Why?

Firstly, scroll down and kindly watch the YouTube video. Bewildering, isn't it? Talented, award-winning actress Gwyneth Paltrow seems determined to succeed as a singer. Bizarrely, she's as wooden as a forest, monotonous (though to be fair she has mastered that one note) and looks and sounds like an auntie doing karaoke at a wedding reception. Not the most pleasant noise, is it? Aside from the fact the popular, Auto-Tune loving show Glee has chosen to feature a song that will profit a convicted pedophile (and how creepy are those lyrics in retrospect?) they also seem to have cast Paltrow as the most unconvincing rock chick ever.

Milquetoast Gwyneth seems to have become fixated on a music career since playing a troubled country singer in the movie Country Strong. In fact, she has just signed an album deal to release an album of 'country pop' and on this, I have to quote Hampton Stevens,

"Oh, good. That makes sense. Country music, which at its heart celebrates the simplicity of small-town American life, always sounds best when played by a New York City native, the child of a famous director father and Tony Award-winning mom, who went to elite private prep schools and spent every Thanksgiving with the Spielbergs at their estate in the Hamptons. Heck, there ain't hardly nothing the average Wal-Mart shopping, NASCAR-loving, hunting and fishing, line-dancing country music fan loves more than a woman who speaks fluent French, follows a strict macrobiotic diet, married a rock star, was quoted talking smack about America, and—lest we forget—named her first child after a fruit. "

Let's face it, she probably doesn't need the money, though she does have a unique selling point in that not many country singers grow up on Park Avenue and in Bel Air. "I have weathered cold winters, and gone through summers without a drop of rain," she drones. Well, it does get pretty cold in N.Y.C. during the winter months, and of course L.A. is notoriously sunny, so she does sing from her own experiences. As Gwyneth herself tells us, "I think I can feel what it is to be a country singer. I don't come from the country physically, but from my heart's true perspective I can fill those shoes, you know, walk in pain, walk the line as it were...I am an actress but this flame burns from the truest part of my soul."

Unfortunately, hearing her sing, just reminds me of watching Madonna act- I'm disappointed, bored, embarrassed and confused. And with a bit of a headache.