Drama is no stranger to this Tony-winning star of the stage known as "The Queen of Broadway", so her latest studio album, "Drama Queen" is very much apropos. Idina Menzel joins me on LOVE SOMEONE to share the inside scoop on her August release of this 70's-inspired dance/groove/disco LP.
For those of you who have only heard her amazing vocal skills when she implores you (and every child in the world) to, "Let It Go", you'll be delightfully surprised when you find yourself up and shaking your groove thing to tracks like, "Move", "Beast", and "Dramatic". Slip into something satin or sequined and join us for this conversation! ~ Delilah
July, Oh July, How I love your warm evenings. Warm nights that bring folks onto their back decks and their front stoops. Warm nights that invite summer strolling around the lake, along the river, extended visits to neighborhood parks. I'm grateful for the days that stresssch out long into the evening hours and the lovely, laid back, lazy pace. I'm grateful for so much. The ability to step out of the studio and into the warm embrace of July or fresh air and fresh perspective is no small thing. I'm grateful for gratitude, for love, for entertainment, for inspiration. These are the things that I want to share with you with you, my listeners, and I believe today's episode will help me on that mission. Some folks just seem to have it all. Today's guest is one of those people. Adina Menzel is a Tony Award winning powerhouse. She is, of course, a singer, an actress in film and TV, a songwriter, a Broadway star, and a philanthropist. She rose to fame as Maureen in the popular Broadway musical Rent, and her career took off when she won a Tony Award for her role as Alphaba, Alphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, who really wasn't wicked at all in the smash music Wicked. Her voice can be heard, of course, as Elsa in Disney's Award winning Frozen and its song that my kids and my grandkids sing every day, Let It Go, voiced by aDNA, It became an instant international phenomenon, winning the Oscar for Best Original Song. It's a song that you hear everywhere, everywhere you go, still to this day. In addition to her contribution to multiple cast albums, her prolific recording career includes a catalog of successful solo albums Still I can't be still Here I stand a Dina, and you know how we love Christmas Here at the Delilah Show, Christmas a Season of Love. We've played that a lot last year. Adena is joining us today to tell us about her new album, Drama Queen, and I already know just from the title that it's material that's going to speak to my heart. I can't wait to get dramatic with a Dina Manzell right after I bring the curtain up and shine the spotlight on one of my spectacular podcast sponsors. I am so happy to tell you about my favorite cosmetic company, Laura Geller Beauty. There's so much to love about them, like all of their are made for women who are north of forty. Let's start with their hydrate spackled skin perfecting primer. It glides on to create the perfect base before you begin your makeup routine, or their tinted primers that are perfect on their own for a day that only needs a light touch, while the baked balance and brighten color correcting foundation self adjust to leave skin looking even flawless and beautifully radiant. I like to use it as a setting powder, and now they have even more beautiful shades in their modern classic lipstick collection, including the Light and Lovely Barry Bliss. I have my favorites and you can find yours at Laura Geller dot com. So how are you, Adina Menzel, Welcome to love someone with Delilah. I haven't talked to you in what seems like for but because you know I have so many children and grandchildren, I hear you every day.
I know it's a good thing or a bad thing.
It's a good thing because I love you.
Thank you.
You've got little ones do they do they watch you? O, he's.
Just thirtyen, he's thirteen going on fourteen. He wants nothing to do with me. That's not true. No, what I did a I did a show the other night, and I forced him to come because I thought it would be really cool for him to see me do this particular music for the first time. And he came up to me after and he was very emotional. He said, I'm very emotional, mom, and he hugged me in front of a lot of people.
Wow. Yeah, yeah for a thirteen almost fourteen year old boy, that's huge.
Yeah, So that was that was really nice. But most of the time he wants nothing to do with me. He's at a math final right now, and well, let's just send him pauseitive energy because it's seventh grade. You know, how is this boring for your listeners, this kind of mommy stuff.
