William Shatner – The Transformed Man

When I first heard about William Shatner's albums I was warned that they were really, really bad. I gave them a try and immediately liked it enough to buy them. I didn't find it to be "ludicrous", "terrible", "horrendous" or even "a train wreck". (These are all words I have seen in reviews of his work.) Sure, they aren't your stereotypical performances of these pieces, but therein lies the charm!

William Shatner is primarily an actor. Let's contemplate that for a moment. David Hasselhoff? Patrick Swayze? Sylvester Stallone? Steven Segal? Don Johnson? Come on! He has outshone the whole lot of them. Like Leonard Cohen, William Shatner doesn't have a singing voice (something he himself pokes fun at on the album "Has Been"), but he overcame this obstacle and still gave a highly captivating and entertaining performance.

I have tried hard to understand his critics. My only guesses are that they must have very rigid, preconceived ideas of music, or perhaps they have strong attachments to the original versions of the songs, but any piece of music so offensively bad that I would feel the need to label it a train wreck, I would simply avoid hearing again. Problem solved. No, that's too simple. These people are compelled to troll any medium that affords them the opportunity to make the same old tired remarks over and over again. Why? I can't get behind that.