As he releases an album celebrating the world of music in films, the singer, songwriter, and actor talks Ed Nash through the pivotal songs and artists in his life.
Josh Groban is fascinated by the art of storytelling.
When we meet on a balmy afternoon in London, during a break in his GEMS world tour which ends in October with a residency at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, the first thing he tells me is that he’s itching to get back onstage again to share stories through songs.
“I’ve been travelling the world, and you spend a lot of time in this business isolated, so to have a chance to get shot out of a cannon again, to go out and see people around the world and sing, it's a blast.”
This week he’s back in his native Los Angeles, where his name will grace the 2,843rd star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Having grown up in L.A. and fascinated with the stars in the street as a child, Groban is infectiously excited about the moment he’ll get a star with his own name on it.
“For a Los Angeleno, who walked with my parents over those stars when I was a kid, looking down at my heroes with all kinds of different little shops on that wacky street, it's surreal. I'm supremely honoured. It's going to be a crazy thing to look at.”
There’s been a serendipity to Groban’s career. His initial break arrived unexpectedly at the age of 17 when he was a rehearsal singer and was asked to stand in for Andrea Bocelli to duet with Céline Dion. The appearance led to him being cast in Ally McBeal and getting a record deal, and since the release of his eponymously titled debut album in 2001 he’s sold over 35 million albums.
Groban’s latest record, Cinematic, is a love letter to the music of the cinema, and a companion piece to 2015’s Stages, a celebration of his love of Broadway musicals. Cinematic sees Groban interpreting the songs from Stand By Me, Breakfast at Tiffany's and others.
I ask him how he felt about stepping into the shoes of such iconic songs and he says, “It takes some stones to sing anything that people love. These songs are adored and I always say that interpreting songs is way scarier than presenting something new”, he reflects. “It's vulnerable, and you want people to like it. If you're singing something that people love and they don't feel you did it justice then I feel terrible, you want to honour it.”
Groban feels that by their very nature songs are meant to be interpreted, that the artist has to find a different way to tell their story, which was his ambition for Cinematic. “They're meant to be done in lots of different ways but there needs to be enough space between the original and the cover, because there has to be an openness and a freshness to it. I thought the Adele song, “Skyfall” was released much sooner than it was, it's actually been 13 years.”
When it came to his Nine Songs selection, Groban says he didn't want to overthink it and went with his instinct. “Every day there's another nine that represent a certain time of my life, the way I'm feeling that day, or a style that I'm influenced by in that moment. I tried to not let perfect be the enemy of the good here.”
When we get to the end of our conversation however, he realises there are connections between each of them, from key moments in his life to the heroes he’s collaborated with, and we end where we started, with Groban musing on the power of stories.
“With these songs, you want to have a good emotional attachment, a story, something that represents what makes you tick and what's made you as an artist, but talking to you about them, I realised I picked the right songs for me”, he explains. “They have more of a connective tissue than I thought, and they drifted into stories and emotions that seemingly have nothing to do with the song!”
“Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes” by Paul Simon
JOSH GROBAN: This was my first introduction to South African music, but not my first introduction to Paul Simon. I wore out There Goes Rhymin' Simon and a live concert of that, Live Rhymin', which introduced me to his lyricism and the sweetness of his voice. Even as a young kid, the way he sang about life and the poetry of it reached me on a very deep level.
With Graceland something awakened in me. For an L.A. kid to hear these sounds I'd never heard before, the concert in the park with Brazilian drummers, the voices of Ladysmith Black Mambazo, it really resonated with me. It was discovering that cross-pollination of genres can work really well and provide something together that you could never do apart.
In South Africa, it was still apartheid, he had to do his Graceland concert in Zimbabwe because they wouldn't allow a mixed-race audience in South Africa. It took a lot of bravery on everybody's part to collaborate.
BEST FIT: This song nearly didn't make it onto Graceland. The release date was pushed back, he was doing Saturday Night Live with Ladysmith Black Mambazo and they recorded it in New York and decided to add it to the record.