We're all moms or grandmoms at this point in the game.
So he's, uh, yeah, he's at he's at a math final, and I was just handing him positive energy because you know, seventh grade is such a transition from elementary school, and like he didn't have tests in the elementary school that he was at So it's just been crazy this for him, and the workload. More than the workload, the executive functioning for a young boy, you know, is a whole new thing. Anyway, let's talk about something else.
Uh well, I was just going to say, my daughter, who is setting in on this Delilah Junior. He's going into high school next year. So she's going from a school of three hundred students to a school of almost a thousand students.
Yes, that's overwhelming. It is, Yeah, so overwhelming. Walker's in the school right now that his school, the junior high and the high school in the same school, So he's got these huge kids walking around. You know. The good thing is that they're really sweet and they act like big sisters and brothers, and so it's cool. Back in my day, I would have been like bullied in harass, and I remember that these girls would throw spitballs in my hair down the locker room. Was afraid to go, I mean down the hall, and I was afraid to go to the bathroom.
Okay, now where do you think How do you think they feel now when you know you're winning every award in the world and you have an album that's coming out, do you think they're like, dang, we probably should have hung out with her instead of throwing spitballs in her hair.
Now most of them have come to my shows and stuff after and acted like we were best friends. And one girl that's never the one, the worst one. It's probably really sweet now and everything, but in my head, she'll never redeem herself, you know, And I've never seen She's the only one I've never seen since, and she was the queen of the bullies. Yeah, she was so mean to me. So maybe she really did have a thing, or maybe she doesn't even remember, you know. That's the thing. I don't know anyway.
Do you go to class reunions, do you go back to your high school? Do you do those down memory lane trips?
I would have, but I haven't. Every time there is one, I had a show or something, so I haven't. But I see certain people a lot, Like I said, the doing theater and concerts and going on tour. You know, people come and they ask the tickets and they come backstage, and so I can. I've seen a lot of people through that that it's actually been really nice too. And then I sort of re establish a relationship with some of them. Which has been really cool.
I've known Michael Bubla since he was a teenager, like twelve, do you have yeah? And he says, got to I was such a nerd when I was a kid, you know. I think he was twenty the first time I had a chance to meet him. Same with Josh grob And I met him when he was a teenager. And I always wonder because you know, they've shared being bold lead or made fun of or you know, for being music geeks. I always wonder, like, do people come to your shows and say, oh my gosh, I'm so sorry, or like in your case, they pretend they knew you, they were friends with you.
Yeah, no, they just they don't say they're sorry.
Well, the good news is the first time I met you, I was in love with you. I had seen you in Chicago as Alphaba, and I was in love with you from the first note you sang the first time you appeared on the stage in your green and I have loved you ever since.
So thank you. That was a special time for me. That show So yeah, and.
I loved you so much as Alphaba. I have seen the show I saw you. I saw it with you twice, but I've seen the show eight times.
Now, wow, well, you probably take the girls to see it. I do.
I take the girls to see it. I take my grandkids now to see it. And oh my gosh, it's just such a such a beautiful story of true friendship.
It really is.
People's like, isn't it a love story? I said, yeah, it's a love story, but.
Not not that, do you think exactly?
Yeah, so you've been busy now, you haven't slowed down. You've you've got a new album out. And Delilah Junior and I were talking before the interviews. She said, talk to her about Enchanted. Did she like being the mean step mom?
You mean? And Cinderella? I was the mean step mosment and I came back as the princess that I mean, as the queen that I went up into the animated world at the end of Enchanted one and then we come back and we revisit James Martin and I and then yeah, Cinderella.
Was the Cinderella that was the one I was thinking toy and.
