“I want to fail more”: if you hated Kate Hudson’s album, it’s all Paul McCartney’s fault
Actors have been recording and releasing albums for decades, and they’re usually split into two distinct categories, which is something that Kate Hudson was fully aware of.
In one corner, you’ve got the obvious vanity projects from stars who barely have a musical bone in their body, which covers everyone from Bruce Willis, Joe Pesci, and Corey Feldman to Terence Howard, Chevy Chase, and Mr T, all of whom mistakenly believed they had the chops to cut a record that wasn’t shite.
In the other corner, you’ve got the Hollywood staples who clearly held their musical career in equal regard to their one on the big screen, a camp that includes Frank Sinatra, Kris Kristofferson, Billy Bob Thornton, and Steve Martin, who are as accomplished in the booth as they are on the set.
While the occasional anomaly slips through, like Christopher Lee’s heavy metal concept album, Kate Hudson had already showcased her pipes in several films before she crossed the final frontier and unleashed her debut album, Glorious, in May 2024, receiving solid-if-unspectacular reviews.
She’s far from a bad singer, as evidenced onscreen in her Academy Award-nominated Almost Famous and Song Sung Blue performances, as well as Rob Marshall’s Nine and Sia’s Music. However, if you didn’t rate her album and thought it was another exercise in mediocrity from a movie star who thought they had what it takes to succeed in the music business, then you’ve got Paul McCartney to blame.
“It was Paul’s 80th birthday, and I was sitting at the side of the stage watching him headline Glastonbury,” Hudson recalled. “I woke up the next morning and felt so emotional. I was like, ‘I am not happy with my output!’ I mean, I have so much gratitude, but I am not just an actor. I’ve been a musician my whole life, and I never had the courage to do anything with it.”
“I decided I wanted to take more chances,” she added. “I want to fail more.”
Catching Macca’s live set at Glasto was something of an epiphany, and the moment that the second-generation actor convinced herself that if she didn’t record an album soon, she may never end up recording one at all.
The Beatles legend made her think “about those who compromise and those who don’t”, and having done enough compromising of her own, it was time to bet on herself. It’s an admirable mission statement, and she followed through with it, but for anyone who listened to Glorious and loathed every second of every track, there’s only one person to blame, and it’s not Hudson.
