So when people deny Russell Crowe his musical accolades, I’ve got at least one song to make the counterargument: “Testify.”
It’s easy enough to find on YouTube, usually a performance he gives at an awards ceremony he’s otherwise hosting. Between that and the Alan Doyle cover with the video starring Crowe, I assumed for a long time that it was a cover. It’s a great song. But as far as I can tell (the always reliable Wikipedia), it’s a song Crowe and Doyle wrote. Both sound great singing it. Anyway, it deserves a wide audience somewhere, and should elicit many covers through the years.
A peculiar thing happened along the way to Sherwood…
In the last twenty-odd years Russell Crowe’s public profile has undergone a remarkable series of twists. He went from being the most acclaimed actor of his generation with the Oscar-dominating one-two punch of Gladiator and ABeautifulMind to a perennial punching bag for any number of reasons, whether an on-set “behavior challenge” that led to SouthPark famously lampooning him or critics somehow being more interested in his waistline than his talent. Then of course people discovered he really just wanted to…sing! (That last sentence works better if you have a bit of Monty Python in you.)
Which is hilarious because in his native Australia, Crowe was a pop star in the Eighties. Seriously. Guy has been doing music his whole life.
It got to the point, once he became famous as an actor, that Crowe went out of his way to cultivate a relationship with Alan Doyle from the Canadian band Great Big Sea, leading to a series of collaborations, both musically and onscreen. Doyle showed up in a number of Crowe’s movies in minor roles, the most significant being Alan-a-Dale in RobinHood.
The rest of the Merry Men, Scott Grimes (with legitimate vocal training behind him) and Kevin Durand (otherwise known for tough guy roles), as it turned out, liked singing, too.
The four of them ended up singing Sean Kingston’s “Beautiful Girls” on the publicity tour, and I’ve spent many hours YouTubing the results over the years. Crowe minimizes his contributions during these performances, giving all the space to Doyle, Grimes and Durand, but he clearly enjoys himself singing backup and clapping along.
With apologies to Kingston, they’re the reason the song is never that far from my thoughts.
Here's one of those instant miracles, Bob Dylan's popular comeback "Make You Feel Your Love," adopted by Garth Brooks and Billy Joel in rapid succession.
