A Review of Josh Groban's Awake

Josh Groban's latest album, Awake, offers a taste of something for everyone. This highly anticipated album marks a significant shift in the artistic styling of Groban, whose blend of the Classical and Pop music genres has earned him a massive fan base over the years. On this album, Groban seems to shift his attention in several ways. First, the Classical feel of previous albums is taken over by an engagement of several different musical genres. Groban also shifts a bit from his traditional engagement of the romance languages; only five of the album's thirteen basic tracks-there are more on other versions-are in different languages, where on previous albums English typically proved the minority language used. Groban shifts from simply the performer to new roles on this album, namely writer/co-writer and collaborator. Groban wrote or co-wrote five tracks on this album: "February Song," "Now or Never," "Lullaby," "Machine," and "Awake" (a track that only appears on the three special editions of the album). Finally, the album as a whole shifts from the traditional single release to not two or three, but four separate versions of the album. Clearly, this album is quite literally an awakening of sorts for Groban.