{"id":438,"date":"2015-10-23T02:30:55","date_gmt":"2015-10-23T02:30:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/?p=438"},"modified":"2015-10-23T02:30:55","modified_gmt":"2015-10-23T02:30:55","slug":"idina-menzel-2014-was-the-year-that-i-couldnt-let-it-go","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/idina-menzel-2014-was-the-year-that-i-couldnt-let-it-go\/","title":{"rendered":"Idina Menzel: 2014 was the year that I couldn’t let it go"},"content":{"rendered":"

This spring, Tony winner Idina Menzel returned to the Broadway stage for the first time in nearly 10 years as the star of If\/Then, a thoughtful musical about a woman starting over at the age of 40. It was a fitting role, given Menzel\u2019s other marquee performance\u2014a leading role in Disney\u2019s Frozen, which quickly transformed her from beloved theater star to worldwide sensation. Here, Adele\u2014er, Idina\u2014talks her biggest career year yet.<\/em><\/p>\n

I knew I had this movie coming out, and I was proud to be in it\u2014any time you\u2019re in a Disney movie, you\u2019re stoked. And I was really happy I had this cool song. I knew Elsa was going to surprise people. But I didn\u2019t know it would resonate so deeply and stir up so many young people to take ownership of the song. It\u2019s a nice marriage of social media with a zeitgeist moment. Every day I receive a video from a friend of their daughter singing \u201cLet It Go\u201d in the backyard.<\/p>\n

When I first heard it, they sent me a demo\u2014[co-songwriter] Kristin Lopez sang it\u2014and I thought, \u201cOh, shit, this is going to be hard to sing.\u201d And I changed the key; I made it higher because I thought it would sound younger.<\/p>\n

I feel really fulfilled and proud of the things I\u2019ve done, but this crossover thing was a big hurdle for me. The days of Judy Garland or Barbra Streisand, when they could take a song from Funny Girl and it was a hit song on the radio\u2014that\u2019s not our time. But I\u2019ve always tried to do that, and this was the closest thing to that. Demi Lovato\u2019s version, which I love, was produced specifically for radio, and they still play my version, even though it doesn\u2019t have hip hop or drums or anything like that.<\/p>\n

In my career, I\u2019ve learned when it\u2019s important to embrace when something magical is happening\u2014but I\u2019m good at knowing, don\u2019t get swept away by the perfectionism of it. To me, the imperfections make it better. I have those moments. It happened when John Travolta screwed up my name; it threw me out of this meditative place I was in, and I had to get back on track. \u201cStop thinking about that, just sing the song. Sing to your son. Who cares if he messed up your name?\u201d All that happened in about 8 seconds, and then I got back on track and finished.<\/p>\n

The year of Rent and Jonathan Larson, that was a big, remarkable year that defines who I was and how I thought about my life. The Wicked year, the same thing. Professionally, this is the biggest one yet because it\u2019s given me the biggest profile. But I\u2019ve had some special gifts with all those projects. The pattern is that they all resonate with young audiences\u2014so this year is especially extraordinary, because I\u2019m not a twentysomething anymore. I\u2019m still able to do things that can connect with young people. Halloween was crazy. Every little Elsa and their mother wanted to take pictures with me, and my son was not having it! I snuck a picture in and he saw it and flipped out. He was the best little bodyguard ever.<\/p>\n

Next year, hopefully, there\u2019ll be another album, and a world tour. Frozen helped me sell some tickets in countries I haven\u2019t been to. And past that, I don\u2019t know. When I go on tour next year, I\u2019ll sing it every night. I mean, it\u2019s my song!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This spring, Tony winner Idina Menzel returned to the Broadway stage for the first time in nearly 10 years as the star of If\/Then, a thoughtful musical about a woman starting over at the age of 40. It was a fitting role, given Menzel\u2019s other marquee performance\u2014a leading […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[42,38],"class_list":["post-438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interviews","tag-42","tag-frozen"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Srnq-74","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=438"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":439,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438\/revisions\/439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}