“When all else fails, call Rick Rubin,” Lars Ulrich said recently and Josh Groban, the operatic former king of adult contemporary, is doing just that.
After working almost exclusively with producer David Foster for years, Groban is recording his follow-up to his last studio album, Awake, with legendary producer/guru Rick Rubin, Fox News reports. That sure explains why the two were sighted hanging out at a Neil Diamond concert a while back.
Rubin seems to have streamlined his projects into one area of record making these days: the return to form. For Johnny Cash, Rubin built the entire arrangement around his iconic voice, freeing Cash to cover songs from all genres and make them his own. Rubin tried almost the exact same thing, but with original material, for Neil Diamond. Working on Metallica’s comeback album, Death Magnetic, Rubin was even more blunt, telling the band, “Think back to Master of Puppets.”