Remember a little over a month ago when I wrote a post about camping out to buy Spring Sing tickets? Well after lots of waiting, Spring Sing finally came! The big night was last Friday and it was so much fun.

We got there fifteen minutes ahead of time (yippee, reserved seating!) and all got settled in our seats with just enough time to look through our programs before things got started.

The show started with an exhibition act – an all-male step group called TDB – and was quickly followed by the traditional Company intro video and dance. Like I said in my last post, Spring Sing is UCLA’s end-of-the-year talent show put on by SAA. It features mostly musical acts that are broken up by comedy sketches performed by a group called Company.

This year, their intro video showed the members of company preventing the end of Spring Sing (and the end of the world) as was predicted by the Mayan calendar.

Company performed lots of other fun sketches and skits. My favorite was a parody song about the Flyaway bus, and this video about finals week deserves an honorable mention.

The actual musical performances were spectacular as well! The coolest part about watching all of them is that you know that everyone singing goes to UCLA. It’s fun to see the talent that your school holds!

In addition to the funny sketches and the brilliant musical numbers (most of which were original!), the night was also exciting for its star factor. A number of celebrities attended the event including Sarah Bareilles – a former bruin! She even did an 8-clap on stage and took a video with her phone of the whole thing (which I’m pretty are she posted to her Twitter feed).

At every Spring Sing there is an award given out called the George and Ira Gershwin Award to honor a member of the music industry who has had amazing accomplishments. This year the recipient was Bruce Lundvall, the President and CEO of Blue Note Label (he helped get many musicians’ careers off the ground like Natalie Cole and Norah Jones (cool!)). Although he couldn’t be at the ceremony, Mr. Quincy Jones accepted the award on his behalf (so cool!).

The highlight of the evening was definitely the announcement of the winners at the end of the show. Every year, there are a slough of winners in a variety of categories. There are winners like best solo/duet or best production number, and of course there is a best overall entry winner. A band called Alto was the biggest winner of the night (and rightfully so, they rocked it!). They won in every category they were eligible for! Best band, best overall entry, and probably the coolest one to win – Bruin Choice (the one where the student audience votes with their cell phones).

The night was awesome! And that camping out was definitely worth it.