Scarlett’s debut album is ‘seriously weird’

Can Scarlett Johansson really sing? The question is pertinent because the star of Lost in Translation and several Woody Allen films is seeking to branch out from acting to singing. She performs on the much talked-about Yes We Can video made by the Black Eyed Peas frontman Will.i.am for Barack Obama and, as reported on The First Post a week ago, she's due to release her first album, Anywhere I Lay My Head, a selection of cover versions of Tom Waits songs.

One of the first to hear the album - not due out until May - is the pop critic Neil McCormick who was invited to meet the "languorously cool star" at an "intimate listening soiree" held in London this week while the actress was in town for the premiere of her new film, The Other Boleyn Girl.

"I want you to picture Johansson," McCormick writes in the Daily Telegraph, "curled up on a sofa in a subterranean studio, soft and gorgeous in a sort of indie pin-up way; long platinum blonde hair; huge, blue fawnish eyes; voluptuously indecent red lips; slender but curvaceous frame..."

At which point the reader might suspect a flattering review. Not the case, sadly. McCormick writes: "The first time I heard her singing voice emerge from the speakers, I thought I was listening to a guy. Her voice is very low, shaky and has about two notes in it. Think Nico, backed by the Flaming Lips. On acid. Johansson has made a seriously weird record."

One person who doesn't see it this way is the super-confident Johansson. She said of her voice: "I just knew how fantastic it sounded in the shower."