Scarlett Johansson's best-known musical performance to date was her pink-wigged karaoke rendition of a Pretenders song in the film Lost In Translation. But the Hollywood actress has now released an album and it has been proclaimed by one of the music industry's toughest critics as "the coolest movie/rock crossover album in the history of celebrity cash-ins".
The New Musical Express says Johansson's "astonishing debut" of Tom
Waits covers, Anywhere I Lay My Head, has succeeded where other celebrities
who have attempted to break into music have so miserably failed. Proclaiming
the 23-year-old an "indie icon", Johansson is pictured on the
cover of the NME's latest issue holding a horned animal skull between
crimson-painted fingernails.
The magazine's deputy editor, Krissi Murison, said: "When people first
started talking about it, we thought it didn't sound very NME; then we got
the album and it floored everybody. It's really beautiful, really
unexpected, with very artful, interesting influences. A lot of people's
expectations of an actress making an album are that it would be manufactured
and robotic. No one expected she would sound like that – a deep baritone and
quite androgynous."
NME's glowing verdict is not universal, however. The American magazine Rolling
Stone gave the album just two-and-a-half stars out of five. "Johansson's
voice is unremarkable and her pitch sometimes unsteady; she's a faintly goth
Marilyn Manson lost in a sonic fog", the magazine wrote. Entertainment
Weekly gave the album a C grade, branding the actress's voice "expressionless".
Murison said Johansson may have more appeal in Britain than in America because
her musical tastes are "quite Anglophile". Johansson, who grew up
listening to Depeche Mode and Radiohead, is a fan of the Scottish bands
Cocteau Twins and The Jesus and Mary Chain, with whom she sang the track "Just
Like Honey" at the Coachella Festival in California last year.
Scarlett Johansson's video for single "Falling Down"
Johansson was invited to make an album by Rhino Records, the label behind last
year's Led Zeppelin compilation album Mothership, which heard Johansson sing "Summertime"
on a 2006 compilation of recordings by actors.
The actress, a prot�g�e of Woody Allen, agreed to cut the CD but her first
attempt at a Waits cover album was, by her own admission, a flop. It was
only when she teamed up with Dave Sitek, the producer recently ranked number
one in NME's list of the 50 most forward-looking people in music, that
success beckoned. Sitek came up with the idea to take Johansson to a
Louisiana recording studio to recapture some of the rawness of Waits'
original recordings. David Bowie provides backing vocals on two of the
album's tracks, and sound effects including owls and rainstorms were used. "It's
Dave Sitek who opened the horizons of what this album could be and brought
in ideas," said Murison.
Initially, Johansson just wanted to record "I Never Talk To Strangers",
a duet between Waits and Bette Midler. Then to balance the song out, she
recorded some more Waits songs until she had an entire album of covers, plus
one original track, "Song For Jo", which she and Sitek co-wrote.
In an interview with the NME, Johansson said she had been a fan of Waits
since the age of 13, when her father played the singer's music to her and a
friend. "At first we were like, 'What is this noise? Chainsaws hitting
nails into walls?' But we liked it and it became our little secret, the
music that we were into that none of our friends knew about," she said.
"What gripped me about it was that he writes from shadows. It's really
dark and shadowy music that talks about the emotion, passion and rawness of
the human condition and there's this real fire to it."
Musical interludes
Paris Hilton
Released her debut album, Paris, on Heiress records in 2006. It received a
mixed critical reception.
Keanu Reeves
Bass guitarist in the rock band Dogstar, which supported Bon Jovi in 1995,
before quitting in 2002 over work commitments.
Russell Crowe
Sang with 30 Odd Foot of Grunts. He quit in 2005 before returning in a new
band with the same initials, The Ordinary Fear of God.
Minnie Driver
In the UK last week performing her second album, Seastories, which has just
been released to warm reviews.
Bruce Willis
Released his debut album, The Return of Bruno, a collection of R&B covers
with The Temptations, in 1987.
William Shatner
Recorded a spoken-word album with orchestral backing, The Transformed Man, in
1968. It included a version of Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds.
See Also
