Scarlett Johansson takes a walk on the weird side

Many actors and actresses have recorded albums, but Scarlett Johansson's debut release is possibly the strangest of them all. Neil McCormick meets her

Scarlett Johansson has made a record.

The languorously cool star of Lost In Translation, Girl With a Pearl Earring and Match Point, nominated by Esquire and Playboy as "the sexiest girl alive", has decided to share her singing voice with the world. From David Hasselhof to Jennifer Lopez, movie stars who sing have not covered themselves in glory. But Warner Music have been predicting great things for Johansson's debut album, Anywhere I Lay My Head, a selection of cover versions of Tom Waits songs. It won't be released until May, but this week Johansson was in London to host an intimate listening soiree.

I want you to picture Johansson, curled up on a sofa in a subterranean studio, soft and gorgeous in a sort of indie pin-up way; long platinum blonde hair; huge, blue fawnish eyes; voluptuously indecent red lips; slender but curvaceous frame. So what do you think she sounds like? A breathy vamp in the style of Marilyn Monroe? A sensual jazz diva like Norah Jones? An auto-tuned pop bimbo à la Paris Hilton? Well, none of the above actually. The first time I heard her singing voice emerge from the speakers, I thought I was listening to a guy. Her voice is very low, shaky and has about two notes in it. Think Nico, backed by the Flaming Lips. On acid. Johansson has made a seriously weird record

Just 23 years old, there is a little bit of "yes but no but" hesitant inarticulacy about her, curiously combined with airy pretentiousness. Overlooking appearances in movie stinkers such as The Nanny Diaries and The Island, she describes herself as "an artist", as in: "I don't feel like an actor or a singer - I am able to focus wherever my mind wanders." Recording is "a different field of creativity". When she says, "I'm not a musician. I can sing. I can play the kazoo," it is difficult to tell if she's joking. She doesn't seem big on irony. And anyway, her record is so bizarre, it genuinely could feature a kazoo. There is certainly a hand-wound music box, massed banjos, birdsong and the choral chirruping of detuned crickets.

In any case, Johansson approached her singing debut with an unwavering confidence in her ability to deliver. "I just knew how fantastic it sounded in the shower," she says of her voice, demonstrating the single-mindedness of every failed auditionee for Pop Idol. Like many movie stars, music is her first love. She rhapsodises about the albums she first obsessed over as a child in the '80s, the Beatles' Abbey Road and The Best of the Doors. "It was kind of unusual - most girls my age were into Ace of Bass or something." She got into acting because she wanted to do musical theatre. "I always loved to sing. Then puberty hit and I didn't want to be a showgirl any more."

She has appeared in videos for Bob Dylan, Justin Timberlake, and -recently - Will.i.am's video for Barack Obama. She also joined the Jesus and Mary Chain onstage at last year's Coachella festival (contributing barely audible backing vocals), and sang Summertime for a Hollywood charity album, Unexpected Dreams - Songs from the Stars. This predictably led to an offer to record her own album. "I have friends who would kill for that opportunity," she gushes, as if this were reason enough to make a record. She confesses that she "had no notion" what she wanted to do, vaguely contemplating torch songs and Cole Porter standards before settling on Tom Waits covers. "I have absolutely no idea why. I just love his songs."

She embarked on recording with a group of session musicians but was deeply unhappy with the results. "It sounded terrible, like fake Tom Waits records with my voice on it." Some might say Waits's voice is quite terrible enough in itself. It is a gruff, barking, dramatic instrument which he often employs in a visceral, percussive fashion, ripping into his surreally poetic lyrics to an insane tapestry of gothic sonic invention. It is hard to know what Johansson thought she might add to this.

All she knew is that she wanted it to sound "strange". And so a friend put her in touch with Dave Sitek of iconoclastic New York indie free jazz electro trip-hop eccentrics TV on the Radio. Strange is his oeuvre. Sitek proposed making a record that "sounds like we drank a lot of cough medicine and saw Tinkerbell". And that's pretty much what they've done.

news source : http://www.telegraph.co.uk/

Scarlett Johansson album tracklisting revealed

The track listing has been revealed for the debut album from actress Scarlett Johansson, ‘Anywhere I Lay My Head’. The record which is slated for a May 20 release, features 10 Tom Waits covers including ‘Fawn’ and ‘I Don’t Want To Grow Up’ as well as an original song called ‘Song For Jo’.

As previously reported, TV On The Radio man Dave Sitek produced the album with cameo appearances by Nick Zinner, and David Bowie, who guested on tracks ‘Falling Down’ and ‘Fannin Street’. Johansson yesterday said that Waits has heard some demos and he is ‘very pleased’ with the results.

The track list is:

‘Fawn’
‘Town With No Cheer’
‘Falling Down’
‘Anywhere I Lay My Head’
‘Fannin' Street’
‘Song for Jo’
‘Green Grass’
‘I Wish I Was in New Orleans’
‘I Don't Want to Grow Up’
‘No One Knows I'm Gone’
‘Who Are You?’

news source : http://www.nme.com/news/

There was a surge in Obama's army of A-list celebs when Scarlett Johansson signed on for duty

When Law & Order star Fred Thompson decided to pull out of the Republican presidential nominee race a few weeks back, the dismay in the media was palpable. The reason? That whole narrative about Thompson being the "next Reagan" -- ie. another actor turned president -- had to be dropped like a Tony Romo pass with Jessica Simpson in the stands.

The problem was that the "actor as president" paradigm is so '80s. What matters now in the American electoral system is the list of celebrities you bring to the table. And movie stars -- knowing from personal experience that most movie stars are high-school dropouts who couldn't feed themselves without the help of a personal assistant -- were at least not dumb enough to put their support behind a fellow actor.

Instead, the big news in the Republican party was the emerging faceoff between two major movie tough guys in the endorsement race. This, after Sylvester Stallone came out in support of John McCain (Perfect no? Sly played Rambo, who freed American POWs in 'Nam, and McCain actually was an American POW in 'Nam). This counters Mike Huckabee, who has the once-and-future Walker, Texas Ranger Chuck Norris behind him. And I mean literally behind him -- he's in virtually every campaign trail picture of Huckabee.

What hasn't changed from the Reagan scenario is the notion that the presidency is a "part" one plays. "There's something about matching the character with the script," Stallone was quoted as saying by way of endorsement. "And right now, the script that's being written and reality is pretty brutal and pretty hard-edged like a rough action film, and you need somebody who's been in that to deal with it."

news source : http://torontosun.com/

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