Shatner is making an album with 35 metal icons

[jsheard]

If I had a nickel for each actor who recorded a heavy metal album after their 90th birthday then I'd have two nickels, which isn't much but it's weird that it's happened twice.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlemagne:_The_Omens_of_Deat...

[defrost]

Impressive.

The great Orsen Welles spring chickened out by only recording heavy metal tracks when he was 70. His excuse for not repeating that at 90 was dying not long after.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AMi-vCfAWw

[stavros]

I knew about this, though I'd never listened to it. I gave it a shot now, and I wanted to like it, but... it's terrible, unfortunately.

[russellbeattie]

Phineas and Ferb had some of the best scripts ever written for TV, and I'll die on that hill.

[kergonath]

That’s unfair to Sir Christopher. He was only 82 when he started working with Rhapsody.

[ziofill]

Oh wow he looks incredible for being 94

[jimberlage]

William Shatner has the most experimental, wild Spotify I've ever seen. If you haven't ever seen it, look at his discography. He does a lot of almost spoken-word poetry over soft rock, punk, etc. You get the sense that he views acting as his side hustle and is waiting for his musical career to take off.

[vunderba]

He's also (to my knowledge) one of the only major Hollywood actors to ever star in a movie filmed entirely in esperanto. I've heard that the pronunciation is rather rough around the edges though I have no way of corroborating that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incubus_(1966_film)

[wodenokoto]

His rendition of “Common People” is my favorite cover and I honestly prefer it to Pulps original.

[theshrike79]

An interesting choice of words: "has the most experimental, wild Spotify" when referring to someone's discography :)

Is Spotify becoming the new Kleenex or Hoover when referring to music?

[etrautmann]

At one point he was huge into the paintball scene as well. Beyond hobby level

[squigz]

There's also the time he did spoken word Slim Shady for Futurama

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqf04PAeFnE

[MrBuddyCasino]

Zarelli took Leonard Nimoy's 1975 audio recording of the disturbing short story “There Will Come Soft Rains” (The Martian Chronicles, 1950) and turned it into a song. I think you'll like it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_ekjpJWSvY&list=RD7_ekjpJWS...

[throw0101c]

> You get the sense that he views acting as his side hustle and is waiting for his musical career to take off.

Steve Martin paid the bills with stand-up comedy and acting until his banjo career finally took off.

[this-is-why]

If you’ve never heard it, his duet of the song Common People is pretty awesome:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cMXhWf0vE7c

[magicalhippo]

He did an interesting cover[1] of Elton John's Rocket Man[2] back in 78.

That cover was later remixed into this[3] piece of internet gold (IMHO).

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wI4jMxveyI

[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_QZe8Z66x8

[3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IffZh3V8oQ

[linsomniac]

Agreed, it fits well within his range and it's IMHO a really great cover of Common People.

I also really enjoy _That's Me Trying_: https://youtu.be/vjGaqFrF5Fw?si=eq_VSQXnxqXQ_Kyg

and _Real_: https://youtu.be/hsKfZ3wvLkE?si=l7FdbGCX_u8ep0Ie

[dpe82]

Even better is the live version: https://vimeo.com/714215610

[davidw]

Mr Tambourine Man is pretty epic too

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmCi_-9Shhg&list=RDXmCi_-9Sh...

[crtasm]

and only improved by adding the Star Trek cartoon

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXWEM4gZhg4

[lovich]

I honestly thought his voice fit better for the theme of the song than the original

[amiga386]

I'm amazed the guy is still ticking at all. He's 94! Seems he's also still driving... and eating his breakfast at traffic lights: https://www.tmz.com/2026/01/20/william-shatner-eating-cereal...

[2muchcoffeeman]

Only in earth’s frame of reference. He spent a long time at warp. So he’s really only 65

[LeoPanthera]

The breakfast cereal thing was a commercial. A successful one, apparently.

[jlarocco]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shatner#/media/File:Wi...

For 93 that's amazing.

[ryandrake]

No mention of Shatner's music career is complete without listing Spaced Out: The Best of Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner[1]. And, yes, it's exactly as -unique- as you'd imagine it might be.

1: https://www.amazon.com/Spaced-Out-Leonard-William-Shatner/dp...

[qmr]

Bilbo, Bilbo, Bilbo Baggins, greatest little hobbit of them all ..

[timoth3y]

William Shatner is someone I really wish I could dislike. I mean, he is certainly not a conventionally talented singer or actor. He's laughably, painfully bad sometimes.

But the man keeps going! He's one of the hardest working people in show business. He clearly takes his craft very seriously, even if he defines it a bit differently from the rest of world.

The Wrath of Khan has no business being as great a movie as it is, and his version of Common People is fantastic.

I'm sure this collaboration will be .... something else.

== Edit I'm sure I am over-analyzing this - I do that with everything - but Common People is actually "perfect" Shatner.

When you start listening, you feel "OK, this is lame." After a bit it clicks and it becomes "Oh! I see what they are trying to do here." and by the end it becomes "Damn! This is awesome."

Shatner doesn't change throughout the performance, but everything just falls into place around him.

[throw0101c]

> But the man keeps going! He's one of the hardest working people in show business. He clearly takes his craft very seriously, even if he defines it a bit differently from the rest of world.

I still think him (of Star Trek) opening AFI's tribute to George Lucas (of Star Wars) was genius:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEZVwQptvWw

(Also love Mike Myers' AFI for Sean Connery.)

