Albert Einstein once likened life to riding a bicycle — you have to keep moving in order to maintain your balance.
Apparently, this is a credo that Josh Groban has wholeheartedly embraced.
The singer nabbed a Tony nomination in 2017 for Best Actor in a Musical for his performance as Pierre Bezukhov in Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 and last September the Netflix murder-mystery series The Good Cop premiered; developed by Monk creator-writer Andy Breckman, it stars Groban and Tony Danza. The same day The Good Cop began streaming (Sept. 21), the California native’s eighth studio album, Bridges, was released. While all of this would seem to be a pretty overwhelming slate of activity, Groban doesn’t quite see it that way.
"Time does slow down in my head, even if it’s not slowing down in front of me,” he says. “I’m able to kind of zone in on things and focus on them, and I think being able to take a time out and go make The Good Cop was really serendipitous and helpful, because I was starting to feel a little burnt out having finished about half the record (before filming).”
"I got that (role) out of nowhere,” Groban adds. “It gave me a chance to change gears and sides of my brain. Then when I had so much fun taping that and was done with it, I couldn’t wait to get back to my day job. I was there guns blazing, ready to get back in again. Everything happens for a reason and I feel like even though it’s been a lot on my plate, those things have inspired me to do other things.”
Groban’s newest musical outing, Bridges, is his first album of mostly original songs since 2013’s All That Echoes. Balance is a key element at the center of the album’s dozen songs, as life lessons about receiving and losing love and maintaining positivity through times good and bad resonate solidly, whether it’s throughout the stirring “River” and its inspirational Gospel accompaniment or the closing “Bigger Than Us,” a message of unity wrapped in a delicate swath of string arrangements and sparse piano runs that wouldn’t sound out of place on a latter-day U2 album. Guest appearances by Sarah McLachlan and Sugarland’s Jennifer Nettles further sweeten the listening experience.
As someone who cut his teeth doing musical theater, Groban shows his range and adeptness at singing in a foreign tongue, be it in Spanish for his duet with classical guitar virtuoso Vicente Amigo on “Música Del Corazón,” tackling Celine Dion’s French “S’il suffisait d’aimer” or trading lines in Italian with Andrea Bocelli on “We Will Meet Once Again.”
For Groban, going the extra mile to learn how to sing a song in the original language that it was penned makes for a more rewarding experience for all involved.
“It takes the difficulty level of recording up considerably,” he says. “I didn’t grow up with these languages. As a vocal student, I studied many of them, which is how (the languages) started to find themselves on my first album. Just singing in those languages was always a huge part of why I loved singing. But the process that goes into it is pretty in depth.”
Groban says he always works with a language coach on any non-English songs he takes on, making sure he gets the dialect and pronunciation correct. He says his goal is to sound fluent, “as if I were singing it in English.”
“I’ve always felt there’s a musicality and a poetry to these songs when they are in those languages, especially if they were written in those languages,” he says of keeping the tunes in their original tongues. “They lose their music when you translate that into English. There’s something very special about choosing to sing in different languages as a vocalist because it really unlocks different levels of your voice that are both challenging and so rewarding for both me and my audience.”
Groban puts a lot of thought into his live shows, which can feature up to 40 musicians on stage. His setlists include the popular material from all stages of his professional career (including several songs from Bridges), as well as a few deep cuts.
“I always like to have the live show be the best representation of the spirit of any new music that I’m putting out and also be a celebration of the songs that I’ve had throughout the course of my career,” he says. “There are some songs we do that the fans have loved forever, and we always like to throw in songs that are a surprise that fans may not have heard much of. And it gives us a chance to put a new energy on (the music), even the newer songs.”
Groban says that he’s aware that, for as many hardcore fans who come to his concerts, there are also a lot spouses and significant others who might just be coming along for the ride. While his primary focus is on his dedicated followers, he works hard to reach everyone in attendance.
“When I do a live show in an arena, it’s really a chance to celebrate the connection that I have with my fans that’s different than holding or downloading an album. It’s something that becomes a once-in-a-lifetime experience for all of us,” Groban says. “My goal is to both give fans of mine a musical experience that is more heightened than any other way they can experience the music, then it’s also my goal to win over the people that have been dragged there who aren’t as familiar, aren’t fans or really don’t want to be there. Whatever it is, I really want to put on an incredible show and leave them wanting more.”
Josh Groban performs June 12 at U.S. Bank Arena with Jennifer Nettles. Tickets/more info: usbankarena.com.
