Actors release musical albums all the time. Some are talented and can carry the weight of an entire album’s worth of songs in their voice or performance. Others, sadly, cannot.
Tonight, for your enjoyment, I present the singing…um…talents of William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy. Bonus points: Nimoy actually is sort of in his Spock character for one of his songs.
Imagine this, though: somehow back around 1968, someone came up with the brilliant idea to have both William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy record music albums–separate, individual albums. In these albums, this music exec had them sing some ballads, some current tunes, and who knows what else, just because I’m sure that the thought was that their names would sell these things. Heck, maybe it came from some conversation with the pre-teen son at the dinner table, where he was talking about that new show: Star Trek.
What makes this better is that a few years ago, someone decided that these needed to be preserved forever in a “best of” album, thus negating the need for us to have to wade through the clearly lesser songs the two put out.
Ho boy…Your ears stand warned now. Any damage to them is on your own head. Crack a beverage, pack your ears with cotton, and go ahead and read on. Good luck!
I don’t know what’s worse here: the feeling that Shatner is either stoned out of his head, totally convinced that he’s supposed to perform way over the top, or the thought sitting in the back of my mind that he might just be trying to do this straight. Actually, it’s the thought that I ended up paying something for this album at one time. It’s all just too terrifying to comprehend. But, to let you share in my misery, I give you this: William Shatner performing Mr. Tamborine Man.
If you haven’t yet gouged your ears out, try this one from Mr. Nimoy: If I Had A Hammer.
Not exactly Peter, Paul and Mary, right?
We’ll switch gears and let Shatner go balladier on us with the Sinatra hit: It Was a Very Good Year.
Not to be outdone, Nimoy steps into his Spock suit and gives us Highly Illogical. Which may just try to explain this whole album. Because this song is almost as offensive in parts as the concept for the album is.
And, just as a final bonus, the sci-fi musical equivalent of jumping the shark: Nimoy performing The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins. Yeah, you read that right. The problem is you’ll be singing this to yourself for a week. I promise you that.
Yep. I think this just killed this segment.
See you tomorrow.