Elvis Presley’s worst-ever song, according to Tom Hanks: “It’s kinda goofy and trivial”
While it’s reasonable to assume that Tom Hanks singling out one Elvis Presley song as being the iconic singer’s weakest effort was somehow tied to his role as Colonel Tom Parker in Baz Luhrmann’s biopic, the actor made his pick two decades before he buried himself under prosthetics.
Thanks to one of the most bizarre performances of a storied career, the two-time Academy Award winner will always be inextricably linked to ‘The King’, and not in a good way. Austin Butler made plenty of headlines for immersing himself so deeply in character that it took him years to outrun Elvis’ shadows, but at least he had the benefit of winning acclaim and earning an Oscar nomination for ‘Best Actor’.
Hanks, meanwhile, gained recognition at the opposite end of the awards season spectrum. To underline his reputation as one of modern cinema’s most consistent, reliable, and talented performers, Hanks had never been shortlisted for a Razzie until 2022, when he suffered the unwanted distinction of earning his first three nods in the same year.
He may have missed out on a ‘Worst Actor’ prize for Robert Zemeckis’ Pinocchio, but he did win ‘Worst Supporting Actor’ for Elvis. He also shared the ‘Worst Screen Combo’ trophy with, in the Razzies’ words, “his latex-laden face and ludicrous accent,” and it’s hard to say he didn’t earn it with a turn so exaggerated and hammy it feels like it was ripped from Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story.
‘Bossa Nova Baby’ used to be his favourite Elvis song until he went on a deep dive through the back catalogue to prepare for Luhrmann’s film, after which it was usurped by ‘I’m Coming Home’, which he’d never heard before. At the other end of the scale, he doesn’t hold a single used in Zemeckis’ Cast Away in similar esteem.
Four Elvis favourites were on the soundtrack for the Oscar-nominated movie that almost killed him, but it wasn’t ‘Heartbreak Hotel’, ‘All Shook Up’, or ‘Blue Christmas’ that earned Hanks’ ire. “We had talked about it and said, ‘Well, you know, ‘Return to Sender’ – number one – is one of Elvis’ really bad songs.”
“But it’s also kinda goofy and kinda, like, trivial,” he told Charlie Rose before explaining that his personal distaste for the song came in handy because it fed into the mindset of his character, Chuck Noland. “Does that make everything that Chuck had been through up to that point kinda trivial?”
Being shipwrecked on an island for years, making friends with a volleyball, and then returning home to discover the love of his life has moved on without him is hardly a trivial arc, but Hanks nonetheless weaponised his least favourite Elvis song to use it as one of the driving forces behind yet another Oscar-nominated performance.
