Scarlett Johansson - Anywhere I Lay My Head (2008)

Actress Scarlett Johansson unveils her anti-vanity vanity project, a record of Tom Waits covers (with one original) that belongs as much to its producer, TV on the Radio's Dave Sitek, as it does to the Lost in Translation star. If this isn't weird enough already, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Nick Zinner and David Bowie are among the guests.

The very idea of Scarlett Johansson's debut album has been met with a strange collective kneejerk dismissal, not so much because she's an actor making a foray into music, but she's a good actor making a foray into music. The Bijou Phillipses and David Hasselhoffs of the world, the Lindsay Lohans and Don Johnsons, have trained us to think the worst of dabblers and dilettantes. But Scarlett comes from an already storied cinema career-- Ghost World, Lost in Translation, and Match Point among the highlights-- so we assume she has better taste than to do something as gauchely commercial as make an album. Moreover, the concept behind the album-- a collection of Tom Waits covers-- might have bought her some sympathy and at least a little curiosity, but instead it seems almost comically ambitious, an endeavor that even most non-actress musicians couldn't pull off (see: Holly Cole). What could the star of The Island ever tell us about Waits that we didn't already know? Waits himself never got so much grief for appearing in studio bombs like Mystery Men or The Two Jakes.