That’s interesting. Later on in my life I had the incredible honour of collaborating both with Paul and Ladysmith Black Mambazo.
How did you feel when you walked in the room to meet him?
I very rarely get starstruck, but those people were my escape through the years of my education and childhood. It was like a God-like thing, I respect him so much. I've been such a student of his that when you meet him there's a reference there, but I was taken aback by how humble and funny he was.
We got to honour him at a concert at Brooklyn Academy of Music and that was when I first got to sing for him and with him. We did “Bridge Over Troubled Water” together. I was playing it, thinking, ‘Okay, I'll be your Garfunkel tonight’ and he couldn't have been nicer.
And then I chose another song. I figured a lot of people were going to be singing the songs people knew, but I asked him if I could sing a song that I loved of his, that I don't think was known by a lot of people, called “Silent Eyes” from Still Crazy After All These Years.
He said, ‘I've never sung that live’, and he was super excited by it. He had a Turkish düdük player on it, he got Philip Glass to do an arrangement for that performance and Phillip put wonderful woodwinds on it. Singing a song that was such a deep cut and a personal song for him was such an honour. That's the way you want to meet one of your heroes, to be able to do it with music and to honour their music.
There’s a certain calibre of artists who can inspire that feeling of being star-struck no matter who you are.
I don't think they view themselves as legends, and that’s the secret sauce when you meet people who are objectively the greatest of all time. There is a category of greats who have egos that are the size of a house, but I've been very lucky that the heroes of mine that I've met, many of whom are on this list, have never stopped having that spark to continue being a student, to continue growing and to be scared in the right ways.
There's still a lot to learn, they don't view themselves the way the world views them, and that's part of the secret to why they continue to inspire people.
“Hyperballad” by Björk
“Hyperballad” is such a sweet spot of the beauty of the melody, the melancholy of the lyric and the type of relationship she's singing about, and we've all been there. It’s the way it blossoms, it starts with that little brush on the drum, and it grows into this powerful thing.
You've met so many of your heroes, have you met Björk?
I’ve not met her, but she'd be another one I’d be very intimidated to meet! When I talk to young singers about technique we often talk about perfectionism, but her voice is one where when I say to people, ‘Don't worry about being a perfect voice. Yes, learn technique, but be the kind of voice you’d recognise in a crowded restaurant in five seconds.’ Björk is one of those voices. There's a wildness to the way she sings, and an emotion that’s a channel straight to her heart.
I think this song is one of the most beautiful she's ever done. It’s a melody that lends itself to many different styles and it could be done in a lot of different ways. Obviously, Björk’s take will always be Björk, but it's got a universal lyric and melody to it.
The video by Michel Gondry is incredible, it’s based on the lyrical theme in "Hyperballad" of throwing things off a cliff, a metaphor for the trade-offs people have to do to keep a relationship balanced.
That's it, and I understand that deeply. She tackles the idea of loving and being open to being loved, the confusion that can set in when your demons try to be louder than what's in front of you, and the maze you have to go through to get to your heart.
What's so powerful about “Hyperballad” is that it's easy to write about rainbows and moonbeams and everything being perfect. When it comes to love and relationships, it's a lot harder to write something that involves the good feelings, but also the very human grey areas and the not so straight lines that we often have to sift through to get to the good stuff, especially for those of us that are overthinkers. I've managed to conquer those demons, and now I'm with the love of my life.
I'd love to know how you conquered your demons.
Therapy helps in understanding your mechanisms and triggers. Having an outside force helped me to decipher what's valid, what’s been learned as a defence mechanism, your own insecurities and walls. We're all so inside ourselves but having somebody who can help you decipher that clears the way. Emotionally, I was very much on an island for a huge part of my life, and I'm very happy to have been through all that. That’s why I connect so much with “Hyperballad”, it explains exactly how I feel.
Is music a source of therapy for you too?
