Many fans have given or received Josh Groban‘s holiday album Noël as a Christmas gift, but as a kid, he says he had to work hard to get his parents to finally agree to get him his dream Christmas present.
“I lobbied for about four years for a drum set,” Josh said Wednesday on Live with Kelly & Ryan. Josh explained that it was a “big ask from Santa” because it’s such a noisy gift — but he was so determined to get it that he actually wrote an essay explaining why he should receive it.
“I wrote an essay [to Santa]…single spaced…about how every drum has its own story, every cymbal told a story, and how I would treasure it every day, and finally, I got the drum set,” Josh says. His neighbors were even cool with him practicing an hour a day.
“It changed my life,” Josh said of his drum set, which he played for 20 years before finally donating it to his old music school this year. Today, as a global star, he plays drums in his show, and he notes, “Whenever I play them in an arena or something, I think back to that kid.”
“Any parent who’s thinking of a gift…they’re not sure what they wanna get their kids — you can never go wrong with an instrument,” Josh advises. “Because you never know when that light bulb’s gonna go off and they’re gonna figure it out.”
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