It was that was so much fun. Camilla cou it was a gorgeous person inside it out, and yeah, so it was all fun. I spent during COVID once they started to get to figure out production for things. I spent my life in like corsets around and enchanted, you know, and well like we went there, then they'd shut down. We'd come home and get back with my pj's and do my day coupage and then hang out with my son in virtual school. And then they'd say, oh, we're back up for a month. So I go back and try to fit my ass into these coursets again. My boobs got bigger because I put on weight. Then they'd be like spilling out of the course and then they have to add you know. Anyway, that was a lot of my COVID, But.
I have you lost the because you look fabulous. Everybody called it the COVID fifteen, and my world it was the COVID forty exactly because sourdough. Because my girlfriend Marta like a year before COVID hits started talking sourdough and she taught a sourdough class and sourdough, Hello.
Cowardough class is so funny. Yeah, my husband started baking. Yeah, that was his destress. Well, he kept working during COVID because he works in an impatient facility for chemical dependency and mental illness. So he was still going every day. But so then he came home and he started baking as his sort of way to decompress.
But so he and I have a have an extra pound or two. Are you saying that we found?
No, he doesn't because he doesn't gain a freaking pound.
Ever, I has to run like miles, you know. It just makes me And yeah, my husband can. He's he's almost seventy. He can wear his green beret uniform from when he was in his early twenties.
Amazing, what what? I not fair? Not fair? Anyway, I've been I have been getting working out so that I can get these great disco kind of inspired jumpsuits and move around the stage and I have dancers now, and I've been having the best time with this new album because during COVID, actually I had this epiphany that I didn't want to I wanted to do music where people could like really get up and move and dance and have a different experience with me where they don't have to sit in their seats and like feel like their behave theater goers. Because I had done some clubs late at night, in the middle of the night in London when I was there doing press for something, and I'd show up at clubs at like one in the morning and and the crowd was like pushed up against the stage and the energy was amazing, and so I was I really was like excited to make music like that. And I thought, well, what kind of music really showcases a big voice? But still, you know, grew and I thought of all the people I loved, that, all the women I loved, especially that did disco albums and dance albums. So I've been able to, you know, not compromise my big melodies and big singing and but also do something that felt really good that I felt like was an organic transition but also would be something a little unexpected.
Because you're younger than me, you kind of missed out on the jump suits. Yeah, you were in onesies when I was in jumpsuits.
That's not true.
It is true. It is true. You were Okay, maybe not onesies, but you were probably in the parachute pants with matching jacket teal and pink. Yeah, did you have the teal in pink matching jacket and yeah, but a.
Lot of fluorescent and my hair was like this, like like this with hairspray, like I think that, yeah, so is mine. So yeah, but yeah, I named the album Drama Queen one because, as your daughter knows, I played queens a lot of queens in my career for some reason. Two because I sometimes think I'm a queen in my own mind, but also because I feel like I wanted to reclaim the term a little bit. You know, it's kind of like reclaiming the term diva. And you know, a drama queen in my case is someone that has lots of big emotional you know, big feelings, bold feelings, passionate feelings.
I tried the same with broad to me, when you're abroad, that's a compliment.
Yes, exactly well, that's yeah, that's my East Coast, you know, Long Island. Yeah, exactly so. And then I really feel like it it encompass a lot of the themes that have been sort of you know, a pattern in my life and in the projects I've been a part of where we really, you know, especially as women, embrace, you know, this real fire that we have in us and not trying to shy away from that, and so a lot of the songs have to do with that. I'm really glad that it coincides with Pride. So I'm going out and hitting a lot of the Pride festivals and I've just been having the best time with it. I'm really I'm really proud of it too.
Now do you have do you have any many disco skirts that you can twirl in?
Only if I wear like two pairs of tights because I don't feel like my legs are I feel like my legs are too flabby for the mini minis.
I met Cher backstage in one of her outfits and she was in her seventies at the time, I think, and damn she was rocking it. I'm like, you, you are my goal.
You are my goal, one of my inspirations for the album because she came out with members, she came out and Believe and that whole dance album. Oh yeah yeah, rocking it.
Well, I can't Where can we find out a Dina about your tour?