It's a powerful thing. When you write a song or sing a song that connects with people it's always an incredible surprise, because it's very personal, it almost feels indulgent in how personal it is. And that's the universality of music, when I do meet and greets with fans, they'll talk to me about a story where a song of mine was a soundtrack for them.
When you hear so many stories you get endless connectivity about how a song of yours helped somebody understand themselves and their world a little better. That's why we need to support music and the arts, because they remind us of our humanity.
“The Way You Look Tonight” by Tony Bennett
This song has an amazing story. It was originally performed by Fred Astaire for the film Swing Time in 1936 and won the Oscar for Best Original Song. Frank Sinatra, Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald covered it. What made you choose Tony Bennett’s version?
They're all fantastic versions, but I got to know Tony really well and that personal connection to the way he interpreted the song is what’s special to me. He was so supportive from such an early time, and when I talked about curiosity earlier, the first thing he wanted to talk about was, ‘What are your vocal warm-ups? Who do you like to listen to? Who's your favourite singer?’
How did you meet each other?
We were both on The Oprah Winfrey Show, he came into my dressing room and we started talking about singing. And I was like, ‘Oh, this guy is endlessly curious.’ At that point he was in his 70s, and as legendary as a legend gets, but he wasn't aloof, he wasn't ‘I'm this big guy and you're this new singer’. We did lip trills in front of each other.
When he’d talk about singing, there was a childlike wonder in his eyes. I remember when he walked out of my dressing room I said to my manager, ‘That's who I want to be, that’s what I want to grow into. I never want to lose the look he just had on his face.’
Those of us that knew him well knew he was suffering with Alzheimer's for a long time, but many people didn't. The thing with him was that he'd go up on stage, the band would strike up, and it was like he was 45 again, the songs would be right there. It was the conversations afterwards that were hard.
It was amazing to collaborate with him, and we recorded two songs together. There's a sweetness and a range to his voice that’s so great, and again, it’s that recognisability, you hear that Tony Bennett sound and it's so uniquely him. There was a romanticism to the way that he sang that was from the heart, where you really believe it. He was so full of love that when he would sing those songs, it wasn't about putting on appearances, it touched his soul and you could feel it in this song in particular.
Of all the songs of his you could have picked, why did you go for this one?
First of all, that arrangement is so beautiful. It's a song I've always put on when I’m on a long drive, on a date night or cooking at home. We talked about the complicated nature of emotions and relationships with “Hyperballad”, but this song is all about the beauty of simplicity, and he delivers it in such a way that it reminds me not to overthink that song.
It really sparks something in me, there were so many of his that I could have chosen, and this is where I had to not let perfect be the enemy of good. This was one where I've listened to it a lot, and this interpretation is beautiful.
“Candide: Make Our Garden Grow” by Leonard Bernstein
There’s an interesting story to this one, it’s about a character who realises the meaning of life is to create a garden.
As somebody entering his 40s, with this song I think about the garden and what that means to me. I didn't know a lot about Candide, the work of Leonard Bernstein runs deep but this wasn’t one that I knew well. But one day I was on a long drive, this song came on the classical radio station KUSC in Los Angeles, and I pulled over and started weeping, and I don't cry often.
There was something about what I was feeling at the time. I was entering a new relationship, I was falling in love, my brother was getting married, my parents were getting older and my wanderlust as a solo adventurer was starting to wane.
When was that?
Four years ago. We all have these ‘Aha’ moments with songs, sometimes they come early in life and sometimes they come later. It was one of those moments where it came on the radio at the exact time that I was having a real awakening inside myself, of what true vitality in life was all about.
I spent a lot of time in my life searching in the wrong places. This business can certainly make you do that, and I had a lot of time in my life unintentionally searching for happiness through very superficial means. But then you catch yourself and realise, ‘Why do I continue to be so unhappy?’
I was at a time in my life where I was both witnessing a lot of change around me - which even with good things is scary - and also appreciating and making an internal commitment to myself that the richness of life that I wanted for myself was in planting those seeds.
And that's the story of this song.
