Idina Menzel
I Stand
“If this is the moment I stand here on my own / If this is my rite of passage, it somehow leads me home / I might be afraid, but it’s my turn to be brave.” — “Brave”
Though perhaps coincidental, the above lyrics, written by Idina Menzel for the pop ballad “Brave,” could describe the singer’s experience making I Stand, Menzel’s debut album for Warner Bros. Records due for release on January 22nd, 2008. A charismatic, Tony-Award winning actress who has become a star thanks to her knockout turns in the blockbuster musicals Rent and Wicked, Menzel is known mainly for her voice — a rich, soaring high belt that has earned her comparisons to her idols Barbra Streisand and Bette Midler. So it took a certain amount of courage for her to tell her own stories and co-write the 10 tracks on I Stand with the help of legendary songwriter and producer Glen Ballard, who has worked with Josh Groban, Annie Lennox, and Celine Dion, among countless others.
“I was prepared to be told that I had to sing other people’s songs,” she says, “but thankfully the label hooked me up with Glen. I’ve always wanted to work with him, even back when I was performing in New York bars for five people. He just believes the artist has something to say. He forced me to bring my ideas and my journals and just sit there and work. When he heard some of my ideas for melodies or lyrics, he would get really excited. It was really gratifying to have him recognize me as a writer on my own.”
For his part, Ballard says: “It’s very rare when you have somebody with Idina’s vocal skills who also has the ability to write about what’s really important to her. I felt like I was working with a writer of first rank, who gets it. And now she’s got her story to tell and I think it’s really worth hearing.”
I Stand — a mix of powerhouse pop tunes and touching balladry that Menzel began working on in May 2006 (six months before appearing in Wicked in London’s West End) — is filled with searchingly honest tales of love won and lost, and keeping it together through it all. “Most of the songs explore relationships,” says Menzel, who met her husband, actor Taye Diggs, through Rent in 1996. “Some are about my own relationship, some are about my friends’ relationships, and some are made up. I’ve been with my husband for 12 years, and we’re in a really hard business to be together that long. So we’ve gone through it, but we celebrate a lot. I write about all the different aspects of us.”
And so we get the above-mentioned “Brave,” and the emotional opening track “Better to Have Loved,” which Menzel describes as a significant song for her. “It’s important for me to know that even if I experience heartbreak or pain, I’m living my life in a rich, passionate way,” she says. “That song came about during a difficult time when I was trying to understand myself, and I wrote it to get myself out of bed, like, ‘Well, okay, if I screw up, at least I’m screwing up big. I’m taking chances, and when I look back on my life, I won’t feel that I’ve missed out on anything.”
Then there’s the hopeful, uplifting “Gorgeous,” co-written with songwriter Dave Bassett (Lisa Loeb), about dealing with some people’s reaction to Menzel’s relationship with Diggs, who is African-American. “It started out being about my husband and I coming from such different backgrounds and how we have been the target of bigotry; but it’s for anyone who has been alienated in some way for loving someone in the face of what the world throws at you.”
Another notable song is the album’s title track, which Menzel says she wrote to “try to figure out what I contribute to the world. I wanted to write a song about all these things I stand for, but I felt like such a loser. I’m not Bono; I’m not going over to Africa with this soapbox to stand on, I’m just this work in progress. So it’s sort of an anti-statement song, because I wrote it from a place of trying to figure out my own identity.”
Through all the introspection and confession is Menzel’s voice, a goose-bump inducing instrument that Menzel honed as a teenager entertaining happy couples and amped-up 13-year-olds as a wedding and Bar Mitzvah singer in her native Long Island, NY. “It was a very integral part of my growth as a singer and performer,” she says, “because every night I had to learn some first dance number or jive tune to sing while everybody ate their salad. It informed my confidence on stage. At a wedding, you don’t expect people to listen to you, so I actually knew I was good when I’d get applause.”
While working toward her bachelor’s degree in drama from New York University, Menzel did her wedding gigs on weekends and performed with rock bands downtown during the week. “It was just really hard in New York because the great musicians will do you a favor because they believe in you, but then the night before your gig they’ll say, ‘I’m sorry, I’ve got a gig with Ray Charles’ and ditch you. My dad would come to the gigs and I’d ask him to shell out $70 to pay the bass player because only 10 people showed up.”
In the winter of 1995, with the wedding season slowing down, Menzel auditioned for Rent and won the part of Maureen, an outspoken bi-sexual performance artist, a role that earned her a Tony Award nomination. The musical went on to win four Tony’s and a Pulitzer Prize, and put Menzel in the sights of theatrical casting directors. She went on to appear in 2000’s The Wild Party, 2001’s Aida, and 2005’s See What I Wanna See, picking up nominations for virtually every prize that the theater community awards. But it was originating the role of “green girl” misfit witch Elphaba in 2003’s Wicked that cemented her star status, in no small part thanks to her show-stopping number “Defying Gravity.” Gushed the Boston Herald in its review: “Menzel need only plant her feet and sing to make the back of the theater vibrate with the power of her voice.”
Menzel has since appeared in the 2005 film version of Rent, 2006’s Robert Towne-directed Ask the Dust, and most recently, in Disney’s box-office blockbuster romantic fable Enchanted, opposite Patrick Dempsey. She also recorded the end title song, “A Hero Comes Home,” for Robert Zemeckis’ film Beowulf, which hit theaters in November.
Menzel sees no problem using her talent to fashion a multimedia career. “Versatility is a great thing,” she says, “and the way show business is now, I feel like there’s a return to supporting the “entertainer” in somebody. Barbra Streisand and Bette Midler are women who could do everything, and I feel proud of everything I’ve been doing. I don’t want to stifle any part of myself. Maybe it’s timing, maybe it’s my own growth and evolution, but I’m owning up to everything I can do and saying, ‘This is who I am!’”
(November 2007)