On April 28th, Josh Groban is releasing Stages, an album full of movie and show tune covers. One of the tracks off of it is a duet with Tony winner Audra McDonald from Carousel called If I Loved You. Their powerful voices combined makes this song even more romantic than the original version.
So sit back, hit play, close your eyes and let your pure imagination transport you to that feeling you got when your date took you for a ride on a magical carousel. You know, when you wondered if they loved you and you knew at that moment they did.
On April 28th, Josh Groban is releasing an album full of his interpretation of some of the most iconic Broadway tunes and movie musical numbers. Stages includes songs like Over the Rainbow from The Wizard of Oz and What I Did for Love from A Chorus Line, but in a way that personifies his boisterous voice.
Another song off the record is Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory’s Pure Imagination and he just released the music video for it. I will openly admit, he is no Gene Wilder; but he comes really close. I just love the control that Groban has over his voice as he belts out the beautiful haunting tune. Plus, the way he hits the high notes, it’s like I found the Golden Ticket and got to eat the chocolate bar too.
Don’t you just love the way he used his pure imagination to make Pure Imagination come to life in his own special way?
Josh Groban has a very important question, and that is he wants to know, “Do you think I’m cute?” The baratone singer didn’t ask it in his normal very masculine voice, instead he sounded like a little girl thanks to the app DubSmash.com. And when a man like him sounds like that, how can you not think he is squeeze those chubby cheeks cute? Right!
Josh Groban parents are both only children, so he doesn’t know too much about his family tree. Tonight at 10p on TLC’s Who Do You Think You Are?, he learns a lot about his ancestors going back to the late 1600’s. The singer’s search focuses on his 8X great grandfather, Johann Jacob Zimmerman, who lived in Germany, and the two family members have a lot in common.
Even though Zimmerman’s father was a craftsman, Johann did not follow in his father’s footsteps. Instead, he want to University and became a music teacher. Besides teaching music and singing, he was a Deacon at his Lutheran Church. If that is not enough, he also studied astronomy and mathematics, and wrote 12 books on the topic.
In 1680, Johann saw something great in the sky from his Church that changed his whole life and his family’s lives. Something so astronomical that Isaac Newton wrote about him in his book, Book 3 of Isaac Newton’s Principia.
What is it? How did it change everything for Groban’s lineage? You just have to watch this extremely compelling episode of Who Do You Think You Are? to find out.
Groban will discover the answers to these questions when he travels to Germany. When arrives there, he visits the archives. From there he goes to the University that his 8X great grandfather was a student. His next stop is to the church that Johann worked a Deacon and made the discovery that changed everything. A discovery that revolutionized his way of thinking so much so that he had to beg the local Duke to keep his job at the Church. This revelation leads Groban to his final stop, the archives of the Lutheran Church. There he learns about all the sacrifices Zimmerman made for his new beliefs. With the book almost closed on Groban’s research, there is one more astonishing fact that he finds out about Zimmerman that will blow him and you away.
When Groban’s search is concluded, he gets to reflect on his 8X Great Grandfather and how much they have in common. In some ways. It is almost like they are connected even though they lived almost three and a half centuries apart.
Maybe it is because I was a Religious Studies major, but I was completely enthralled with this episode of Who Do You Think You Are? Although I really think that I was so captivated by the show because his history is so unbelievable and interesting that you just want to know more and more. In fact, after the episode I concluded, I had to research Johann Jacob Zimmerman and I learned some more incredible facts about the impact he had on his time and ours.
On April 28th, Josh Groban will release his 7th studio album and this is one he has wanted to do since he was a freshman at Carnegie Mellon. This record is tribute to the many great songs from the musicals he grew up with as a kid and some he is not as familiar with. After listening to two of the tracks from the upcoming CD, you can tell his voice is made to make these songs even more special.
I am very particular about Pure Imagination from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory because I don’t think anyone can do it as well as Gene Wilder. I think that Groban came pretty gosh darn close. The control he has over his powerful voice is mind blowing to me. What is also mind blowing to me about his voice is that I can’t believe it is coming out of the same man I follow on Twitter, talk about night and day.
The other track I heard off the album is What I Did For Love from A Chorus Line. I can picture Groban in the show on Broadway and him bringing down the curtain with that performance. Close your eyes and picture him closing the show with that number. Just forget that it is a woman singing it in the original version of the Broadway show and the movie.
Another song I can’t wait to hear him do, is another female melody and it is Over the Rainbow from The Wizard of Oz. In the Stages’ trailer you hear just a snippet of it, and he really lowered his voice to bring out the true emotion of the song just like Judy Garland did.
April 28th can’t come soon enough for me because Stages is going to be one of the few albums I will have the entire record on repeat. Josh Groban singing the songs from musicals, equals an album the Grammy voters will have a hard time ignoring.
I say that he will break more than a few legs with his album. Bravo sir, bravo!
To hear What I Did For Love and to see the tracklisting from Stages, then click here!