When that song came on, the orchestra backs out and there’s that choir, I'm telling you, the heavens opened up. I felt this was a song that represented all of the joy and the melancholy and sadness that can come from joy. Complicated joy is an interesting relationship. One thing therapists talk about a lot is ‘why? - ‘Why am I so sad when things in my life are so joyful sometimes?’
That's the complexity of human emotion, and this song represents all those things. At the end, when the guy goes ‘Any questions?' it's a perfect ending to the musical. I’d love to perform this song live one day; I'd love to join a choir and do it.
“Resting Place” by Bruce Hornsby
Where does Bruce Hornsby fit into your story?
I learned to play piano listening to Bruce Hornsby. I’d sit down and play his riffs, my voice is a bit different to my piano playing style, because I would play in that way with a lot of Grace notes. I loved his chord progressions; I loved what he would do on a song like “I Can't Make You Love Me.”
There’s a sound that's all his and I love the energy of him and The Noisemakers. I've dived into all his albums, but I haven't caught him and The Noisemakers live. He's on tour right now and so is Paul, and I want to try and get to see those shows this year.
This album Spirit Trail, I don't think was a big album for him, but I think it's fantastic. There’s something about the song “Resting Place” that again tackles some of the themes of the song from Candide. There was something about the songs on this album that really represented the complexities of life, family and legacy.
This song has a nice message and a great feel to it. I love the rhythm, and I love his playing on it. There's a wonderful solo in the middle of it that I think represents the best of his style.
There's a line in it, “I'm on a long sojourn. I'm shedding my skin”, which links to what you said earlier, about life changes, and going on a journey.
It's hard to write about those internal, existential crises without coming across as ‘woe is me’ and to be able to connect in that way. That’s why I love Paul Simon so much and the great writers like James Taylor and Carole King, they write about complexities in a way that's like, ‘This isn't just me word vomiting on you, we're in this together.’
This song does that with a smile on his face and that's something I've always loved about it.
“Nessun Dorma” by Aretha Franklin
Like I mentioned with “Hyperballad”, when a melody is so universally beautiful a number of different vocal styles could tackle it and it would still have the same emotional weight. That’s what happened at that Grammys when she sang “Nessun Dorma”.
I sang with Celine Dion at a rehearsal, I was 17 years old and it changed my life forever. I met Pavarotti backstage during that rehearsal. I watched his rehearsal and it was wonderful, but you could tell he was a little ill.
When I read about the story of her version, it was fascinating to discover that Pavarotti and Aretha Franklin were really good friends.
They were. When he had to bow out and she stepped in, first of all, I admired the incredible bravery it took for her to dive into this Italian, operatic song. She brought every bit of it to life the way a classical singer would, but she did it in her Aretha style. That was eye-opening, that a voice could take on such an amazing, classical piece of music and add to it.
At the age of 17, when I was finding my own voice and where it fitted, finding myself not really fitting into one category or the other and feeling quite lonely in that, I'm watching one of my favourite singers of all time sing one of my favourite Aria pieces of all time. These are two very different bins in the music store that are suddenly coming together.
Was it like the feeling you had hearing “Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes?” for the first time?
Yes, it was cross-pollination and they’re both songs that represented such success in that. I remember watching it, I had tears in my eyes and thinking that this was an amazing proclamation of the power of music. I always knew she was extraordinary, but that was the first time I started to learn the versatility of her musical mind.
As I became even more of a fan and listening to all the interpretations of songs that she's done in many different styles and genres, I started to learn about her virtuosity as a pianist and her improvisational abilities. That was the first time I’d seen her beyond the hit songs that I knew, and it started a huge fandom. And we got to sing together once, which was so fun.
I’m guessing that singing with Aretha Franklin was pretty nerve-racking, to say the least.
If we’re talking about nerves, that was one of the most nervous experiences I've ever had, but luckily, she was so gracious and kind. We were singing together at a Nelson Mandela birthday concert at Radio City Music Hall in New York. I’d done a lot of work with Mandela's aids charity, so I was invited to sing for him. I have a song called “You Raise Me Up" that Aretha wanted to sing with me, and I thought, ‘Well, this is going to be one of the top moments of my life.’
