Josh Groban: so how did Josh Groban manage to woo millions of hearts with just his set of prodigious pipes?

Interview, March, 2004 by Renee Fleming

RF: Are you comfortable onstage?

JG: Much more than I was. The nerves really got the best of me when I was younger, and I still have a certain amount of stage fright: Whether I have to perform for 10 people or 10,000, I get major butterflies. But more and more I'm able to focus that, and as soon as I walk out on the stage and feel that positive energy, the fear goes away. The fans are always the best medicine.

RF: Has your success made this easier?

JG: I do try to use it as a confidence builder. It validates me and makes me feel like despite any demons I may have, I'm on the right path.

RF: What's it like for you on the road?

JG: I'm surrounded by so many people--my manager, the road manager, my band, sometimes my voice coach--but it's very lonely because I'm not with my friends and family. I'm with a very business-y group of people. They're all wonderful, but it's different.

RF: Is there a great love in your life at the moment?

JG: Oh ... [both laugh] I have a wonderful girlfriend right now. It's so hard to find people in this business that you really connect with, but yeah, I'm seeing someone who's very nice.

RF: And you're finding the distance and the touring and all that to be manageable?

JG: That is kind of tricky, but it's okay. As David said to me, the golden microphone is in front of me now, and I have to use it as much as I can, otherwise it will be passed along. So I'm working as hard as I can and opening as many doors as possible. And she understands.

RF: One of the things that strikes me listening to your music is that you've managed to keep a vulnerability in your sound and in your presentation. It's something that I think really touches people. How do you prepare yourself emotionally before recording or performing to get to that place?

JG: For me the lyric is extremely important. It has to be something I feel--even if it's not written by me--and that I can make my own.

RF: So you connect first to the text?

JG: It depends. So often you're disappointed because one is greater than the other, and they've got to match. After a first album that does as well as mine did, you get sent many songs that just aren't right. So I had a real urge on this second album to do some writing and to sit down and ask myself what it is I'd like to express.

RF: So you're writing now as well?

JG: Yeah. I co-wrote three songs on this album, and it's been such a great experience because it got me out of my shell. You have all these emotions in your head, these things you want to say, but you're never fully inspired to take the jump and say them because you've got these wonderful writers around you all the time. This time, though, I felt I had to get it out, and I got to do a lot of that on this album. It's a much more vulnerable feeling, but it's a good one.

RF: Tell me how you go about choosing your repertoire. For instance, I found it interesting that so many of the selections on your new CD are in Italian.

JG: There are definitely a bunch of people I trust to advise me. If what they suggest is something I feel I can sing truthfully, I'll go with it. I find songs in Italian to be very romantic and poetic. The language itself is very musical.