritual, a building block of our friendship. (Life lesson: No one will ever get sick of "King of Wishful Thinking.") Recently we reorganized, renamed ourselves, and put on our first performance of the year. It was rocky in places, but it felt great to sing harmony with my friends just for the pure joy of it, and now each of us are revved up and eager for more. Song ideas and even completed arrangements have been flying across our email listserv, and I feel myself getting swept up again in a cappella fever.

And so I started a new iTunes playlist of songs to arrange.

First up on that list is today's jam, fun.'s "We Are Young," the lead single off the band's sophomore album Some Nights, to be released this month. This acoustic version downplays the drama of the studio version, with its building chords, gospel-like chorus, and Janelle Monáe cameo:

But lead singer Nate Ruess is just as mesmerizing here as when he fronted The Format. He also has the most understated Wikipedia entry I've seen for an artist, or anyone. That simplicity, also reflected in the band's name, plays so well in this song, in which Ruess pleads over driving piano riffs and backing vocals for someone to "come and carry me home tonight" because "tonight, we are young." The chorus swells and voices join in and the song becomes an anthem for the current generation, or any generation: "So we'll set the world on fire, we can grow brighter than the suuuuuuuuuuun!" [Emphasis added, because it's absolutely the most fun part of the song to sing, and when it comes to a cappella, having fun is what it's all about.]

This is fun.'s first charting single -- they've been around since 2008, literally a week after The Format broke up -- but if the songwriting stays this simple, the execution this unadulteratedly guileless, the lyrics this joyfully unrestrained, then we're all in for some serious fun.

(I'm sorry, I just had to.)

You know you've made it when your song is featured in a Super Bowl commercial: