Which Marvel Hero Had The Worst Musical Career?

The history of actors which are also musicians is not an entirely great one. There’s a reason that no-one ever says of Russell Crowe “The singer from 50 Odd Foot Of Grunt does some acting too, you say?”

And yet actors will keep thinking of themselves as renaissance artistes crossing boundaries which are in zero hurry to be crossed. And, it turns out, this is especially true of actors in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

And it turns out there’s a lot of musicking going on out there.

Jeremy “Hawkeye” Renner has reportedly written the entire soundtrack for his forthcoming animated film Arctic Justice: Thunder Squad, Don “War Machine” Cheadle’s jazz chops got a workout on the Miles Davis biopic Miles Ahead, and Peter “Eitri” Dinklage was in a punk band called Whizzy – while everyone from Samuel L Jackson to Sebastian Stan to Stellan Skarsgård have popped up in music videos.

But as per the premise of the headline, here are five musical explorations from MCU luminaries, ranked from “yeah, that’s alright” to “BURN IT WITH FIRE”.

#5 Scarlett Johansson and Pete Yorn: ‘I Am The Cosmos’

First up, it’s an inspired choice – a classic by Chris Bell, the doomed genius who co-founded Big Star, and Johansson’s twittery voice suits the song perfectly. Better than her album of Tom Waits covers, at any rate.

#4 Brie Larson: ‘She Said’

Larson had an honest-to-god teenage pop career before she was Captain Marvel, although the returns were rather lower than hoped. Insipid sub-Avril material like ‘She Said’ didn’t help. La di dah, la dee dee.

#3 Tom Hiddleston: Lovesick Blues

The wisdom of getting an Englishman to play Hank Williams, one of the most archetypical southern US musicians in history, is debatable. As is the wisdom of doing a soundtrack album where Loki does his versions of some of Hank’s classic cuts.

I mean, he’s fine – and there’s only so much damage one can do to some of the best songs ever written – but even so…

#4 Robert Downey Jr: ‘Man Like Me

His voice is… look, it’s fine. It’s appealingly husky, and he bends vowels to a degree which would embarrass Eddie Vedder, but it’s not egregiously awful. Still, his material’s nothing to write home about. And can you really trust someone who spends that much time with Sting?

#1 Anthony Hopkins: ‘Distant Star’

Supposedly if you really, really want to annoy Sir Anthony Hopkins, the man who was literally Odin, then you should be sure to mention his 1986 single which manages the amazing feat of being simultaneously Casio-keyboard cheesy and downright creepy. Hooray?

Listen to it at your peril.

BONUS: The Absolute Best One

Cobie Smulders is Maria Hill in the MCU, but she was also Robin Scherbatsky in How I Met Your Mother, which contained an inspired plot point which was that she’d had a secret Brie Larson-style teenage pop career in Canada.

And this led to the glorious magic which was her (fake) 90s single ‘Let’s Go To The Mall’. Which looked like an 80s Tiffany video because it took a few years for the 90s to get to Canada, supposedly. Burn.