Intro for April 17, 2026

Dear Gossips,

It is Friday and we will have fun goddammit! Fun will continue until morale improves! And today’s fun is brought to you by…Russell Crowe?

Crowe stars in a new MMA movie called Beast, which he co-wrote with Daniel Frigerio, and co-stars in alongside Daniel MacPherson and Luke Hemsworth (least of the name). It’s about a fighter who is dragged unwillingly out of retirement. You can see the trailer here, but we’re not here for the trailer. No, we’re here for Russell Crowe’s new song.

Crowe has a long history with music. Like many actors, when he started out, he was a musician as much as he was an actor. When his acting career took off, he used his fame to cram his music down our throats in the form of his band, 30 Odd Foot of Grunts. After that band fell apart, he formed other musical acts, including a band called The Ordinary Fear of God, and his latest is a band called Indoor Garden Party (the band names are not improving). I have a theory that the quality of an actor’s band is inversely proportional to their talent at acting. The better the actor they are, the worse their music is. Russell Crowe is a good actor; therefore, his music is bad.

In his younger days, though, Russell Crowe performed music under the name Russ Le Roq and had a notable single, “I Just Wanna Be Like Marlon Brando”. Whatever you think that song is going to sound like, you’re wrong. You are not prepared for what it ACTUALLY sounds like. Listen here and join me in in a nether realm where you will never know peace again. (Honestly, that song sounds like it could be one of Obscurest Vinyl’s joke songs.)

The Brando song is why I pay attention to Russell Crowe’s music career. You just never know when he is going to drop pure gold in your lap, which is what he did yesterday with the music video for “The Beast In Me”, a power ballad to go with his MMA movie.

Watch out Diane Warren! Russell Crowe is coming for your obligatory Best Original Song Oscar nomination! I am only half kidding. I would genuinely love to see Crowe make a run at the Oscars with this song. Will he? No, of course not. The song is terrible. But so are all of Diane Warren’s Oscar songs. If we’re nominating bad movie songs as a matter of course, let’s nominate FUNNY bad movie songs. Let’s nominate Russell Crowe for Best Original Song. Come on. Do it. It would be the funniest. We need it. You have eleven months to make this happen, Academy!

Live long and gossip,

Sarah