You Should Know About… Scarlett Johansson and Pete Yorn: Breakup

Scarlett Johansson steps forward with her second musical foray, but this time with the help of acoustic legend Pete Yorn.

We all know that Scarlett Johansson had a dalliance with a microphone and released her first album, a cover of Tom Waits songs called Anywhere I Lay My Head, in 2008. Now the actress is back with an album called Breakup, recorded with Pete Yorn.  

The friends made these tracks in Pete’s garage back in 2006, two years before Scarlett recorded her Tom Waits covers, but have only just got around to releaseing them – and we like what we hear.  

“I was having a strange week of insomnia and when I finally passed out, it came to me in a dream,” Yorn explains. “I woke up and the whole thing was in my head, fully formed.” Johannsson was reportedly intrigued by Yorn’s out of the blue invitation. “It sounded like an interesting little adventure,” the actress said. “The idea of two people vocalising their relationship thorugh duets.”

“I always thought of it as just a small project between friends,” Johansson explains, when asked about making the tracks in Yorn’s garage. “I’ve loved the album ever since I heard it completed. It perfectly captured where I was in my life at the time.”

Scarlett Johansson’s voice could do with a little training, as she seems to stick with tried and tested husky tones à la Amy Winehouse, but one of the biggest names in Hollywood brings more to this album than just her vocal talents.

Inspired by actress Brigitte Bardot’s collaborations with Serge Gainsbourg in the 1960s, each of the singers sing their side of the story about a break-up with such emotion that it will bring tears to the eyes of the most unsentimental of people.

Brief at just nine songs, most songs here have a perky, light indie-pop tone, with our favourite being I Just Don’t Know What To Do, a slow, acoustic ballad about the good sides and bad sides of a relationship.

A free steam of the single Relator is available at www.thebreakupalbum.com