I went to her dressing room, she had the song on a boom box, and she's got all her family in there. She liked to keep her dressing room very hot and we're not talking humid hot, she had dry space heaters, it was like a sauna. I said, ‘It's very warm in here’, and she goes, ‘Yes, isn't it wonderful?’ We rehearsed in her dressing room, and I was writing down feverishly, ‘Aretha is going to sing here. I'm going to take this line. I'll take this harmony.’
One of the things I learned when singing with Aretha Franklin is that when you're out there the plan goes out of the window, when she decides it's her time to sing you shut the hell up.
That was better than anything that was planned, to have a dance with her out there and the spontaneity of singing with her was one of the great joys of my life. I feel so honoured I got to have that moment.
“Try a Little Tenderness” by Otis Redding
Why did you choose this one?
His voice is so raw, it's so emotive, and this song is a reminder of how I want to record music. When I think about the history of how a lot of these songs were recorded, you couldn't splice and edit, a lot of the time these songs were recorded in big spaces with everybody in the same room. You can hear the one take, all of the emotion, where a note shouldn't come out, but it does.
As a singer that always tries to be a perfectionist, there's a tightrope walk to that but hearing singers like Otis Redding reminds me of the power of just going for it. That song is going to be a wedding song for me one day. It’s one of the greats. It's one of the most feelgood songs I've ever come across.
The musicians in the room were incredible, his backing band was Booker T. & the M.G.'s, Isaac Hayes produced it, played keyboards and wrote the arrangement.
I wonder if they knew before pressing the red light how special that recording was going to turn out to be. Everything about the recording is perfect, and it feels perfect in almost an accidental way. Not to say that it was going to be anything less than great, but when a track has a vibe, where for whatever reason the alchemy in that room just came together and everything sounded right.
There’s the back and forth between him and the horns, and the improvisation of the way he decides to repeat those lines. You can tell that it was a moment, and that somebody probably said, ‘That's the take’. In a day and age where you can put things through every filter, have strings sound perfect and make a voice sound perfect, the songs from that era, and especially Otis Redding in those songs, reminds me of the beauty of trusting - trusting the space, trusting the song, trusting your voice and then trusting your emotions.
I didn’t know Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra both recorded this song, I listened to their versions and they’re wonderful.
They are, they’re controlled though.
In comparison, Otis Redding’s take is much wilder and sexier.
It is wild, absolutely, and that's the way the song needs to be. There are a lot of songs where I would say Bing's version or Frank's version are the version, but that's a song where Otis made us all go, ‘Oh, it can be that?’ Whenever somebody gives you an ‘Aha moment’ about a piece of music, that’s the fear and the excitement of interpretation.
It's a singer's dream and goal to try and find something new and fresh about a song, and that song is the most shining example of how that can happen.
“Floe” by Philip Glass
Where and when did you discover Phillip Glass?
In junior high school there was a guy who was the smartest kid in the room and I became friends with him. His parents were musicians, and they were really avant-garde classical music fans and jazz fans. Anytime I’d go to their house, they would introduce me to things.
When I was 13 they introduced me to NPR, we would go on drives and they’d play Morning Becomes Eclectic and all that stuff. I was introduced by this friend and his family to all kinds of music that I wasn't listening to on top 40 radio, and Philip Glass was one of those composers.
I remember sitting in the car, listening to Glassworks and going, ‘What is this?’ I'd never heard anything like it in my life, and I couldn't explain why it was evoking such feelings in me. This kind of classical music can be polarising with the repetitiveness of it, the style of it, but being introduced to that style of classical music, the work of Philip Glass and Steve Reich, did something to me at that age that was very, very powerful.
What did you love about it?
I love the piano work that he does. There are very famous songs on the Glassworks album, the first track especially, but “Floe” was interesting. Over the years, as I've become more and more of a fan of Philip Glass, one of the things that I admire most about him is his use of woodwinds, there’s something that he does with a clarinet, a saxophone and a flute that is just different.
