In the past, Josh often spoke of his frustration at not fitting into a grammy category. Though he normally presents as a humble fellow, his desire for a grammy has been thinly veiled at best. I remember one tweet about the grammy nomination of Ruslan Sirota, his pianist on the All that Echoes tour, where Josh tweeted that he was "grammy adjacent."
For me, though, it's bittersweet.
What I liked best about Josh was his music that was pop crossed over with modern classical. People called it pop/classical crossover, but to me that description is more evocative of Il Divo. Josh was bringing in more elements of experimental music. That's what I really liked.
Here are some examples:
Sometimes it was just unusual note or chord progressions
sometimes a bit more exotic
often international and exotic
sometimes electronic
Modern classical/pop crossover: not a grammy category, not accessible to the masses, intellectually complex -- but to me this has been his genius.
Don't ge me wrong. "Stages" is beautiful. He has a new voice coach and his voice is sounding better than it ever has, albeit a bit more conventional than it did.
But the background music sounds like Muzak to me... not as interesting.
There have been articles written about how successful popular music is all similar musically. Here are some examples:
Uggh, like we're just sheep -- baaaah-baaaah -- always going after the same stuff; but Josh wasn't. Josh was different -- refreshingly different.
To get a "grammy" nomination, he had to become more similar to others. Ick, ick, ick. I don't like that. It bothers me. Not that I hate this album. I don't. But I hate that in order to get recognition he had to give up the way he was different.
Still, hopefully, the fact that "Stages" has done so well will give him some flexibility in creating a different sort of album next time.
