How David Bowie ended up on Scarlett Johansson’s album: “I basically peed myself”
Actors releasing albums tend to be viewed as vanity projects more than anything else, but it can’t be said that Scarlett Johansson didn’t pull out all of the stops when she was putting her debut album together.
As regularly turns out to be the case, there were the inevitable eye-rolls when yet another Hollywood star announced they’d be dipping their toes into the waters of musicality, especially one who’d never signalled their intention to show off their pipes onscreen to a significant extent.
2008’s Anywhere I Lay My Head actually managed to win decent enough reviews from critics, who were impressed with Johansson’s vocals. It wasn’t exactly a bestseller, though, with the record barely squeaking past 50,000 units. It wasn’t the arrival of a new talent who was destined to master two worlds, but it did at least allow her to realise a childhood fantasy when David Bowie contributed to two tracks.
The entire thing was basically a Tom Waits tribute album, with every single song, bar one, being covers of the musician’s existing ditties. ‘Falling Down’ and ‘Fannin Street’ enlisted the ‘Thin White Duke’, and even though they never stepped into the studio in the same place at the same time, it was one of the greatest moments of Johansson’s entire life.
“Bowie became involved in kind of an amazing way,” she told Interview. “It was incredible, actually.” The actor had “always loved his voice and everything about it,” and the ultimate unattainable dream – or so she thought, anyway – was to have him feature on her first album in what she called the fulfilment of “my 13-year-old fantasy.” Sometimes, it’s all about having connections, and Johansson lucked out on that front.
Anywhere I Lay My Head was produced by Dave Sitek, who Bowie already knew. When the icon and Johansson ran into each other at an event, he wished her luck with her upcoming debut, and she threw out a hail mary and said he was welcome to get involved if he managed to clear some time in his schedule. Months later, she got her wish.
“I got this call from Dave, and he was like, ‘You’ll never guess who I have in the studio right now,'” she recalled. “And, sure enough, it was Bowie. According to Dave, Bowie came in totally prepared with the sheet music and everything. He already knew what parts he was going to sing. I just, you know, basically peed myself when I found out. So that’s how it happened. Pretty exciting.”
Like many other walks of life, sometimes it’s more about who you know. Thanks to mutual friend Sitek, Johansson did what she thought was impossible and landed the biggest fish of all when Bowie guested on two tracks.
