Ballad of a Very Unlikely Pop Star

Try as you might, you’d have trouble dreaming up a singer less likely to become a pop star these days than Josh Groban, even if he does have a 14-time Grammy-winning producer, composer and arranger in his corner.

This 20-year-old Angeleno is a throwback to an era of polished pop singing. Groban is light-years removed from the hip-hop, hard rock and teen-pop sounds dominating the sales charts. Yet his self-titled debut album has sold more than 300,000 copies since its release in November, and last week it shot from No. 100 to No. 50 on the sales chart.

“This album was never designed to get radio play,” says the record’s producer, David Foster, whose Grammys have come for his work with Celine Dion, Whitney Houston, Barbra Streisand and Chicago, among others. “But sometimes you can transcend all the problems, the naysayers and all the things that shouldn’t happen.”

Foster is right. Radio airplay--something considered indispensable for breaking new artists--has been nominal so far.

So how has this kid with a dark, rich voice managed to defy conventional wisdom? You might say he’s done it by becoming a charity case.

“I started hitting the nonprofit circuit with David,” Groban explains, referring to the charity events that Foster regularly produces. Though they didn’t pad his bank account, those appearances put Groban in front of all the right PWMs--People Who Matter, from television producers to celebrities to record executives.

That exposure has led to a string of increasingly high-profile television appearances and a burgeoning fan base keyed to his Web site, www.joshgroban.com.

“Ten years ago, when I did the ‘Unforgettable’ song with Natalie and Nat King Cole, the last thing on my mind was radio,” Foster says. “Who knew? I did it because I loved it, and I did this album because I loved it.

“A little part of me hoped it would transcend [a cult following], but the big part of me said, ‘I’m doing art now, and that’s just the way it’s going to be.’ But when you get both, it sure is nice.”

Groban came to Foster’s attention three years ago, as a last-minute replacement for Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli, whose delayed flight to L.A. kept him from a rehearsal for a Grammy Awards performance. Foster sought recommendations from celebrated vocal coach Seth Riggs, with whom Groban was studying at the time. Foster flipped when he heard a tape of Groban’s voice and invited him to the rehearsal, where the teenager found himself harmonizing with Celine Dion on Foster’s song “The Prayer.”

Among those who heard Groban sing at the Foster-organized inaugural for California Gov. Gray Davis in 1999 was television producer David E. Kelley, who arranged two appearances on his show “Ally McBeal.”

Groban also has found admirers in Rosie O’Donnell, who is having him back on her show on April 16, as well as at “Larry King Live,” “The Today Show” and “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno.” He’ll be profiled on an upcoming edition of “20/20.”

Oh, and then there was Groban’s performance last month at the closing ceremonies for the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, where this boyish-looking man with tousled curls that match his dark brown eyes sang before a worldwide audience of more than 1 billion people.

How many more?

“After a billion you kind of lose count,” Groban says with an easy smile as he sits in the living room of the Hancock Park house where he’s lived with his family since he was 3.

Groban’s mother, Wendy, says she and her husband, Jack, were convinced of Josh’s musical talent from the time he was very young, but he didn’t start to study singing seriously until his teens. Then, while attending the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts, he focused on musical theater because he realized that his voice wasn’t cut out for rock ‘n’ roll.

After signing Groban to his Warner Bros.-affiliated 143 Records label, Foster encouraged him to move from theatrical singing toward pop. He also felt Groban’s voice was ideally suited to Italian, which led to the five numbers he sings in that language. It wasn’t, Foster says, an attempt to cast Groban as an American Bocelli, who prefers opera over pop.

“I’m not touching classical music yet,” Groban says. “I have too much respect, and I know how sacred these songs are to people for me to come out at my age and say, ‘Here I am’ [and then sing] ‘Nessun Dorma.’ I look at [my album] as a pop CD with classical influences.”

As Foster sees it, Groban could fill the current void in pop male ballad singers.

“Where is today’s Michael Bolton, or Bryan Adams, or Teddy Pendergrass?” he says. “There are a lot of women doing that kind of singing, but not a lot of guys.”

Now radio airplay is one of many things that might have seemed unimaginable just a few months ago but now appears within the realm of possibility.

“Ever since the [Olympic] closing ceremonies, there’s been such a great reaction from younger audiences that I feel I have a shot--a hard shot, but a good shot--at radio,” Groban says. “Some Top 40 stations are actually starting to play it, along with some modern adult-contemporary and some oldies stations.”

“He’s different,” Foster says. “When you read the fan mail, you see that people really love him and his music, and that they find it refreshing. That’s why there’s 31 flavors at Baskin-Robbins.”