The “circusy, carnival-act” album that made Scarlett Johansson a lifelong Tom Waits fan
There are a few big Hollywood names who are also musicians in their own right: from Keanu Reeves to Jared Leto to Florence Pugh, who used to perform cover songs on YouTube back in the day.
Another name to add to the list is Scarlett Johansson, a singer of some repute, despite having recorded the majority of her work before she really hit the big time.
As far back as 2006, long before Johansson had appeared in The Avengers, but a few years after making people sit up and take notice with her fantastic performance opposite Bill Murray in Lost in Translation, Johansson lent her vocals to a cover of the Gershwin standard ‘Summertime’ for a charity album recorded by actors, before she appeared on stage with ‘80s Scottish rockers The Jesus and Mary Chain at Coachella the following year.
In 2008, she recorded a debut album, Anywhere I Lay My Head, featuring a collection of ten Tom Waits covers and one original song, which had David Bowie collaborating with her. Many were surprised by the choice of Waits as an artist for a young singer to know, let alone cover so comprehensively.
Apparently, it came about because, as a child, Johansson was played several of Waits’ albums on rotation by a family friend, causing the young actor to fall in love with the gravel-voiced crooner’s work. Johansson told Paste: “At first it was like, ‘What’s this weird music that your dad listens to?’ But Tom Waits’ music somehow oddly appeals to a kid because records like Small Change have that circusy, carnival-act vibe. The songs are very cinematic”.
She added how it also influenced her taste in another classic track: “I think as a kid I was attracted to that in the same way I loved ‘Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite!’, one of my favourite Beatles songs. It really lets a kid’s imagination take flight.”
Small Change was the 1976 album by Waits that opens with perhaps his most famous song, ‘Tom Traubert’s Blues (Four Sheets to the Wind in Copenhagen)’, a string-laden seven-minute epic with a chorus based almost wholesale on the traditional Australian song ‘Waltzing Matilda’ from the late 1800s.
Highly acclaimed by critics, the album was recorded during a period when the songwriter was at a creative peak but a personal low, drinking heavily and becoming jaded by the rigours of touring. Those issues made themselves clear in the album’s themes on songs like ‘The Piano Has Been Drinking’ and ‘Bad Liver and a Broken Heart (in Lowell)’.
The actor followed her covers album up the next year with another unusual project, a record titled ‘Break Up’ with singer-songwriter Pete Yorn, based on the duets between French legend Serge Gainsbourg and his actor girlfriend Brigitte Bardot. Johansson also revealed some of her influences and favourite songs in an interview with a US radio station, naming ‘In My Room’ by the Beach Boys as one of her all-time choices and that she was deeply affected by it when she went to see Brian Wilson in concert.
Since then, she has been so busy acting that she has only turned her hand to music on occasion, including briefly forming a supergroup with Californian girl band Haim and recording vocals for two major kids films: Disney’s live-action reboot of The Jungle Book and the massive 2016 global hit Sing.
The 40-year-old has just appeared in another big-budget smash with Jurassic World Rebirth and will soon be seen in two new films alongside Adam Driver and Tom Cruise, one titled Paper Tiger and the other a remake of 1977’s The Gauntlet.
