Sawyer Rabin, a sophomore majoring in popular music performance as well as music industry, made it clear: While pop music is fun to listen to, it isn’t always as easy onstage.

“Pop is just the hardest group project you’ve ever done in your life, all the time, every week,” Rabin said.

But Friday night, a cohort of students made it look easy. The crowd at the sophomore pop music showcase at Carson Soundstage emanated a wave of radical support as dozens of students jammed their way through modern pop, R&B and rock ’n’ roll hits.

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Their performance — which is also, incredibly, their midterm — is all part of a comprehensively structured popular music program. Sean Holt, a professor of popular music, said this structure is very purposeful.

But that purpose is relentless.

“They get two 90-minute rehearsals [a week], that’s all. And then they come back every Tuesday night, and we workshop those songs,” Holt said. “It’s kind of like a continual masterclass every time they come back to class.”

This endless march of new songs is a tough task, and it requires everyone to be at their best. Nolan Heilman, a sophomore majoring in popular music performance, said this group of second-years was fully prepared for that challenge.

“We all want the show to be great,” Heilman said. “We’re all heavily invested in making it sound the best that it can.”

That kind of full-hearted commitment is rare. Luckily, this group has something even rarer: a level of genuine care for another. It’s a distinction that Asher Belsky, a sophomore majoring in popular music, seemed shocked to acknowledge aloud.

“[We] all get along, which is interesting, because there’s 35 arts majors who all have big personalities,” Belsky said. “Everybody likes to hang out with each other, not just in a musical context.”

You could see this care in moments peppered throughout the showcase. From the tiniest nods of support to shrieks that sounded like a fan instead of a classmate, these sophomores showed they have each other’s backs. In an emotional moment, Rabin made this implied encouragement as explicit as possible.

“It’s pretty amazing to be able to create such a special show with these people that I love so much,” Rabin said.

This care is something Heilman said was actually essential for putting these complex songs together. Throughout the semester, the walls between the four bands that made up the showcase came tumbling down out of sheer necessity.

“You’re constantly collaborating with the other bands, being like, ‘Hey, I really need someone to cover the horns part on the keyboards … ’ or, ‘This song has eight backing vocals,’” Heilman said. “And the answer is always yes, and that’s the great thing about this class. It’s so collaborative — mirroring the real music industry.”

The students maintain this mirror onstage, lovingly covering songs as diverse as “Leave The Door Open” and “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” The stars of the show aren’t just the array of lead vocalists, even though they’re all fantastic — they’re all over the stage. There were often a dozen students onstage at once, with all carefully playing a range of roles to craft a rich sound.

The performance is a sign of the growth this program inspires, a phenomenon that Rabin described with awe.

“Something about pop is magical,” Rabin said. “If you just give into it and let it work its magic on you, it will change you as a musician, a performer, a writer, an arranger and everything in ways that you could never have imagined before.”

As “Cinderella” by pop star and Thornton School of Music graduate Remi Wolf played between sets, one couldn’t help but wonder if the next stars were performing in this random college soundstage. Heilman was extremely confident about this idea.

“The people on stage … those people will be figures in the music industry in five to 10 years, which is so crazy,” Heilman said. “We have a penchant for creating industry-working musicians, and I think getting the chance to watch that formative process in a group of 30-some musicians that all do different things but will do them so well is really, really cool.”