The five best songs by actors
As fame elevates many silver screen stars into the perilous realm of unrelenting acclaim and endless praise, hubris often convinces them they’re destined for greatness in other fields. Consider Johnny Depp’s ill-fated Hollywood Vampires project with Alice Cooper and Joe Perry, or Jared Leto’s overly earnest Thirty Seconds to Mars, whose preening space-rock spectacle remains blissfully unaware of its mediocrity. With a big-name actor in the lineup, even the most average band can fill stadiums.
There was a time when the distinction between singer and actor was less defined. In the old Hollywood system it was routine for some of the biggest studio names to sing, dance, and generally jazz hands along with producing numerous records. Judy Garland, Bing Crosby, and any of the Rat Pack straddling both music and film and making a buck on the Billboard as much as the box office.
There are impressive instances of actors getting so stuck into their method that they take up learning instruments, albeit primitively. Robert De Niro famously tackled the saxophone for New York, New York, and Geoffrey Rush resumed piano lessons after having stopped at 14 for the acclaimed 1996 feature Shine. For the upcoming A Complete Unknown biopic, Timothée Chalamet learned to play and sing just as Bob Dylan did, performing over 40 songs live with the guitar and signature harmonica.
There are many passable, valiant efforts from actors that are no doubt filled with sincerity but just serve as mediocre examples of the genres they’re fancying themselves in. Juliette Lewis and the Licks pumped out bang-average indie rock back in the 2000s, and Keanu Reeves’ Dogstar was authentic enough but lacked any memorable songs. Some, such as Corey Feldman or Macaulay Culkin’s The Pizza Underground, successfully carve a whole new audience for themselves of ironic appeal.
With such a patchy history and slew of honest yet mediocre attempts by Hollywood’s biggest names to enter the world of music, let’s explore five of the best and most interesting examples of songs by established actors.
The five best songs by actors
Billy Dee Williams – ‘A Taste of Honey’ (1961)
Before his defining role as Lando Calrissian in the Star Wars series, Billy Dee Williams was a respected thespian of the stage, appearing in the Broadway run of Shelagh Delaney’s A Taste of Honey in 1960.
After several instrumental pieces were recorded, including a single by ‘Spanish Flea’ composer Herb Alpert, Williams recorded the first version with vocals for his Let’s Misbehave LP. Sung with such conviction, The Beatles included a cover on their Please Please Me debut album.
Richard Burton – ‘The Eve of War’ (1978)
Conceiving the idea of rock opera telling the tale of HG Wells’ Martian invasion classic War of the Worlds, American composer Jeff Wayne let loose his sci-fi double LP opus, replete with disco orchestra, folk pieces featuring The Moody Blues’ Justin Hayward, and oodles of phat synthesizers illustrating the story’s otherworldly menace.
Richard Burton’s commanding narration affords the record gravitas, grounding the 1970s relic from floating too far into the realms of kitsch. Opening with memorable lines of aliens’ envious eyes and plans against mankind, Burton’s authoritative delivery opens the tale better than any string section or keyboard solo.
Tracey Ullman – ‘They Don’t Know’ (1983)
Before her smash comedy show with America’s Fox and inadvertently bringing The Simpsons to the world in the late 1980s, British comedian Tracey Ullman had been a feature of UK soap before joining the cast of BBC’s Three of a Kind along with Lenny Henry and David Copperfield.
Performing send-ups of the hits of the era, Ullman took a stab at Kirsty MacColl’s ‘They Don’t Know’ and injected the piece with her own tongue-in-cheek melodrama that hovers perfectly between genuine hit and wry humour perfectly, managing to rope in Paul McCartney for the video for extra measure.
Eddie Murphy ‘Party All the Time’ (1985)
When Eddie Murphy informed Richard Pryor of his intentions to release an album, Pryor bet him $100,000 he couldn’t produce a straight, legit LP without any jokes. Recruiting Rick James to write the album’s biggest hit, 1985’s ‘Party All the Time’ reached number two on the Billboard singles chart for three weeks.
It’s a reasonable leap, seeing that a major ‘bit’ of Murphy’s Delirious special was him just singing Michael Jackson’s ‘She’s Out Of My Life’ (and went on to collaborate on the godawful ‘Whatzupwitu’), but even with its dated production and James’ disconcerting vocal interjections, the single’s a banger.
Childish Gambino – ‘This Is America’ (2018)
The easy jump to music has arguably never been so effortless as comedian and actor Donald Glover made it. Coming from the TV shows Community and Atlanta, his hip-hop Childish Gambino moniker saw a string of acclaimed releases alongside his growing Hollywood stature.
Dropped simultaneously with his Saturday Night Live performance channelling the Black Lives Matter movement, gun violence, and institutional racism, ‘This Is America’ struck a potently satirical barb as the precarious tightrope of navigating a racist country as a young black man, see-sawing between light flickers of pop and dark descents into trap bite with unnerving energy, its iconic video instantly cementing itself as a contemporary classic.
