The Lighter Side of Josh Groban
L. A. Daily News
March 29, 2007
By Sandra Barrera
When Josh Groban appeared in Blender magazine and answered questions about nose picking and favorite curse words, fans were shocked.
They saw it as showing poor taste.
And the 26-year-old classical-pop singer, who in six short years has conquered the world with his rich, lyrical baritone voice and beautifully orchestrated songs, admits that maybe they're right.
"I just wanted to do something in bad taste at the moment," he says.
Groban is speaking by phone from the road, where he's en route to Sacramento on the West Coast leg of a tour that includes a stop Saturday at the Staples Center in his hometown.
The Staples Center is where Groban says he and his dad used to catch Laker's games before his life exploded into a Hollywood fantasy that tends to ignore his goofball side. So, when it surfaces, people are surprised, he says.
"My press has not emphasized a lot of personality stuff," he says. "It's been a lot more about the seriousness of the music, or whether or not people like the music."
And they do.
Groban's new album, "Awake," has drawn praise as a "skillfully made, richly varied set" and an "artistic titan."
The album is the third studio release in Groban's impressive six-year career, whose highlights include 16 million albums sold, two PBS concert specials and several high-profile performances.
That would satisfy most young artists, but Groban says he had a longing to spread his wings.
"There's a couple things I like to do when I'm working on an album, one of which is to find music that I feel I can really wrap my voice around and be the storyteller of the song. The other is to have a hand in creating it.
"Musically, I hear things in my head all the time, and it's just a matter of being focused enough to get them down and organize them into a song."
On the night that "February Song" came into his head, he didn't hesitate.
Half asleep and still bruised from a broken relationship, Groban sat down at the piano and composed the melancholy song that Billboard included among those "destined to join his greatest hits."
It's one of four songs on "Awake" that Groban co-wrote with the likes of John Ondrasik of Five for Fighting, Dave Matthews and Imogen Heap.
The oddball pairings get even more interesting in the musical contributions with Herbie Hancock and Ladysmith Black Mambazo, the South African group featured on Paul Simon's Grammy-winning "Graceland."
Ladysmith Black Mambazo appears on the standout tracks "Lullaby" and "Weeping."
Groban wrote "Lullaby" on keyboard and then sent the demo off to Matthews for finessing. He has been playing the song as he originally wrote it for the live show.
"For 'Weeping,' we videotaped Ladysmith Black Mambazo and incorporated them into a visual that I have playing on a screen behind me," Groban says. "So their voices are actually being heard on the speaker system when I sing 'Weeping.'
"That's one of the places where you can take this high tech and really use it for the benefit of the sound," he says.
And what a sound.
It's no wonder Groban has been credited with helping boost classical music sales last year by 22.5 percent, according to Nielsen SoundScan's yearly report card, a fact the singer admits he finds baffling.
"From the very beginning, I've never tried to make people believe that this was classical music; it's pop music," Groban says. "I have a huge respect for opera, which is why I've never done opera. There will be a specific time and place if and when I decide to tackle something from that genre. But in the meantime, I've just been experimenting and trying things that work for my voice."
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