Is probably the greatest album of it's kind ever. Fucking genius and everybody should listen.
The
allmusic review sums it up pretty well...
......That's not the album Has Been is. Sure, there's a good dose of humor throughout the record -- not only is Shatner hamming it up, but Ben Folds can never resist a joke -- but that's only one element on an album that's as weird and bewildering as The Transformed Man. In many ways, Has Been is its polar opposite -- there are no baroque arrangements or psychedelic effects, it's grounded in rock & roll and jazzy lounge instrumentals, its message clear, not deliberately cryptic. But the most shocking thing about the album is its sincerity. There's only one cover of a big pop tune, and it's Pulp's "Common People" -- one of the great singles of the 1990s, but a standard only in Europe, and largely unknown in America. While it's played on Has Been with a knowing wink, the song itself is intended to be funny: in Jarvis Cocker's hands, the wit cut like a blade, while Shatner blusters his way through it, but the difference is in delivery -- Shatner knows what the words mean, and he delivers it with an actor's precision. It's funny, but it's sincere, right down to how Folds brings his idol Joe Jackson in to snarl the chorus, so the cover works as a piece of music, not just as a novelty.
That's the approach of Has Been in a nutshell, but the album gets far stranger very quickly as Shatner begins a series of spoken song-poems, all but two written by him and revealing his introspective musings on love, life, work, fear, disappointment, regret, and everyday mundane things that get on his nerves. Even the two songs not written by him -- "That's Me Trying," Nick Hornby's tale of a neglectful father ham-fistedly reaching out to his adult child, and Brad Paisley's peak behind the personal ballad "Real" -- feel autobiographical, feeding into the sentiment that this record functions as a kind of last testament, Shatner getting everything off of his chest while he still has a chance to do so. That he's doing it while cracking jokes, or while Folds crafts the title track into a mock spaghetti Western theme, just makes the entire project all the more surreal and oddly affecting. It may not be an album that's as funny or timeless as The Transformed Man, but Has Been is every bit as bizarre as that cult classic, giving Shatner the distinction of producing two of the strangest footnotes in the history of popular music, as well as celebrity culture. And that's gotta count for something.
Obviously some youtube links are required (probably best to ignore the amateur slide show visuals that some have)
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Have I sold it enough?
