Joshua Henry is juggling the kind of résumé that makes publicists sweat—Tony-nominated Broadway lead, film and TV gigs, and now a run of soul-pop singles that refuse to unclench. Somewhere between curtain calls and daycare runs, he wrote “Can’t Nobody Tell Us Nothing,” a love song that swells like a stairwell choir and then keeps going. “I’d just released Grow in 2021, and I realized I was getting too precious,” he says. “So this time I stripped it down to one instrument and a question: ‘Did the wind blow me too close to you?’ From there the song rushed. It was about the intimacy and the fireworks of love—and the billions of things that have to go right to find that feeling and make it last.”
He’s leaning hard into curiosity as a writing tool. “I’m learning that starting with a question opens more doors,” Henry says. “You don’t always need to set it up and pay it out like a thesis. Life isn’t tidy. Ask better questions, learn other things.” On this track, the questions come wrapped in a falsetto that could cut glass. He remembers the exact moment he unlocked it. “2017. September. I literally have the voice memo,” he says. “I explore with my voice a lot, and one day it was just like—boom. I recorded it so I wouldn’t forget the feeling. When a male voice goes that high, people lean in. For this chorus, it felt right to go to a place of wonder and bliss.”
The arrangement is all escalation, no release. “I love that it never lets off,” Henry smiles. The Broadway muscle helps, not because he’s smuggling showtunes into pop, but because theater trained him to recognize when feeling outgrows speech. “In musicals, when talking isn’t enough, you sing. And when singing isn’t enough, you dance,” he says. “There’s a moment in my song ‘Guarantee’ where it’s like, okay—it’s time to just dance. Nothing more to say.”
If you saw that viral “stairway” clip, you already know his circle is stacked: Sara Bareilles, Phillipa Soo—the kind of friends who can casually sight-sing your demo into a better chorus. “It’s an embarrassment of riches,” Henry admits. “I’ll send something and say, ‘Can you try this arrangement?’ Sometimes they sing it back and I realize, actually, that doesn’t work. That’s the dream: community, feedback, sharing. You don’t always need to reach up to some mythical collaborator; it’s your peers who help you grow.”
The two-career tightrope is real, even for someone who just wrapped Into the Woods, opened for Diana Ross, shot a Disney musical special, and popped up on screens in In the Heights and Tick, Tick… Boom! “Last year was a lot,” he says. “You caught me after I took a month and a half to do nothing work-related. I needed time to listen—like actually listen—to my thoughts, to my kids. I’m reading Rick Rubin’s book on creativity. I do a lot of things, but I try to block out the noise of what people think is possible.”
That inward pivot isn’t branding—it’s survival. “I’ve got three kids; my twins are two now,” he says. “Watching them process the world makes me want to be more intentional with how I live. To make better use of time, I have to be honest about who I am. What am I unlearning? What systems am I leaving behind? What am I adopting that’ll help me be a better friend, a better father, a better example? I’m facing myself so future-me has less to untangle.”
If Broadway is projection—“performing for the person in the back row”—his records are the opposite. “With my music, I’m turning around, closing my eyes, and sharing my heart so people come closer,” he says. He’s allergic to the factory pace of cast albums. “A cast recording is usually cut in one or two days because it’s so expensive—you get a general idea. With my own music, I can sit for six months. I’m not releasing it unless it’s exactly what I want.”
Up next is a full album, circled for spring. “Can’t Nobody Tell Us Nothing is the first piece,” Henry says. “I’m sharing other parts of me—love, the love of the arts, and a lot of questions. You don’t have to be an artist to relate to falling in love, questioning a decision, wanting to run away or run back. We’re constantly facing ourselves.”
He grins like a man who knows the tape is rolling and plans to leave the mistakes in anyway. “Ask better questions,” he says. “Sing when you can’t talk it out. And if the chorus needs to float, go ahead and fly.”
Watch the interview above and then check out the video below.
