Singer Josh Groban shares his dirty little secret

It’s pretty crazy how things have turned out. I showed a passion for music from a young age, and my parents were afraid I’d be a struggling musician.

Any time your kid tells you they want to be anything other than a doctor or a lawyer, there’s always a worry about how long are they going to live at home.

I was asked to sing with Celine Dion when I was 16. My main concern was not mucking it up and going back to school the next day.

The other kids didn’t know how to take it, and I didn’t know how to tell it without sounding like I was bragging. They would have taken me back down to size immediately if I had.

Sometimes you’re given the best advice when you’re just not ready to hear it. As a teen, my father told me to make time for friendships and relationships… I always believed if you didn’t eat, breathe and live your work, success would fritter away.

But going it alone doesn’t make the successes as fun, neither does it make the failures more tolerable. The dirty secret is having happy relationships makes your art better.

I can count my truest friendships on two hands. I have 100, 200 friends, but my best friends are still those I made in college or camp. A few friends may edge in later, but mainly I’m closest to people who have been with me my whole life.

It’s easy to get wrapped up in your own hype… It can make you feel narcissistic by accident. I work to keep that in check.

Be kind to people: the more you do things for other people, the happier you wind up being and the more you get in return.

The longest relationship I’ve ever had is with my dog Sweeney. He’s 14 and we have a real soul-to-soul connection. He’s by my side constantly, and has been with me through thick and thin. He’s accompanied me on four tours, and sits in the vocal booth with me when I record – if you listen carefully you can probably hear him breathing.

Social media is changing the way we connect with people romantically, and it’s damaging our self-worth. I’m weary of it, and at times it makes me anxious.

I think of fame as one big fun game. We’re not meant to be under microscopes, and I realise as I’ve got older all I can do is do my best.

Those Glee kids were the hardest-working people in showbiz. I played a weirdo version of myself, and it was such a blast. I had no idea it would go on to become such a phenomenon.

Sometimes I go to the woods and sit and read. I’m a city kid, I love the hustle and bustle, but spending a week offline in the middle of nowhere makes me feel great. It takes prep to shut off, but I’m never happier than when I do. The phone is a tether – you hear that ding and don’t realise how much of a slave you are to it.

MY SECRET SNAPSHOT

Whenever there was an instrument nearby, I would gravitate towards it. My mum would say, ‘Where’s Josh?’ and I’d have found a drum somewhere and be hitting it. I was just making noise on the piano in this shot, you can tell from my little double-jointed fingers.

I was about three, and this was around the time I really got into the spirit of song-writing. I didn’t even call it song writing back then, it was just a special time for me to go over to my grandma’s and improvise on her piano.

She was a dancer and singer too, and her house was always full of the sound of good music on the vinyl and fresh stew cooking on the stove. I was very close to her, and when she died aged 94, I inherited this piano and had it refurbished. I still play it now and think of her.

NB: Josh Groban ’s album Bridges and the Netflix series he stars in, The Good Cop, are available on 21 September. Tickets for his tour can be purchased from Joshgroban.com/tour

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