Gwyneth Paltrow the singer?

Gwyneth Paltrow attempting to sing
Photo by Rick Diamond/Getty Images North America

As much as I love Gwyneth Paltrow and think she's one of the most amazing women in the world, I have a little problem with her as a singer...






Sure, her duet with Huey Lewis for the movie Duets was cute, but I thought that was that. To my horror, her new movie is called Country Strong and someone had the bright idea to promote it by letting her sing during the Country Music Awards. Let's watch...



If you're not busy wiping the blood from your ears, then read on. Not so cute anymore, right? I was particularly... I think offended is the correct word... about the whole thing especially because the awards are supposed to be a salute to the best country music artists, not a shameless self-promotion from a would-be singer. Considering other performers included the likes of Lady Antebellum, Carrie Underwood, Sugarland, Reba, and Keith Urban, Gwyneth Paltrow's performance was just so far below the calibre of the other (real) musicians. Hell, even the hit-or-miss-when-singing-live Taylor Swift sounded good that night.

Okay, so let's get over that... Unfortunately, it gets worse. Two reasons:

1. She will be appearing (which is no harm) and singing (holy shit) on Glee
2. She will be singing Cee-Lo Green's incredible song "Forget You"

So shock and horror right there; and don't worry, I have proof!


There you go. First the positives. She looks amazing as usual. She actually sounds better here, particularly because of the autotune.

Speaking of which, let's dive head first into the negatives! The autotune done to this song is ridiculous. She sounds like a robot. Glee has been suspect to massive autotuning recently and is losing their initial raw appeal they had when they started.

You can see the difference in tonal quality when Kevin McHale (Artie) and Amber Riley (Mercedes) sang a couple of lines. Lea Michele (Rachel)'s reaction to it all was appropriate.

Her performance itself seemed a little awkward to me, with the whole dancing and big smiles aspect of it. I'm sure her acting and speaking parts are a lot better.

Finally, talk about raping a song. I don't know how Cee-Lo feels about this. It sounded like a bad Kidz Bop cover featuring... Gwyneth Paltrow. Hell on earth right there. I'll still watch the episode, and I'm hoping the other numbers turn out to be much better than this.

So there's my two cents worth on Gwyneth Paltrow's singing experiment... she should stop. I'm sure a lot of people will gobble it up and give her false affirmation, though. Oh well.