{"id":716,"date":"2018-07-06T16:16:51","date_gmt":"2018-07-06T16:16:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/?p=716"},"modified":"2018-07-06T18:17:05","modified_gmt":"2018-07-06T18:17:05","slug":"idina-menzel-gets-real-on-perfect-story-and-her-new-pop-album","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/idina-menzel-gets-real-on-perfect-story-and-her-new-pop-album\/","title":{"rendered":"Idina Menzel Gets Real On \u201cPerfect Story\u201d And Her New Pop Album"},"content":{"rendered":"
\u201cWhen I see a sea of young girls in blue dresses looking up to me, I feel like a phony sometimes.\u201d<\/div>\n
\n

The Idina Menzel on her new self-titled album is not the theatrical powerhouse vocalist that Broadway and Disney fans have grown to love over the past 20 years.<\/p>\n

Her roles in Rent<\/em>, Wicked<\/em>, Frozen<\/em>, Glee<\/em> and If\/Then<\/em> have made her best known for motivational ear worms like \u201cLet It Go\u201d and \u201cDefying Gravity,\u201d but fans can expect something different on her eponymous fifth studio album. Idina has laced this more pop-leaning effort with raw emotions, spawning from her 2014 divorce from Taye Diggs and how she fears it will impact their son.<\/p>\n

The Tony Award winner is at her most vulnerable on \u201cPerfect Story\u201d when she sings as though she\u2019s talking to her young son:<\/p>\n

If you had watched us burn<\/p>\n

Would you grow up and think a bridge on fire is what you deserve?<\/p>\n

“You always think, well, maybe I should just stay, that\u2019ll be better, that\u2019ll cause less pain if you just stay in the relationship. But then by staying you are setting the example for your child that you don\u2019t deserve real happiness and therefore that they should do the same thing in their own lives, in their adult lives, compromise that as well. So it\u2019s a choice that you make, hoping that maybe as children they won\u2019t understand, but as adults maybe they\u2019ll come to appreciate. I came from divorced parents as well, and I had always sworn that I would never get divorced, so there\u2019s a sense of failure there as well.<\/p>\n

\n

I have a lot of regret and guilt about not giving my child the idealistic, stereotypical version of the perfect childhood, the perfect family, the perfect home life. I have a lot of guilt about that, and I was just trying to work through those feelings really.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Her fresh path away from her theatrical roots has paid off, so far. Idina<\/em> debuted this month on the Billboard 200 albums chart.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t like the responsibility of always singing these songs about finding your strength and the light inside you all the time and rising above all the time,\u201d Idina tells Genius. \u201cI\u2019m happy to have these songs of inspiration that help people get through their day, but sometimes it feels a little inauthentic because I\u2019m not that person all the time. I\u2019m the glass half-empty person a lot of the time, and I have my own shit that I deal with. So when I see a sea of young girls in blue dresses looking up to me I feel like a phony sometimes, that\u2019s all.\u201d<\/p>\n

A recurring theme on the album is the desire to be seen for more than what people traditionally see you as and the need to have those people appreciate the other parts of your life and personality.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I had my druthers, I would be more like Sia,\u201d Idina explains. \u201cYou\u2019d never see my face, I\u2019d have like 12 electric guitars and be like Nine Inch Nails. There\u2019s this whole side of me, but it doesn\u2019t really make its way out, and so I gotta stop fighting it, I guess I have a different path. I don\u2019t know what it is, chicken or the egg, I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s the characters I\u2019ve played or who I am as a person, and I gotta stop trying to be something I\u2019m not.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cWhen I see a sea of young girls in blue dresses looking up to me, I feel like a phony sometimes.\u201d The Idina Menzel on her new self-titled album is not the theatrical powerhouse vocalist that Broadway and Disney fans have grown to love over the past 20 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"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":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[47],"class_list":["post-716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interviews","tag-47"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Srnq-by","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/716","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\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=716"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/716\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":717,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/716\/revisions\/717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}