A Star in the Making
By Bob Brown
abcnews.com
"I thought to myself, 'Maybe one day I'll have a big break, but I don't want it to be like this,'" Groban remembers. "I didn't want to go in there unprepared."
But he had to. Dion was due to sing with Andrea Bocelli that night at the 1999 Grammy Awards, and Bocelli couldn't make the rehearsal. Groban was his stand-in, and, Dion says, he did better than all right. "This young man comes on stage almost going backward he was so scared," remembers Dion. "He took the microphone, and when he started to sing, he couldn't be any more powerful than that. … This kid was incredible!"
His career started to take off. A guest-starring role on Ally McBeal won him national attention last year and then, two months ago, he had a major international appearance at the closing ceremonies of the Salt Lake City Olympics, singing with Charlotte Church before a worldwide audience estimated at 1.6 billion people.
Groban's first album, a collection of songs in both English and Italian, is nearing sales of 500,000 — the gold standard. Many people in the music industry believe he will fill a niche in the pop market with his extraordinary talent for interpreting ballads. One music executive called him the "first Internet star" because the CD with the song he sang on Ally McBeal quickly became one of the top sellers on Billboard's Internet charts.
Groban, now 21, is poised for major stardom. He just has to figure out what kind of singer he wants to be.
Raised in a Los Angeles family with no show business connections, Groban was noticed for his voice at an early age. He remembers one comment in particular. "Somebody came up to me and said, 'You've got a really beautiful voice. You've got a nice light bulb, you just don't have the power yet.'"
His voice began to mature in his teens, and he was admitted to the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts. His break came when a vocal coach sent a tape to David Foster, a top producer who was looking for young talent to perform at charity events.
"I'm always leery when people send me tapes," Foster says. "Ninety-nine times out of 100 there's just nothing there … But this tape stuck out like a sore thumb."
Foster immediately booked Groban to sing at California Gov. Gray Davis's 1999 inaugural. A few weeks later, Groban was on stage rehearsing with Celine Dion in place of Bocelli.
"He's a classically trained singer singing pop music, really," says Foster, who has won 14 Grammies for his work with major artists like Dion, Barbra Streisand, Whitney Houston and Paul McCartney. "He's got the goods, I know he does," said Foster. "He's got youth on his side. You look at that body, and then you hear that voice — they just don't go together, do they?"
That's the concept that has gotten Groban attention: He is so young, yet sounds so experienced, that he sometimes causes double-takes when people hear him. "The world is looking for a male vocalist with a voice that's a little bit deeper than a chipmunk," Groban was told by Los Angeles disc jockey Rick Dees in a recent radio appearance.
Singing at one of Foster's charity events, Groban next impressed Ally McBeal creator David E. Kelley, who then wrote Groban into a spring 2001 episode. Groban played a nerdy high school kid who sues his prom date for dumping him. Feeling sorry for him, Ally, played by Calista Flockhart, agrees to be his prom date. At the prom, she persuades him to put aside his shyness and stand up to sing in front of the whole class. The scene plays up the qualities that Foster first saw in Groban: the vulnerable-looking young man opens his mouth, and his magnificent voice quickly silences everyone.
Internet interest in Groban began the day after the Ally McBeal episode aired. Since then, his following has been growing.
"He still sometimes doubts himself," says Foster, who has gotten Warner Brothers record executives interested in Groban. "I had to explain to him that this is hardball now. When a record company signs an artist, it's not just a $50,000 hit or a $100,000 hit. It's multi-multi-millions of dollars of investment. So I'm going to Warner Brothers and saying, 'I really believe in this kid. I think I've got something here.' That's a check for three to five million dollars before we're done."
But what kind of singer is he?
Groban says that when he goes into record stores, he never knows what section he'll find his album in. "I'll find it in the classical section in one place, I'll find it in the pop section in the other place, I'll find it in the rock section somewhere else. I'll find it in easy listening," he says.
As well as pop ballads, he is considering developing his voice to sing operatic arias, although he concedes he is much too young to do arias now. He is currently studying with a voice teacher.
Groban, a young man who got noticed by playing a self-conscious
kid on Ally McBeal, must now learn to play himself. That's
the hard part.
To hear more of Groban's music, visit his Web site at www.joshgroban.com.