![\"William](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/William-Shatner-Director-2025-Far-Out-Magazine-1140x855.jpg\")
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Credit: Far Out \/ John Manard<\/p>\n
Tue 14 July 2026 16:45, UK <\/p>\n
If William Shatner<\/a> is associated with one thing, it is Star Trek. You can\u2019t fault him, for he is a true science fiction onscreen icon, one of the first to ever do it, and he was brilliant, but some people also associate him with music, and they probably shouldn\u2019t, to be honest.\u00a0<\/p>\n The reason they do that is for almost as long as he has been acting, Shatner has been doing spoken word covers of popular songs by other artists, and then releasing them himself, as far back as 1968, in fact, when he put out The Transformed Man. That was an LP of covers like Bob Dylan\u2019s \u2018Mr Tambourine Man\u2019 and \u2018Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds\u2019 by The Beatles, but with Shatner dramatically talking the lyrics <\/a>rather than singing them.\u00a0<\/p>\n Now, to give him his due, this was something of a cash-in due to his fame as Captain James T Kirk, leader of the Starship Enterprise, who he was still playing at the time, and so the artwork of the album reflected that, with a \u2018futuristic\u2019 typeface and the name of his Star Trek character emblazoned on the cover. That\u2019s fine, everyone\u2019s got to get that bag, as they say on Instagram.\u00a0<\/p>\n But that was nigh-on 60 years ago, and somehow Shatner has managed to drag this \u2018just talk over other people\u2019s songs\u2019 schtick out decade after decade, despite it being something literally anybody could do, as long as they have a voice and access to a recording studio. Oh, and some famous mates to rope in occasionally to add some legitimacy to it all.\u00a0<\/p>\n Things reached a nadir in the 1970s, when Shatner decided to take things further and would sit on a stool on the telly in full black tie, smoking incessantly and performing painful jazz versions of songs like Elton John\u2019s \u2018Rocket Man\u2019. It was rubbish; I don\u2019t care how many Klingons you\u2019ve zapped, but it was inexcusable.\u00a0<\/p>\n And Shatner is still at it even as he approaches 100 years of age<\/a>, putting out an album as recently as 2024\u2019s So Fragile, So Blue, which was produced by Ben Folds Five, and a single called \u2018I Want to Be a Tree\u2019. In fact, the only real period of time when Shatner didn\u2019t bother a recording studio much was the 1980s, during which he perhaps let actual musicians get on with it, including Michael Jackson.\u00a0<\/p>\n Shatner cited Jackson\u2019s world-conquering 1982 album Thriller as his favourite of all time, telling MusicRadar, \u201cThis album is a no-brainer. It just might be the greatest of them all. Everybody loves it, of course, it\u2019s all wonderful. We\u2019ve seen him perform it, and the image of him on stage captures our imagination perhaps more than anything else. He was truly a supreme performer.\u201d<\/p>\n Further reading: Cutting Room Floor<\/p>\n Jackson, who has gone through a massive revival recently thanks to the Antoine Fuqua-directed biopic <\/a>Michael this year, was indeed a supreme performer, but he comes with an awful lot of baggage that the TikTok teens don\u2019t really know about, possibly because the film\u2019s producers came to an agreement with his estate to leave all the troubling sections of his life out completely.\u00a0<\/p>\n Thriller remains the best-selling album in music history, shifting around 70million copies since its release, and it was nominated for a record-breaking 12 Grammys, winning eight, making it the most critically awarded album too.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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