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...
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.
Manowar are such a guilty pleasure of mine. They have a lot of very silly material, but hard to deny that Dark Avenger is anything but absolute art.
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.
He also did work with Rhapsody of Fire from 2004 to 2010, where his contributions were of much higher quality.
It doesn't bother me, it's fantastic that he did this, it was just objectively not very good. I'm glad his other contributions were better, and he's obviously had an illustrious career in general.
Oh wow he looks incredible for being 94
Phineas and Ferb had some of the best scripts ever written for TV, and I'll die on that hill.
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.
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.
I'd heard of this movie before and had to check it out - the scene I watched where he was speaking to who I assume is the female lead sounded like an American and an Italian both speaking perfectly passable Esperanto. If I were to nitpick his i's were a little soft - Esperanto i's are canonically pronounced ee - but Esperanto was made to accommodate lots of different accents without losing comprehensibility and it did that here. I actually found his Esperanto easier to follow than the girl's, but that's probably because I learned Esperanto from people speaking it with Canadian accents.
Shatner speaks Esperanto with a perfect native accent. Everyone else is pronouncing it wrong.
This has strong Chuck Norris facts vibes.
I know you were speaking tongue-in-cheek.
Esperanto has native speakers. Shatner is not one of them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Esperanto_speakers
> Native Esperanto speakers (Esperanto: denaskuloj [denasˈkuloi̯] or denaskaj esperantistoj [deˈnaskai̯ esperanˈtistoi̯]) are people who have acquired Esperanto as one of their native languages. As of 1996, there were 350 or so attested cases of families with native Esperanto speakers.[1][2] Estimates from associations indicate that there were around 1,000 Esperanto-speaking families, involving perhaps 2,000 children in 2004. ...
> some families have passed Esperanto on to their children over several generations.
When I watched Incubus I remember him sounding very much like he was trying to speak Italian. My only basis for comparison are some podcasts in Esperanto I've listened to, and completion of the duolingo course (I've forgotten everything).
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?
His rendition of “Common People” is my favorite cover and I honestly prefer it to Pulps original.
Thank you. 100% agree. I would love to hear Shatner work with John Cooper Clarke
At one point he was huge into the paintball scene as well. Beyond hobby level
There's also the time he did spoken word Slim Shady for Futurama
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...
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...
Only in earth’s frame of reference. He spent a long time at warp. So he’s really only 65
The breakfast cereal thing was a commercial. A successful one, apparently.
I honestly couldn’t stop thinking about it. People around here eat plates of pasta in cars and throw them out the window.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shatner#/media/File:Wi...
For 93 that's amazing.
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.
Denny Crane!
If you’ve never heard it, his duet of the song Common People is pretty awesome:
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
And Shatner's cover was covered by Family Guy:
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
Even better is the live version: https://vimeo.com/714215610
Mr Tambourine Man is pretty epic too
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmCi_-9Shhg&list=RDXmCi_-9Sh...
I have to say, the brass arrangement is pretty good - would have loved to be there when they recorded that staccato part.
and only improved by adding the Star Trek cartoon
I honestly thought his voice fit better for the theme of the song than the original
Shatner ... knows ... how to ... have fun ... in his 90s!
Whenever someone overuses ellipsis I imagine they talk like William Shatner.
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.
Brooks was a combat engineer at the Battle of the Bulge! That always blows me away. What a life's journey.
Like a stray bullet and his journey ends there but instead he’s still going strong at 99.
100 is the new 80... I hope!
And more power to him; he's enjoying himself and that's all that matters. We should all be so fortunate.
Captain Kirk is climbing a mountain, why is he climbing a mountain ?
I can't get behind this!
It's Rad. It doesn't even have to be good, it just has to exist.
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...
In a thread full of attractive links, this was the one that got me to break discipline and click. Thanks!
His 2004 album “Has Been” is surprisingly good.
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.
Well, thanks for cutting another one and a half hours from my already too short period of sleep at night and making me waste more time tomorrow at looking up more stand up shows from Henry if available.
I highly recommend watching his live show if he's ever in your area. Great experience. Henry is the epitome of intensity for 2 hours. He doesn't stop. He doesn't sit. He doesn't drink. I'm not even sure he breathes.
The album he made with Ben Folds was worth a couple of listens. Only a couple.
Sometimes I’m absolutely mystified by the items that appear at the top of HN.
That's not a bug, that's a feature
I am also confused as to how this is relevant to HN.
Apparently more than 100 registerd users with voting rights thought it interesting and few to none felt it flag worthy.
So, much the same bar was cleared as every other article that makes the "interesting to HN community" grade.
Rack that up to more Trekkie-adjacent and metal-heads than you might have expected.
Mystified by the fact that people on HN have interests outside of computers and shit?
A lot of those non-tech get flagged from the homepage. It’s interesting to see what is allowed to stay and what is not.
...Yes. We're all fucking nerds.
/s
Still waiting for his spoken word, rnb, julius caesar.
Guess the Beastie Boys were never in the running.
It's Shatner, he can score anything.
God speed, Metal Man.
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.
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.
Yup, I am a fan and watched that concept video when it came out. I'm hoping he makes some sort of return, perhaps involving the Star Trek Picard Season 3 reveal that Kirk's body is being kept on ice at Section 31, on Daystrom Station. I would imagine that there are many ways that Kirk could be brought back, perhaps Kirk's body could have ended up being stored in a transporter's buffer similar to how the episode "Relics" from Star Trek: The Next Generation, Captain Montgomery Scott (Scotty) is discovered alive in a transporter buffer after being trapped for 75 years on a Dyson sphere. The transporter has been rigged to sustain two life signals, allowing Scott to survive by maintaining a diagnostic cycle. His pattern remains intact, allowing him to be rematerialized after being rescued by the USS Enterprise. Another possibility is being back due to meddling from the Q or an evolved V'Ger. There's been published a comic where some of the old crew from multiple TV projects have been brought back to help solve the killings of some of Star Trek's Gods by an unknown figure. Emperor Kahless is eventually revealed to be Star Trek’s god-killer. Among the many cameos in the series are Benjamin Sisko, Jake Sisko, Kira Nerys, Odo, Worf, Alexander Rozhenko, Spock, Scotty, Uhura, B'Elanna Torres, Tom Paris, Ro Laren, and others like Q, Kahless (clone/Emperor), and crossovers with Picard-era or TOS characters. It does not have to be a TV series but could be a limited TV mini-series. The Star Trek financial gods wasted big money on a badly done Section 31 movie. I don't see why they don't do something more similar to Star Trek comic and Television canon.
"Please God, don't let him sing." is my immediate reaction after curiously hearing one of his previous works.
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?