Uh, it's mostly this summer, hitting a lot of the festivals. I guess you can go on my website, you can check out I'm going to be in DC at Pride, Provincetown, No Providence, Rhode Island, Saint Petersburg, Saint Louis. Then I'm going to go to London and hit a bunch of cities in New Europe, which I'm really excited about, and then we'll see about a tour and a couple months. You know as well, you could just check out on my website or my socials, I guess. So I'm figuring out how can I do Let it Go and find gravity as dance tunes, you know as well, give them a little.
Good oh yeah, you know. Oh, and let it Go as a dance tune could become an anthem of a whole different nature.
Exactly.
I would play that song on my show for women who need to walk away from destructive marriages or destructive relationships. I have played let It Go.
You know.
Everybody thinks of it as a kid's song or a Disney song, but really it's kind of an anthem.
Yes, it is an anthem.
Throw a beat in there and flash some lights and we'll be dancing.
Yeah, and let your fire out, you know, don't withhold your talents or what makes you special for anybody.
You know, or your ice in that case, let your.
Eyes exactly, and don't wear your gloves to keep your icicles from coming out of your you know.
Yeah, take those damn gloves off. Adina Menzella is sharing some time and some love with us today. I have more questions for her, but first a round of applause for an outstanding performance by my podcast sponsor. There's a new network I'm excited to tell you about, and I know you will be two. Great American Family is devoted to family friendly TV with holiday movies, delightful rom coms, fan favorite series, and Christmas. Join them for Christmas in July for Christmas Movies twenty four to seven all month long, then stay tuned for original movies the rest of the year. You'll meet some of your favorite stars there, including Danica mckeller, Candice Cameron Burr, and Trevor Donovan, and of course more Christmas movies come the holiday season. There's a channel finder at Great Americanfamily dot com, so you'll know just where to go when you want unquestionably solid family programming anytime of the year. That's Great Americanfamily dot Com. You're a big deal. I'm very flattered, partly because you're so stink and talented and you're in a lot of their favorite movies that I let them watch, and partly because since the day I met you. I've been impressed by your grace and your kindness to everyone and your honesty.
Thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah, for better or for worse, that's my deal. You know. Sometimes I get myself in trouble, put my foot in my mouth, or you know, when you're really honest, you allow people to see your weaknesses and you got to be careful there, you know. But I think the vulnerability is all of our strengths, you know, it's what makes us human, and the fact that we can make mistakes. It's just more interesting, you know, than being perfect. So that's the way I tumut myself when I feel like shit.
You know, have you ever met anybody whose life appeared perfect?
Yeah? Yeah, Or that I thought was perfect, Yeah, like three kids, skinny as can be, gorgeous, dresser, doctor, saving lives doing you know, and then found out, you know, marriage is a mess and just a bunch of things. So if you never know what people are experiencing. So I try to think about that when I show up to school.
I think people whose lives appear perfect are a better actor than you, you know what I mean. I think they're acting so hard and working so hard to manage other people's perceptions of them. I don't know how old I was when I gave myself permission to not give a damn what somebody else thought about me. Their opinion to me is none of my business. Number one and number two, I don't have the time or energy to waste one second trying to impress you. I'm just going to be me.
I on the other hand, I mean, I know I'm successful, but I do want to impress people. I still want people to like what I do. It's still hard for me to have critics come to my play and give.
Me But you got to know at this stage in the game that you have a voice of an angel, powerful angel, a warring angel. You know, we're talking about the ten foot tall angels that are blazing.
A little cherub.
You're not a little cherub. But I hope that I hope that you are able to receive the truth of your gifting. Thank you, and then forget them where the clunky heels were the platform shoes and have some fun.
A little shoulder, yeah, show a lot of shoulder. Yeah.
I had I hijacked my Halloween party eleven years ago and got married.
What's that mean?
Like We didn't tell anybody we eloped. We eloped at our Halloween party. We didn't tell anybody.
