Scarlett Johansson does Tom Waits
Monday, 8th September, 2008
I’m in Arizona, and have just managed to get myself sorted, hence the period of silence from these realms.
Of Itchworthy news is a surprising music gem I just heard whilst catching up with an episode of Late Junction on the iPlayer.1
Scarlett Johansson, THE Scarlett Johansson, has apparently made an album of Tom Waits covers with quite an entourage of musicians. I’ve not heard any of the rest of the album, but her take on “I Wish I Was In New Orleans” is a surprising success. Surprising not only because of the usual caution with which musical adventures by actors and actresses should be approached but also because of the fact that, despite being at practically opposite ends of the vocal-range spectrum, this song, works. An excellent song to be murdered to.
You can check out the archived show on the iPlayer (eek — for one more day only!) here.
EDIT: FYI (and should you wish to skip past the Randy Newman - the song is around the 6:30 mark)
- I had bookmarked this episode in particular, having listened to it in bed. I woke up the following morning with disjointed drawls of the spellbindingly annoying Randy Newman in my head, and had to convince myself that I had in fact heard them in real-life-electro-acoustic-vibrato-ear-drum-electro-brain-interpre-memory rather than having made them up [↩]
