In 2019, Josh Groban -- who performs at Darien Lake on Friday -- had gotten a good start on making a type of album that had long been on his to-do list, recording his versions of some of his favorite classic songs from pop and other genres.
Then the pandemic hit, interrupting work on the project. And when Groban returned to recording, he discovered that the album, “Harmony,” needed to change with the unusual times.
“The songs we chose had changed,” the popular vocalist said of the album, which was released in November. “What you want to say and the kind of songs you want to sing, it changes as the world changes around you. So different songs started to rise to the top as we were going through this crazy thing altogether.”
Two covers that came into play were the Joni Mitchell classic, “Both Sides Now” (on which Sara Bareilles joins Groban for a duet) and “The Impossible Dream.”
“I had really known it to be kind of the (Robert) Goulet, just kind of the big, bold, inspirational with a capital ‘I’ (song),” Groban said. “When I really looked at those lyrics, and when I found myself getting really emotional while I was singing it and how we’ve all tried to take these small steps forward in the face of these enormous challenges, it felt both politically, emotionally, health-wise, socially (right).”
Groban, whose nine studio albums have sold a combined 25 million copies, is beyond grateful and excited to be back on tour this summer and promised a show that will balance songs from “Harmony” with back catalog material and suited to the outdoor amphitheaters he’s playing.
“When you’re playing outdoors, so much of your environment is setting the tone already for you,” he said. “I made this mistake when I was younger trying to force-feed a big arena set into a bunch of outdoor sheds and I’m thinking ‘Oh my God, we’re wasting all this natural beauty trying to put all of these bells and whistles up here.’ So we’re really excited about the design for the summer tour because it’s classic, it’s going to be beautiful, it’s also going to let a lot of the natural beauty of these venues do the talking.”
Photo: Submitted photo.
Alan Scully is a freelance music feature writer.
