Music
To a legion of women, John Corbett will always be Aidan Shaw—the affable furniture maker who wanted to marry Sex and the City heroine Carrie Bradshaw and sand her floors. The easygoing foil to mysterious Mr. Big. And, arguably, the one who got away. But Corbett likely wouldn’t be fond of this introduction. In fact, the primary message in the marketing for his debut album, John Corbett, has been a plea: “Just listen to the music.” In other words, please try to forget that this singer belting out boisterous Southern rock tunes is also a big-time Hollywood star.
In reality, Corbett’s musical pedigree is limited for the most part to having owned a club in Seattle for 10 years, and the album has that rough-and-tumble, sticky-floor sound that generally suits his husky voice. But it’s hard to imagine his bid for a country career would have been green-lighted were it not for his TV credentials.
Perhaps in an attempt to garner the respect of Music Row, Corbett has assembled songs from some of Nashville’s most established writers, including Jon Randall, Darrell Scott, Rivers Rutherford and Mark Selby. He also chose not to contribute any original songs. The result is a solid but safe collection of tunes that doesn’t show much personality. Instead, Corbett too often seems to be trying on different country singer personas—a tender balladeer on “Wichita,” a whiskey-soaked Southern rocker on “Revival”—very few of which play to any particular strengths. It’s as if Corbett was so anxious to assimilate into the Music City community and shed his TV characters that he disappeared altogether. (Case in point: the debut single, “Good to Go,” is a tediously familiar count-your-blessings lecture that has also been recorded by “Hicktown” singer Jason Aldean.)
Though Corbett calls on current country hit makers for his songs, his best moments are tributes and throwbacks to the older country tradition. Johnny Cash memorials are becoming so ubiquitous that they’re often tired, but John Corbett’s “Cash,” written by Jon Randall and Jessi Alexander, is a whip-smart lament that taps into the restorative power of music, especially by one’s heroes. “I hear that whistle blowin’ / It gets me back on track,” sings the down-on-his-luck protagonist, who suddenly finds himself unemployed and turns to his Cash records for comfort and guidance, “I don’t care where I’m goin’ / ’Cause I’m with the Man in Black.” Likewise, the high-energy, harmonica-laden “Simple Man”—perhaps another nod to a Southern rock hero—finds Corbett exploring a more playful delivery, as he slyly describes the relationship between a drunk and his long-suffering ol’ lady.
Where Corbett seems to want you to forget he’s not from around these parts, actor Rick Moranis is up front about his lack of country cred on his debut album, The Agoraphobic Cowboy. “I ain’t from nowhere near Kentucky / No right to sing them Southern blues / I’m from Toronto, snowy city / From a neighborhood of Jews,” he sings on “Mean Old Man.” As the title hints, The Agoraphobic Cowboy is a Roger Miller-style musical humor album penned entirely by the Second City veteran. Moranis is best known for his roles in Ghostbusters and Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, but he also boasts a well-received musical turn in 1986’s Little Shop of Horrors.
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Though its unadorned, loping sound recalls the cowboy music of the ’50s, Moranis’ lyrics gleefully skewer modern life, from our love affair with pharmaceuticals to the prevalence of acronyms in pop culture. (The song “SOS” is made up entirely of them, name-checking, among other things, DVDs, ISP, LAX and WMDs.)
It’s the kind of humor that made shows like SCTV so beloved, and Moranis has it mastered. A standout track is the political satire “Four More Beers,” a head-spinningly clever tune packed with blink-and-you’ll-miss-them barbs that capture a hopeless feeling about democracy in America. Lyrics like “I want to live in a swing state / a perpetual state of swing / Throw another couple of blogs on the fire / While I revel in my bling,” build to the sly hook: “Me and my pet goat are going to vote for four more beers.”
John Corbett, John Corbett (Fun Bone Records)
Elsewhere, Moranis pays homage to old-school country with a hilarious parody of “I’ve Been Everywhere”—originally a Hank Snow tune that Johnny Cash later recorded—called “I Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere” (from which the album gets its name). Instead of listing all the places he’s been, he rattles off rapid-fire all the modern conveniences that allow him to hole up in his house indefinitely: “I go online, DSL, Amazon, buy and sell.… I’m on Ritalin, Coumadin, Zantac, Lipitor, Diazepam.”
When asked why he chose to write humor songs for his album rather than straight country songs, Moranis told NPR recently, “I don’t think anyone wants to hear me do anything straight. And I can’t take myself that seriously.” What audiences expect from Moranis—and what he wisely delivers—is what he does best: razor-sharp satire and tongue-in-cheek comedy. That he has a pleasant singing voice is an unexpected bonus, but he clearly harbors no illusions that he’s launching a second career. In fact, The Agoraphobic Cowboy is all the more enjoyable because the geeky actor is such an unlikely country star. It comes across as a shy, affectionate tribute to an art form and industry he’ll never truly be part of.
Rick Moranis, The Agoraphobic Cowboy (ArtistShare)
Corbett, on the other hand, tries too hard to forge separate identities as a singer and actor, and the album suffers as a result. He’s at his best when, rather than trying to put his own stamp on a standard-issue love song, he inhabits hardscrabble characters in detailed story-songs. That may be due to the fact that those songs require the same kind of work he does in his day job—tapping into characters, their emotions and motivations and trying to express their plight in an empathetic way. Should he continue to make a run at a country career, he might take a cue from Moranis, fully embracing the talents that make him successful in Hollywood and applying them to his musical endeavors. Because in those rare moments on John Corbett when he calls on his acting skills to bring complex characters to life, it’s easiest to think of him as a country singer—and not just Aidan Shaw.