Josh Groban released Illuminations in the United States and Canada on November 15, 2010, through Reprise Records. His fifth studio album put him to work with producer Rick Rubin and gave him a larger role in shaping the material. Groban earned writing credits on 11 of its 13 tracks, with six songs pairing him with Dan Wilson.
Lead single “Hidden Away” captured the approach in one recording. Groban sang and played piano with acoustic guitarists Matt Sweeney and Smokey Hormel and organist Spooner Oldham performing alongside him. David Campbell’s orchestral arrangement was added afterward. The musicians established the core performance together before the orchestral parts were layered in.
Getting to that point took patience. Groban had spent his recording career working with David Foster, so changing producers also meant reconsidering habits established over roughly a decade. He told the Associated Press that he and Rubin spent more than a year working through songs, musicians and piano parts before recording. He found that preparation “extremely scary and very frustrating at times.” Groban wanted to hear something taking shape; Rubin kept developing the material before committing it to a record. The producer also supplied songs by other writers as a standard for Groban to meet. His own compositions had to earn their place against those alternatives. That challenge made songwriting a practical responsibility: he had to produce material strong enough to displace songs Rubin already believed in.
Rubin also connected Groban with Wilson. In a HuffPost interview with Mike Ragogna, Groban recalled choosing to travel to Minneapolis to work with him, deliberately leaving his familiar surroundings in Los Angeles. The collaboration clicked, and he returned about six or seven times. “Bells of New York City” began at Wilson’s piano there. Groban recalled the two discussing New York and how it drew them back. While Wilson briefly left the room, Groban started playing the bell-like figure that became the song’s opening. When Wilson returned, they set aside the piece they had been working on and followed the new idea.
Wilson’s working habits suited that concentration on the song itself. Discussing his collaborations with Ragogna in October 2010, he described starting with piano or guitar and voices, leaving the fuller arrangement until later. He wanted a song to hold up when someone else played it with a single instrument. He estimated that he and Groban had written nine songs together for the project, although the final selection wasn’t settled when they spoke. Wilson also said he hadn’t known “Hidden Away” would become the first single; learning it had been chosen came as a welcome surprise.
The finished album also retained a song from Groban and Rubin’s early experiments with covers. “Straight to You,” written by Nick Cave, emerged from sessions built around piano and voice. Groban felt its dramatic words and melody could support a full orchestra. James Newton Howard supplied that arrangement, and the track became the closing song on Illuminations.
