Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Progressive Christian
Vanitas vanitatum …

Vanitas vanitatum …

Last updated on: September 27, 2015 at 3:09 pm by Fred Clark

Vanitas vanitatum … 2015-09-27T15:09:29-04:00 Fred Clark

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Look, I understand the temptation. You’re riding this wave of fame and acceptance due to the success of Moonlighting, or Beverly Hills Cop, or your inspiring papacy, and somebody suggests you expand your audience by releasing a pop record. Sure, maybe music isn’t your main thing, but they say they’ll bring in the best people to help and they can do amazing things in studios these days, so you shouldn’t worry about that.

But this is almost always a Very Bad Idea.

The result, usually, is a vanity album. And a vanity album usually winds up seeking pop stardom in vain.

So when I read that Pope Francis is releasing a “pop/rock album,” I can’t help but think of infamous mistakes like The Return of Bruno or The Transformed Man and worry that he’s been given — and has acted on — some poor advice.

When I see a headline like “Pope Francis to Release Pop-Rock Album,” of course, my first reaction is to check to see if this is The Onion or some other group of pranksters. But apparently this isn’t a joke.

Fortunately, this isn’t an actual vanity album. The pope didn’t go into a recording studio and he doesn’t actually sing on this record. But he did give his blessing to allow excerpts from his sermons and prayers to be set to musical accompaniment.

Unfortunately, that musical accompaniment is provided by European prog-rockers and — if the first single is any indication — hearing Francis cover a bunch of old Goffin/King standards might’ve been more appealing.

I’d guess this project was explained to the pontiff as a way of reaching a broader audience of young people with his message of love and inspiration. But, again, after hearing that first single, I’m thinking that broader audience would be mainly middle-aged dudes who really dig Mannheim Steamroller.

Based on that single, I suspect Wake Up! actually is a vanity album — but not one driven by the pope’s vanity. Francis’ words are not the centerpiece of the track — they’re just kind of tacked on, unrelated to or integrated with the music clamoring around them. This doesn’t seem to be an album that employs pop music to gain a wider audience for the message of Pope Francis. It seems, rather, to be an album that exploits the appeal of Pope Francis in an effort to gain a wider audience for its pop music.

So what do we mean by “vanity album”? That term shouldn’t apply to every musical effort by someone more famous for something else. Lots of actors can sing and lots of singers can act. People who demonstrate they can do both well — Frank Sinatra, J. Lo, Hugh Laurie, Yaslin Bey, etc. — don’t get tagged with the “vanity album” label. And soundtrack albums — like Mamma Mia! or True Stories — are clearly not vanity projects either. (Vanity is something many not-usually-musical actors have to overcome in order to sing such roles.)

Whether or not an album is a vanity project has less to do with its merits (Bruno wasn’t terrible) and more to do with marketing and motivation. If it seems like a cynical attempt to cash in on fame by repackaging a movie-star as a pop-star, that’s a vanity project. Ego plays a part, too, of course, hence that word “vanity.”

Mike Barthel has been writing about all of this for The Awl’s “Vanity Project Project.” But I don’t think all of the projects discussed there necessarily are “vanity” projects. Sure, when the unreal housewives of reality television head into a recording studio to make a pop album because how hard could it be? That’s a vanity project. But when the late Christopher Lee, at the age of 88, decides to make a metal concept album about the life of Charlemagne, it doesn’t seem like he’s got any illusions about pop-stardom. That, to me, isn’t so much a vanity project as just a cool old rich dude with a weird hobby.

To further explore that distinction, here are a bunch of pretty good musical performances and recordings from actors not best-known for performing music.

1. Jeff Bridges, “Maybe I Missed the Point“

Bridges is a talented musician and he can sing, which anybody who saw The Fabulous Baker Boys already knew. This John Goodwin song is just about perfectly suited to Bridges’ laid-back, beautifully gone-to-seed persona these days. The Dude abides.

Vanity rating: One Shatner. This is a humble performance of a song about humility with only a tiny hint of a reminder that it’s enjoying a wider platform because of the singer’s movie-stardom.

2. Scarlet Johansson, “Anywhere I Lay My Head“

We still haven’t gotten the Black Widow movies we want, but in between blockbuster action movies and arty independent movies, the versatile movie star did manage to record a collection of dreamily arranged Tom Waits songs.

Is it any good? Well, yeah — they’re Tom Waits songs, after all, which turn out to be well-suited to Johansson’s low alto.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LTTl3-og7A

Vanity rating: Two and a half Shatners. There’s a lot of studio magic here, but still — you can’t say a bunch of songs from Bone Machine are some kind of eg0-driven bid for pop-stardom.

3. Ryan Gosling (Dead Man’s Bones), “My Body’s a Zombie for You“

Lots of people with unrelated day jobs are also in bands with their friends. The difference, in Ryan Gosling’s case, is that his day job is being a famous movie actor. And perhaps also that his strange musical collaboration with his friend Zach Shields is weirdly good. This seems to be just a bunch of friends having fun writing and performing music.

Their Halloween parties, I imagine, are epic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vkEmFQ2btU

Vanity rating: Two Shatners. Yes, it’s a fun hobby more than a vanity-driven bid for rock-stardom. But the movie-stardom didn’t hurt the recording contract and booking for the tour.

4. Milla, “Gentleman Who Fell“

Milla Jovovich is a model/actress/singer-songwriter. And she’s good enough at all of those things that the rest of us should probably view her with spiteful resentment. Jovovich continues to write and record music, much of which is pretty interesting, releasing a lot of it quietly, and for free, online. That’s fare for her fans, but it’s done without fanfare.

Her 1994 album, The Divine Comedy, offered ten original songs and one original arrangement of a Ukrainian folk song. Her modeling fame may have helped to secure a record deal, but this wasn’t a model-slash-singer’s vanity project — just the work of a 16-year-old (!) singer/songwriter who also happened to be a model.

And it was good stuff. As Barthel writes: “It’s almost impossible to listen to the album without thinking of Kate Bush, but that’s OK: it’s hard to listen to lots of albums from 1994 without thinking of Kate Bush.”

Vanity rating: One Shatner. The Resident Evil movie franchise she’s made with her husband, director Paul W.S. (“Not Paul T.”) Anderson, could be considered vanity projects. This was just a precociously good record.

5. William Shatner, “Common People“

William Shatner does what he does, and while that might not be well-suited to every situation, when it works, it really works. Nobody out-Shatners Shatner. His 2004 album Has Been was carefully tailored to his (limited) musical capabilities and his (gloriously unlimited) sensibilities and it achieved its purpose — atoning for his 1968 vanity album The Transformed Man.

The difference between the two wasn’t just that in 2004 Shatner was surrounded and guided by top-notch musicians. It was also the difference between Captain Kirk and Denny Crain. Denny Crain knows exactly who he is, and that self-awareness makes you regard him almost as fondly as he seems to regard himself.

Vanity rating: All the Shatners. This is a vanity album that transcends vanity albumhood by embracing and showcasing its vanity.

music

Previous Post

September 27, 2015

Sunday WTF?

Next Post

September 28, 2015 The promissory note

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category class warfare evangelicals Iraq Left Behind Mammon music Uncategorized

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 February 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 March 2004 February 2004 January 2004 December 2003 November 2003 October 2003 September 2003

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Who said, "Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!"

Select your answer to see how you score.

Thomas Mary The father of a sick boy Peter