Idina Menzel lets go of the past through her music
Mature pop album out this month helps Frozen star chart a new beginning
NEW YORK— It’s only five letters — just her first name, unadorned. All in lowercase, with a period at the end.
Frozen and Broadway star Idina Menzel has a new introspective album out this month after a tumultuous few years and its simple title — idina. — is as strippeddown as it gets.
“I guess I want people to feel like they really get to know me on a first-name basis,” she says. “The period says some kind of confidence, but the lowercase is like not completely arrogant.”
In the eight years since her last original studio CD, Menzel has shot to global fame singing “Let It Go,” had her name mangled by John Travolta at the Oscars, given birth to a son, poured her heart into a new Broadway show and seen her marriage to Taye Diggs collapse.
She’s come out the other end with a mature pop album and a new engagement to actor Aaron Lohr.
“It’s a new beginning — personally, in my life,” she says. “The music was written and is about things that I was experiencing in the last couple of years, sort of putting an end to one era of my life and figuring out how to start again.”
The new album is strong and incredibly personal, with storm clouds seemingly everywhere. “Heaven knows, I went through hell,” she sings on “Show Me.”
On “I See You,” she says: “Here’s to the hopeless/The almost forgotten/To those who got lost along the way/I see you.” The woman who once sang “Defying Gravity” is now singing “goodbye gravity” on one song.
Menzel leaned on two producers — Eric Rosse and Greg Wells — and she had a hand in writing virtually every song, from “I Do,” with its clear dig at Diggs (“Remember you told me/You’re my one and only”), to the upbeat, hear-me-roar “Queen of Swords” (“Don’t go asking me for apologies”).
The 45-year-old singer and actress says her personal turmoil came at the same time as career success, spinning her head. She’d go into the studio angry at the world and yet emerge with hopeful songs.
“I was going through a divorce and, simultaneously, my career was taking off in a bigger way than ever, with Frozen and all of that. And so here I am singing at the Oscars and then dealing with mediation and visitation agreements,” she says. “The dichotomy of that, the contradictions and the guilt and regret that I was feeling all at this wonderful time professionally, was very dynamic for me.”
Dan McCarroll, president of Warner Bros. Records, said Menzel, “was true to who she is and said what she needed to say.” He added: “There’s some really deep stuff on this record.”