I'd always thought of those instruments as being very pigeonholed in very certain styles of music. A saxophone is for jazz, a flute is going to be for Peter and the Wolf, it's going to be sweet sounding, you can hear all styles with a clarinet.
I’d never heard that collection of instruments do that, and with “Floe” I'd never heard that sound before. It was haunting, it was dark, it was like it took you on a journey. Of all the songs on that album, that was the one that really introduced me to the orchestral world of Phillip Glass, and I've been a fan ever since.
When we were talking about “Diamonds in the Soles of her Shoes” earlier, you mentioned he wrote an arrangement for you when you performed with Paul Simon, what was it like meeting him?
I met him then and most recently I met him at Carnegie Hall. One of my great friends is a singer called Angélique Kidjo, she's from Benin, and she's also getting a star on the Walk of Fame this year, she's incredible. She did a concert at Carnegie Hall, I was one of her guests and Phillip was one of her guests.
I got to talk to talk to him backstage for a while and I said, ‘If you ever need a baritone, let me know!’ I'm not above begging and he was so kind to me. It's always nice when you meet one of your heroes.
“The Pearl Fishers Duet” by Robert Merrill & Jussi Björling
This is a beautiful song, but I chose it because of the singers. This is a song that represents my favourite baritone, Robert Merrill, and my favourite tenor, Jussi Björling.
There are great baritones, there are great tenors, I love Pavarotti and I always will. You can talk about a pathos of the human voice, you can be technically perfect. Robert Merrill was one of Sinatra's and Tony Bennett’s favourite singers, they loved him and they loved classical singers. He’s the baritone I’ve always yearned to be.
The first time I heard Jussi Björling’s voice was at the Jussi Björling Museum in Sweden. I stumbled into it on an early tour of mine, in a small city in Sweden and I'm going, ‘What is this?’ His old costumes were there, his voice was playing in the museum and it stopped me in my tracks.
I knew great singers. I knew classical music. I'd heard these Aria’s all the time. There was something about the quality of his voice and I thought, ‘More people should know about this this tenor, he’s something very special.' His voice has an effortlessness that would make people jealous, it was so beautiful. So when I discovered that my favourite baritone and my favourite tenor had recorded this extraordinary song together, it's one that I always return to.
Who introduced you to the song?
I discovered this when I was doing vocal training at 16 or 17 and I was starting to sing more Aria’s as part of my vocal training. A voice teacher of mine put it in front of me, as if to say ‘Get a load of this.’ This is like when the X-Men all gather together, when you've got two of the greats doing such a famous song together. That was my version of when Lady Gaga and Beyoncé came together.
In terms of singing, would you ever fancy taking the baritone part in an opera?
I’d be hesitant. I’m self-aware about the fact that my superpower lies in the in-between. It can be pretty lonely when you feel you're not 100% in one world, but it’s naturally where my voice has always sat. I have a traditional, classical sounding leaning, but I have pop sensibilities that would make doing opera more challenging. I have done very operatic singing that isn't full blown opera with a ‘capital O’, like Sweeney Todd, which is as close to a baritone operatic performance as I've ever done.
I'm friends with that world and I've been able to sing with incredible duet partners, I've been able to stand toe to toe with Plácido Domingo, Renée Fleming and Andrea Bocelli, and it’s been a joy to learn and to sing with them. I've talked to Renée Fleming about if could I do it and she's been very supportive.
But the main reason is that as much I love listening to it, it’s not what I grew up wanting to do. That’s how I felt about musical theatre, I grew up wanting to do it, listening to those songs and saying, ‘I want to be the best for that material’.
Eight shows a week in musical theatre is hard, if you don't love it in your core don’t do it, and I feel the same way about opera. If you haven't wanted to do it since you were little, or ballet, any of the classical arts, then it may not be the kind of thing you should do, because it's just so difficult.
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