Sparing when you got married.
Well, I ordered a dress offline and I didn't have time. It came like the day before. I didn't have time to try it on beforehand, and so I pop my dress on and everything was kind of popping out. Spillage. There was spillage. Yeah, we didn't have because we didn't tell anybody we were doing it. We didn't have a professional photographer or anybody there. But some folks, you know, snap pictures with their friends or whatnot. And I have a couple of those pictures and I'm like, WHOA, I should have tried that dress on before.
I got married. In my backyard too, to my husband that I'm with now. And it was great. Although our neighbors new neighbors moved in, they tried to report us and everything. So then we tried to kiss their butt and like bring them champagne and because we were doing renovations in the backyards, and then they were like annoyed, so we went over. We invited them, you know, but it was so stressful because I felt like, we're just we're gonna have music we're gonna enjoy just you know, it's just one time. I'm not like, you know, they think they automatically think if you're in the business, that you're gonna have crazy rock and roll parties. Little do they know all I do is binge watch and sit on my couch. You know. You know it's funny the golden I went back and I realized they're kind of I always thought they were older women, Like it's like like older, and they're I think they're my age now living but like my age living with my best friends down in a retirement. I don't know, it's just I can't understand what was going on there with the casting. But I think I just I have distorted and a distorted idea of how old I am now.
I think the truth is, uh, we are very different at this age than our parents or our grandparents were at this age.
Well, they had kids so early and so yeah, and.
They loved hard. I mean my grandparents. My sister is the historian in our family, and she was telling me how for years my grandparents were migrant workers. They would they lived in Arkansas, but they would come out to the West Coast in the summer and work in strawberries or picking beans or.
Oh wow, my grandpa and Max used to brag that he would do signs and had gold leaf pint to it. That's went made it's special. But he h yeah, he was a sign painter. And he used to teach me how to do lettering a lot. So I'm good at like doing bubble letters and cursor and calligraphy and stuff like that. Because of him.
I miss beautiful sign work. I missed that was an art form. Yeah, especially like on the sides of buildings when they would do a brick building and do the signs on the brick building. It's beautiful.
And then my dad's old pajamas, So.
Was a pajama sel. Did he make the pajamas? Did he design the pajamas?
Salesman? So he'd go to J. C. Penny and hope to get like, you know, a million pairs of bede pajamas sold. And he still says to this day, the woman, the buyer, you know, put me through college. And he would bring all of his buyers to all of my shows, that was the thing. So he'd see my shows like fifty times. I think he saw wrench and wicked about fifty times or something. But because that was a nice night out to take them, you know, and schmoozze, maybe get a good order. But I had lots of beautiful pajamas and nightgowns.
Aidina, thank you for spending time with us today. I appreciate you.
Thank you, Thank you.
Have a beautiful summer, have a beautiful rest of your summer, and hopefully I will see you soon. Love you guys, Love you Byhan bye. Adina Menzel brings her electrifying vocal chops to high energy electro dance pop anthems on her latest album, Drama Queen, with funky grooves and a disco infuse vibe. It's an invitation to throw off the shackles of expectation, embrace your inner Drama Queen, join her in the spotlight, and move to the dance floor. Put on some roller skates if you want a disco roller skate. It's a fun, fresh new album that brings the drama in the best way possible. The full album will be available next month in August, and the single Move is ready for you to download right now. Keep up with aDNA and all of her projects at adnamanzel dot com. Follow her on Instagram, on Twitter, TikTok, and Facebook. Get out there and enjoy all that summer has to offer. Or take advantage of the long, warm evenings. Maybe take in an outdoor theater performance, or simply use the extended daylight hours to sit in quiet, comfortable contemplation. Don't spend a minute more than necessary indoors, go outside and play. I'm so grateful to you and tickled that you join me here on the air, both on our podcast and on the radio show. As always, I want you to be good to yourself and whenever possible, slow down and love someone