Mark Batty Publisher

Everyone’s Doin’ It

July 30, 2008

As Greek mythology has it, three Sirens once lived on the rocky island of Sirenum Scopuli, singing to passing ships. As half-woman, half-bird creatures, the Sirens’ voices were utterly irresistible; none could escape bewitchment upon hearing their sweet songs. Hoards of enchanted seamen were thought to have abandoned ship and swum toward the music, toward the jagged cliffs, and unbeknownst to them, toward a watery, cliff-battered death.

Today, the sirens are gone, but the link between song and fatality is not – metaphorically, of course. The figures of today’s myths are celebrities, and their songs don’t ensnare strangers, but themselves, to a pummeling, or at least a plummeting of their reputations. 

Take actress Scarlett Johansson, whose one-month vocal experiment culminated in the album, “Anywhere I Lay My Head,” released this past May. Ten of the 11 songs are Tom Waits covers, and one song is an original track, “Song For Jo,” co-written with David Andrew Sitek of the band TV on the Radio. Critics mauled the album. Rolling Stone lamented, “Johansson’s voice is unremarkable and her pitch sometimes unsteady; she’s a faintly goth Marilyn Manson lost in a sonic fog.” 

What to make of this? We could roll our eyes, throw out the tabloids and cast Johansson off as another celebrity obsessed with commercial stardom over developing bleeding-heart, sweat-soaked artistry. Blame it on American culture, pruning itself in the mirror. Read international news instead and discover that the trend reaches beyond these fame-hungry shores: Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, wife of French President Nicolas Sarkozy and supermodel-turned-singer, just dropped a new album this year. In Australia, Kylie Minogue, who made her start on the Australian TV show “Neighbours,” made Billboard’s top 100 this month. 

Even with their posters already tacked above little girls’ beds across the country, starlets like Paris Hilton and Lindsey Lohan attempted to amplify their image through recording albums. Manly men like Clint Eastwood, Shaquille O’Neal, and Jared Leto have taken a stab at singing, too. 

So it’s not about gender, or bound to American culture. And it’s not about buoying the career of a B-list celebrity (especially as the opposite often happens). What exactly is the celebrity impulse to sing about?

Here at MBP, we’re scratching our heads, wondering the same thing. MBP author Tom Hamling’s recently released Celebrity Vinyl courageously delves into the dark past of yesterday’s celebrities to try and grasp this phenomenon. In it, the spotlight shines once again on the (understandably) forgotten albums of celebrities ranging from Dick Van Dyke to Scott Baio to Barbie. On first thumbing through the book, I winced. And then laughed. And then started daydreaming about what my album cover would like, if ever given the chance to record one. 

After all, who wouldn’t want to have bodyguards a mere finger snap away, cause mass fainting spells and be the recipient of spontaneous marriage proposals? And maybe that’s it. Maybe it’s not just celebrities, but everyone who, lying awake at night, has at least once secretly dreamed of being a singer, of being unconditionally adored for fearlessly belting out what lies in the slimiest crevices of their soul. 

Going through the album covers was a bit like flipping through a catalog of egos. Celebrities’ public personas are only partially shaped by the celebrities themselves; managers, tabloids and the public get their hands dirty patting and molding, too. Mislabeling happens, and the glue is sticky. Celebrities’ albums, then, attempt to peel away – or in some cases, reinforce – the label-actor, athlete, politician-to depict celebrities as they want to be seen by the public. 

On Eddie Murphy’s album cover, his renowned goofiness is replaced by skepticism and contemplation as a pinstriped-suited Eddie leans on a piano with raised eyebrows. Squeaky-clean Alyssa Milano, a.k.a. Samantha Micelli, gazes intensely into the camera, a slight pout on her plumped up red lips, a hand grazing her bedroom-mussed hair. Other celebrities play up their images. Goldie Hawn’s blonder than ever, black-leather clad David Hasselhoff stands on a car reminiscent of Knight Rider, and Mister Roger’s still wearing pastel sweaters. 

So then, the question of why celebrities choose to record albums becomes important in what it reveals. Celebrity culture and the projection of self are exposed through embellishing celebrities’ stories of identity in, unfortunately too often, cheesy songs and cliché album covers. True, the music is forgettable, but celebrity vinyl divulges another facet of who these celebrities were, and that lives on, like the Sirens, understandable to the common man only in myth. 

–SF

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