‘I’m very lucky to have a wonderful girl’
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Multi-talented… Josh Groban has released an album of Broadway show tunes.
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LOVE songs don’t get sweeter to sing than when you have a muse.
Josh Groban had a certain lady in mind when he was recording the big emotional showstoppers which comprise his new record Stages.
The American singer, songwriter and actor, blessed with a golden voice which has sold more than 25 million albums worldwide, has been dating Two Broke Girls actress Kat Denning for six months.
And while she may loom large when he is belting out the big ballads on the record, Groban admits he still has a long way to go making her fall in love with the Broadway musicals associated with these songs.
Song muse … Actress Kat Dennings is the inspiration for the love songs Josh Groban has recorded on his Stages album. Picture: Frazer Harrison/Getty Images.
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“Love is great and I am very lucky to have a wonderful, wonderful girl in my life right now,” he says.
“She is becoming (a fan) of Broadway songs. She’s like ‘I love when you sing them!’
“When we have been in New York together we have gone to see great shows.
“I grew up having the most tremendous theatre and play experiences when I was younger, seeing Michael Crawford and Mandy Patinkin and she grew up in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania and didn’t have the same experiences.
“I think she is becoming as obsessed with it as I am — it will always be more my passion than hers — but we have so many other things in common.”
Stages is the album Groban has wanted to make since he was a teenager but felt he had to wait until he became a man in his 30s.
Age appropriate … Groban jokes that there should be a clause in recording contracts that singers can’t do show tunes until they are in their 30s. Picture: Supplied
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He jokes that they should have mentioned that in the musical theatre college curriculum.
“They didn’t teach us that. It was more ‘If you are lucky, you will do a chorus part in a regional production,” he says, laughing.
“And it’s not in your major recording deal either — ‘Do not record this album until you are 30!’”
While he studied musical theatre as a child, and it remains his first love, he said tackling iconic anthems including Over The Rainbow (Wizard Of Oz), What I Did For Love (A Chorus Line), All I Ask Of You (Phantom Of The Opera with Kelly Clarkson) or even Pure Imagination (Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory) was an indulgence he had to resist until now.
Distinctive voice … Josh Groban studied musical theatre.
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He credits his fans regularly asking why he hadn’t explored the world of show tunes on a studio album for helping him make up his mind that Stages would be his next musical project.
“This idea was just dangling in front of me for so long and now it’s time,” he says.
“When I finally realised this is what I should do next, it felt almost like an action movie star deciding to make a Woody Allen film. One for you, one for me.
“Perhaps I didn’t know how many people would be interested in hearing this music — I love it so much _ and I’ve since found out it is exactly what a lot of fans wanted me to do.”
Groban admits reprising songs which millions know so well — and that have been covered relentlessly over the decades — posed its own challenges.
While his distinctive voice naturally places its own stamp on the songs, it would be up to the arrangements to take them somewhere else.
Happy place … Josh Groban is loving life at the moment.
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He chose the songs based on the musical he had grown up seeing from the age of five and felt a deep abiding emotional connection with, from Phantom Of The Opera and Les Miserables to Carousel and Sunday In The Park With George.
“These are songs that are in my wheelhouse both vocally and age-wise and the arrangements that came in were AA+,” he says.
“That’s the other fear if you are going to do a record like this _ and I am my worst critic and worst cynic — and that is ‘What do I have to bring to this because everyone has heard these songs 100 times.”
Groban admits he also wanted to sing these show tunes because they are “big”. He points to Anthem from Chess, complete with a 100-voice choir, as Stages’ biggest songs.
“When you stand in front of the mic and really sing that song and let go, it is massive. Everyone is singing smaller and smaller these days and big, to me, is when I can open up my throat and show everything that it does. Big is not being afraid to do that,” he says.
National tour … Josh Groban is planning to take his album Stages on the road.
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The album was recorded in the fabled Abbey Road Studios where the main room can accommodate a full orchestra.
Groban loves the history of the place, using the same mic John Lennon had sung into for his recording of Over The Rainbow and checking out the one used for the famous King’s speech.
In a closet was the piano played on The Beatles’ A Day In The Life.
“That orchestra room is my favourite in the world; if it has ghosts, they are really good one,” he says.
“The studios have really great mojo, you can feel it. There’s a nice vibration which pulses back from the walls, a natural reverb and everything in that room combines to being the sort of a place a singer feels like a kid in a candy store. It really is Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory for adults.”
Groban is now planning to take Stages on the road, including a national tour of Australia possibly later this year, and is concocting his own Broadway musical of sorts with these songs.
He laughs when asked if the album serves as his audition reel for a role in a musical in one of New York’s famed theatres.
But he admits the young man who studied musical theatre before being signed to a major recording deal still has that dream.
“I don’t know …. maybe it is. I just might shove it under the doors of a few people,” he says, laughing.
“It’s better to slide it under the door than email because then you can include the eight by ten glossy (photo). That’s very important to this world and I will be old school ‘til I die.
“I want to be a micro-ambassador for that world and these songs and maybe I will get to take the step into one of those shows in the future.”
Stages is out now.
