Idina Menzel Wants to Show 'Gratitude' to the LGBTQ+ Community with New Album 'Drama Queen' (Exclusive) (2024)

Long before she was known for roles in Rent, Wicked and Frozen, Idina Menzel cut her teeth singing dance music at weddings and bar mitzvahs —and now, she’s returning to those roots.

On the Tony winner’s new album Drama Queen, which dropped Friday, she flexes her powerhouse vocals on high-energy dance tracks with ultra-empowering lyrics in tribute to the big-voiced divas that shaped her taste and LGBTQ+ fans that’ve supported her for decades.

“It felt really organic for me to revisit this music and put my own spin on it,” Menzel, 52, tells PEOPLE, recalling her teenage years performing classics by Gloria Gaynor, The Weather Girls and C+C Music Factory for crowds at parties while feeling “pissed off that nobody’s giving me a record deal or noticing me.”

“They had no idea who that girl was,” she says. “They’ve probably watched their wedding videos thousands of times and have no idea that it was me.”

Since Menzel’s musical theater career took off in the 1990s, she’s enjoyed dance music in different settings —like club nights at London’s G-A-Y, where she’s ventured on several occasions. “I go in the middle of the night, and there’s thousands of people, and we just sing, cry, dance and connect,” she explains. “When I was thinking about doing this album, I wanted to do music that supports that whole experience.”

She began looking to some of her favorite dance albums by singers like Cher, Donna Summer and Barbra Streisand for influence, but felt she needed an important stamp of approval before officially starting to create Drama Queen.

“I called Nile Rodgers, who’s a friend of mine, and I said, ‘I need your blessing. Do you think I could do this and get away with this, and people will give me a chance?’” Menzel recalled asking the 70-year-old Chic co-founder, who’s produced hits for Diana Ross, Madonna and David Bowie, among others. “He was like, ‘Yes, yes, yes.’”

The pair got in the studio together and wrote the song “Paradise,” which appears on Drama Queen and helped the album take shape. “I wanted soulful, groovy music that would get people up and dancing,” she says.

Menzel’s dynamic and commanding voice is ideally suited for the dance genre. But despite establishing herself as a respected and successful entertainer, she’s endured professional highs and lows over her decades in the industry and still finds herself second-guessing some creative ventures.

“I feel like theater people get put in a box, and we don’t get a chance to really show how versatile we can be. You get seen as a Broadway person or as a Disney princess, and people don’t let you break out of that. I’m not being ungrateful —those are the best things that ever happened to me,” she says. “I just wish people could listen with fresh ears, because theatrical people aren't just Broadway people — Annie Lennox, David Bowie, these people are crazy dramatic!”

Ultimately, leaning into her own dramatic personality is exactly what helped Menzel complete the album — and come up with its title. “I’m embracing all this stuff that I think really makes me who I am, and I’m not trying to combat it,” she declares. “What’s wrong with having really big, bold emotions? What’s wrong with being really passionate, fiery and sensitive? That’s the stuff that makes us interesting human beings.”

Many of the uplifting lyrics on Drama Queen about self-love, belonging and unapologetic expression on songs like “Beast” and “Move” were also inspired by themes Menzel embodied while playing beloved characters like Maureen in Rent, Elsa in Frozen and Elphaba in Wicked.

“They’re all these fierce, young women that have this power about them, sometimes unrealized, sometimes needing to be harnessed,” she says. “I have to sing these songs like ‘Defying Gravity’ and ‘Let It Go’ every time I’m on stage, so you can’t be a role model to young kids and not practice what you preach.”

As Menzel thought about her previous roles for Drama Queen, she realized many of their traits also “ring true for a lot of my friends in the LGBTQ+ community,” and the album became a love letter to queer people.

“All we want to do is live our lives authentically, be true to who we are and be loved and seen the way we want to be seen and accepted. It’s the queer community who’s taught me that more than anything and informed the way I played these roles,” she says, noting that she wants the LGBTQ+ community to feel her appreciation. “If this album can give back in that way and be a ‘thank you’ and an opportunity to show my gratitude, then that’s everything.”

Throughout this year, Menzel’s rolled out Drama Queen with a series of Pride festival performances around the world and connected with her queer audience. But it’s not lost on her that she’s releasing the album as anti-LGBTQ+ legislation is introduced and signed into law across the United States.

“I didn’t want to be tone deaf to what was going on,” says the musician. “I wanted to show my anger, but I didn’t want to bring everyone down because the one thing I’ve really learned from my friends in the LGBTQ+ community is that no matter how hard things are, no matter how much adversity they experience, they always meet it with such joy and hope.”

With Drama Queen entering the world, she hopes to offer “celebratory and triumphant” messages to the community as well as allyship, especially to young transgender people struggling to find acceptance.

“It's hard enough for all of us to figure out who we want to be, let alone this community right now,” says Menzel. “They should rely on us as their allies and their friends to get out there, and we can expend our energy and fight for them. That's our job as allies.”