Pop Star Groban's Stardom Under the Radar
Boston Herald
March 2, 2007
By Jed Gottlieb
If you’re wondering who’s that handsome youngster headlining the Garden tonight, you’re not alone.
While 26-year-old Josh Groban has already done everything -- he’s sold 15 million albums, starred in two top-rated PBS concert specials, performed at the Super Bowl, Oscars and Olympics -- he’s less recognizable than K-Fed or William Hung.
Maybe it’s because popera, the pop/classical hybrid Groban helped pioneer, isn’t sexy enough to garner ink from the rehab-obsessed rags. Maybe it’s because Groban himself is too milquetoast to captivate America’s lust for shame, scandal and sin. Either way, it seems as if 90 percent of America could share a park bench with Groban and not recognize him.
“Oh, it happens all the time,” Groban said from a tour stop in Detroit. “I’ve sung at the Super Bowl and done Oprah five times, and I’m still telling the guy next to me on the airplane who I am.”
With the release of Groban’s third CD, “Awake,” last fall, things have begun to change as the crooner steers his career away from predictability. “Awake” is full of the English and Italian vocal pop that dominated his first two CDs, but there’s a trace of a world beat influence that makes “Awake” more dynamic and less innocuous. It isn’t “Graceland,” but it shows a willingness to grow beyond humdrum romantic ballads. It also makes it hard for him to explain to the guy next to him what he does for a living.
“When that stranger on the plane asks me what I do I generally tell them I make pop music with many different influences, from classical to world music to rock,” Groban said. “To call it classical would be wrong, but it’s also not classical crossover or pop.”
Groban insists that “Awake,” with its collaborations with Imogen Heap, Ladysmith Black Mambazo and Herbie Hancock, isn’t an effort to assert an edgier image. He knows he’s the PBS poster boy and he’s cool with that. He also knows that getting hip to Afro-pop and having Angelique Kidjo open his current tour won’t immediately change the minds of the critics who love to hate him.
“I’ve never been a media darling,” Groban said, “and I think I’ve upset some people in the media just by still being around. But it doesn’t really affect me or my fans when someone who was assigned to listen to my CD for 30 minutes and write about it doesn’t like it. It’s not a bitterness thing or a grudge thing, it’s simply a matter of them getting my music, and they’ll get it eventually because it’s something that deserves to be out there.”
Be prepared. Groban’s comin’ at ya.
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