[dgllghr]

His acting is laughably, painfully bad and then suddenly incredibly poignant and for some reason for the whole time it's bad I'm subconsciously like "oh this part doesn't count". It's so easy to root for him

[nosioptar]

Shatner singlehanded made American Psycho 2 better than the original. It's so awful it's great.

(I know no one else in the world feels this way.)

[GolfPopper]

Denny Crane!

[WalterBright]

Shatner ... knows ... how to ... have fun ... in his 90s!

[johngossman]

As I age, I look on these happy, productive seniors, people like Dick Van Dyke (100), David Attenborough (99), and Mel Brooks (99) and keep my fingers crossed.

[ThrowawayR2]

And more power to him; he's enjoying himself and that's all that matters. We should all be so fortunate.

[Tade0]

Whenever someone overuses ellipsis I imagine they talk like William Shatner.

[saas_startup]

Captain Kirk is climbing a mountain, why is he climbing a mountain ?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HU2ftCitvyQ

[__patchbit__]

If Will Shat would do a cover of Styx's “Come Sail Away” using AI SpaceX Starship imagery in the music video

   https://youtu.be/sm-Vh3j8sys

[BLKNSLVR]

I can't get behind this!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAWP9Oxdn9Q

[DoneWithAllThat]

His 2004 album “Has Been” is surprisingly good.

[pdpi]

I would never have expected that "Shatner and Henry Rollins ranting while Adrian Belew and Matt Chamberlain go absolutely wild on guitar and drums respectively" would be anywhere close to as good as it is.

Incidentally, Rollins talking about the recording[0] of it is freaking hilarious.

[0]: https://youtu.be/8zL3wtNrq00?t=4616

[havblue]

You wouldn't think someone just orating without singing is entertaining, but it worked. I'm sure Ben Folds did a lot of the heavy lifting to make it great though.

While most people cite Common People as their favorite song on the album, I also like "You'll Have Time" as one of the more philosophically important songs that I've ever heard.

[webprofusion]

It's Rad. It doesn't even have to be good, it just has to exist.

[webprofusion]

I'm guessing the music will be much like this one (more about fun than having the best actual songs) but didn't know there was a track with both Chris Poland and Marty Friedman: https://open.spotify.com/track/7yDb6NVzvuUVuvLyTSfDhz?si=0c5...

[ShadyTrail]

HN: Flags anything politics adjacent because it's "not tech-related".

Also HN: Remember Star Trek?!?

[krapp]

Yeah, this is literally the sort of mainstream celebrity news that HN should flag without question, but pop culture nostalgia always means the rules don't count. Pretending you flew in a spaceship in the 1960s shouldn't count for "technical merit."

Meanwhile the story about an Israeli massacre of Gaza aid workers with actual technical content didn't last an hour before being flooded with complaints about being "off topic" then getting flagged.

C'est la vie, Hacker News will never change.

[ThrowawayR2]

From the HN guidelines: "On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting." Star Trek was wildly popular among the OG hackers before most of the people reading this were even born.

[rasso]

This is my all-time favourite from Shatner: "It hasn't happened yet"

https://youtu.be/7GnoLJIIS4w?si=zP_mlOxV1tKMMkQx

[afavour]

Sometimes I’m absolutely mystified by the items that appear at the top of HN.

[johngossman]

That's not a bug, that's a feature

[ThrowawayR2]

There are a lot of Trekkies here. Star Trek was popular among hackers and nerds all the way back to when it first aired in the late 1960s.

[bgdkbtv]

I am also confused as to how this is relevant to HN.

[Razengan]

Mystified by the fact that people on HN have interests outside of computers and shit?

[SilentM68]

Don't know if true or not but I saw somewhere on the web that he is also in talks to return to Star Trek.

[ThrowawayR2]

I recall that he consulted for an unofficial (semi-official?) concept video by the Roddenberry Archive that was a finale/sendoff for Captain Kirk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgOZFny7F50 . If you're a fan of TOS, it's worth a watch.

[acuozzo]

It won't hold a candle to Pat Boone's metal album! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_a_Metal_Mood:_No_More_Mr._N...

[aquir]

Hell yeah! HM on HN! I would like to do metal projects in my nineties! After the Iron Maiden performance we need an album from Ralph Fiennes. How'z'dat?

[excalibur]

If you haven't heard his Bohemian Rhapsody cover, it's something else. He flat out admitted that he had never heard the song before recording it. Which... Number one, how? And number two, who let him do that?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ul6S84qF_TU

[burnt-resistor]

"Please God, don't let him sing." is my immediate reaction after curiously hearing one of his previous works.

[helterskelter]

15 hours and 95 comments later and nobody mentions that he's holding the Les Paul backwards?

[mft_]

It’s possible for a standard right-handed player to throw a guitar over to that position while playing.

Anyway, see the pain on his face; he’s (obvs) just in the middle of an especially aggressive and passionate metal solo.

[antonyh]

I do hope Gibson/Chibson make that guitar with the inlays at the 11th/13th positions.

[block_dagger]

The album he made with Ben Folds was worth a couple of listens. Only a couple.

[TiredOfLife]

A day.

[protocolture]

Still waiting for his spoken word, rnb, julius caesar.

[jrootabega]

Guess the Beastie Boys were never in the running.

[Avicebron]

It's Shatner, he can score anything.

[ArchieScrivener]

God speed, Metal Man.