Summary: It's safe to say that 2004 was a great year for rock thanks to monumental indie rock albums like Arcade Fire's Funeral, The Killers' Hot Fuss and Interpol's Antics -- just to name a few. But that year also brought us an overlooked yet successful album that likely doesn't get mentioned in the same company: William Shatner's Has Been. Back in 2004, as the title suggests, Shatner was not quite the A-list actor he once was in his Star Trek peak, let alone those T.J. Hooker days. As a longtime thespian and all-around showman, Has Been was not the first time the actor best known for playing Capt. James T. Kirk on TV and in movies had dabbled with music. First there was his delightfully misunderstood 1968 record, The Transformed Man, which coupled cosmic Shakespearean readings and spoken-word interpretations of pop songs like "Tambourine Man" and "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds." Then, in 1978, he hosted The Science Fiction Film Awards where he performed a fantastic and utterly bizarro version Elton John's "Rocket Man." So why would Shatner return to that well again? For Has Been, Shatner was coaxed back by Ben Folds, a songwriter who not only took the project serious, but was totally in on the joke. The collaboration gave weight to the album musically, which again, featured a mix of spoken-word and half-sung originals and covers -- most notably, Pulp's hit "Common People." With this song, and throughout the record, Shatner blended his trademark phrasing -- in which he parses each line as if it was a dramatic reading -- with an energetic indie rock sound. The songs were full of anger and humor, but at the heart, was an introspective sadness when he ruminated on aging and regrets. Remarkably, Has Been showed a new side to the actor, and, ultimately, helped reinvigorate his career. In a conversation with Soundcheck host John Schaefer, Dan Ozzi, an editor at Noisey, looks back to Has Been's origins and impact, as discussed in his retrospective piece, "William Shatner's "Has Been": The Album That Broke Indie Rock For Good." Plus he puts the album in the context of all the other now-classic albums that came out in 2004. Interview Highlights Dan Ozzi, on Shatner’s previous attempts at music versus his work on Has Been: I think that the difference between “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” and the “Common People” cover was when they were making this record he asked Ben Folds, “I don’t know how I should make this album” and Ben Fold was like, “Be honest, be yourself.” So I think that’s the difference: He dropped this sort of pretension about maybe I could have a musical career. “Common People” and Has Been is very much like I have no business being in this studio but let’s see what comes out anyway. On why Has Been did so well in 2004: If you look at Has Been it got a 7.5 on Pitchfork that year. That was more than they gave Wilco’s A Ghost Is Born" and more than they gave Rilo Kiley’s More Adventurous that year. That’s insane when looking back on what is a novelty album. It got swooped in with the rest of this indie-mania that it got taken seriously as an album.
