Josh Groban: For Chart-topping Singer, Leaving CMU Risk Worth Taking
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
August 04, 2004
By Scott Mervis
Josh Groban
WITH: Mindi Abair
WHERE: Post-Gazette Pavilion, Burgettstown
WHEN: 8 tonight
TICKETS: $29.50 to $75
Carnegie Mellon doesn't have to save a seat for Josh Groban.
After one double-platinum album, there was always a chance that the young singer's star would fizzle and he would return to his musical theater training.
But now Groban, 23, has followed the success of that 2001 debut with a second record, "Closer," that topped the charts and surpassed it with sales of more than 3.5 million domestically.
Those are big numbers, bigger than Groban expected when he left CMU after one semester to sign with Warner Bros. and enter the studio with superstar producer David Foster (Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey, Celine Dion).
With two records, a PBS special and performances at the Olympics and the Vatican, Groban has established himself as a star in the odd and lonely world of pop-classical crossover. On "Closer," he applies his high baritone to another set of lush, romantic Euro-pop songs, several of which he co-wrote.
In March, the Los Angeles native performed a concert at Heinz Hall that was praised for its "soaring melodies that border on arias." Tonight, he moves to a much larger venue, the Post-Gazette Pavilion, where he'll have to project to a lawn filled with fans ranging from young teens to veteran opera buffs.
Question: How have you adapted to playing the larger venues?
Answer: I'm loving the larger venues. I think I open up a lot more. Sometimes in the theaters, as intimate and wonderful as it is, it's a little stiff. I find that in the arenas and the sheds people are really kinda ready to have a good time, and it's much easier for me to loosen up and have a great time, too.
Q: How would you say you've grown on the second album?
A: With the first album, I wanted to put my best foot forward, offer music that I could sing really well. But to a certain extent we played it a little safe on the first album, which is what I wanted to do. On the second album, I wanted to work with a great artist named Eric Mouquet and a group called Deep Forest. Doing that was a big step forward. I found that I'd grown vocally and I wanted to find material that was a little more complicated, a little more difficult, push myself in that way. I think the similarities are there: It's me, it's storytelling, it's finding the emotion and finding songs that fit the emotion you want to get out there. The second, like the first, I wanted to flow from beginning to end while still tapping into different genres.
Q: You wrote some of the music on "Closer." Had you always been writing or was that new for you?
A: I actually had been always writing music. I'm not sure how good I was at it when I was younger, but it was always a passion of mine, just sitting down at the piano and learning to play and writing lyrics. I was always into poetry. I was always into jotting down in a journal. I didn't know what would come of it. With the making of "Closer," I thought it's time to put some of these words down, it's time to sit down at the piano and come up with a melody that I'd like to hear me sing. It becomes so much more personal and more fun to sing, especially in concert. They're my favorite songs to sing, for sure.
Q: Reading the reviews, it's pretty unanimous that you have a great voice. One of the criticisms, though, is that the arrangements are too much, too sugary, that the songs are overproduced. What do you make of that?
A: Well, opinions are like you know what. ... For me, it's a question of balancing between the fine line of making something lush and beautiful and big. There's nothing wrong with big. Certain songs are meant to be grand. Ever since I started listening to opera and musical theater, I always loved the largeness of certain big songs. But I've always wanted to mix them with some smaller, more simple numbers, like we do with piano and guitar in the show.
I think that if anybody had any comments on that from the albums, certainly in the live show we've made things much simpler in certain regards. There's a song that I like to do right at the end of the show called "America" by Paul Simon that I just sit at the piano and sing. I love both types of arrangements, and I try to put them both in there. To me, all that matters is they like the singing, so I'm happy about that.
Q: Do you consider yourself a "crossover" artist, a crossover between pop and classical? Does that mean anything to you?
A: I don't really know what the word means. I didn't cross over from anything. I was in high school for musical theater, I was trying to be an actor. I was taking voice lessons on the side and really studying everything, listening to everything, not saying I want to be an opera singer, saying to myself, "I want to be a musician who sings music in different genres, who pushes the boundaries." Artists like Paul Simon and Peter Gabriel, Depeche Mode, whoever they are in their particular genres, who weren't afraid to take steps and make people think of their genres in different ways, that's what was inspiring to me. If I can do that for classical crossover, that's great, but I always like to think of it as pop music with many different influences.
Q: You knew that David Foster had a great track record, but did you ever foresee selling this many records?
A: No, I really didn't. It was really such an honor to be chosen by him to work. I had listened to all his albums and I knew primarily he was a real pop pop pop producer, so the kind of voice that I had, it was thrilling to see someone who had the same vision that I did wanting to do something different. He's been a great mentor.
Q: What kind of offers are you getting besides making records? Have you had offers to be in operas and stage productions?
A: Yeah, absolutely. Different opera companies, different classical venues, certain scripts get sent for TV. To be honest, my heart and my concentration right now is on just making music and singing and doing this concert tour, so nothing that is presented has been doable. But I love the options. I love theater and I love film; I'm not sure I would want to do opera at this point in my career. That's something I would want to wait to do until I got older.
Q: Are there artists you are interested in working with?
A: I think sometimes the greatest collaborations are the ones that are least expected. I think it would be really cool to work with someone completely different from what I do, someone like Bjork or, I don't know, Sting. It would be a dream come true to work with some legendary rock person and try to put a classical twist on that.
Q: You've performed at some really major events. What's been the highlight for you?
A: It was such an honor to be at the Olympics, such a moving moment. The fact that everyone was in one place at one time when everybody felt like every country should get together for a good thing. It was such a great feeling being there and then to be asked to sing when the flame went out was such a great honor. I had my whole family there.
Q: So, I guess you're not coming back to CMU ...
A: [Laughs] I won't be coming back to CMU. I'll be able to come back and visit CMU. All my friends have since graduated, so if I were going to go back to college, I think it would be somewhere else. But I did have a wonderful time there, and I still keep in contact with a lot of the teachers. Some of my teachers came to my Pittsburgh show and it was really cool to see them again. Some of the people I met there, even during that short time, are still some of my best friends.
Q: Were there any teachers or people there who gave you a hard time about leaving?
A: Sure, of course. Which was to be expected. I kind of got a little bit of "David Foster Who?" "Warner Bros. What?" Oftentimes in colleges you get the feeling of -- and I don't necessarily disagree with it -- "stay here and finish here or else you're pretty much doomed." It was a big sacrifice and a big risk to go against that and decide to take this opportunity, which I knew might not ever happen again, and see where it took me. They were very supportive. They gave me a leave of absence. I would be able to come back in two years if it didn't work out. Luckily I didn't have to.
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