Dwayne Johnson wants you to hear what he is cooking up in the studio. In a new interview with Rolling Stone, the pro-wrestler-turned-actor revealed his ambitions to explore a music career.
Fans may remember Johnson’s contribution to Wyclef Jean’s 2000 song “It Doesn’t Matter” and his rap feature on Tech N9ne’s 2021 track “Face Off,” but his proper solo debut was in 2016’s Moana, where he sang as character Maui on “You’re Welcome,” penned by Lin-Manuel Miranda.
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Now, Johnson wants to “sing from the heart” and in “keys that don’t exist,” exploring the “old-school soul genre” with “some country flavor,” inspired by Sam Cooke, Elvis, George Jones, Merle Haggard, and Willie Nelson. The focus on music comes at a convenient time as his box-office draw wanes, but we’ll leave that for you to decide.
“I’ve reached this point in my life and in my career where… when I wake up in the morning, I swing my legs out of bed, and whatever the thing is that I’m doing, I wanna feel like I’m just running towards it,” Johnson told Rolling Stone. “The most gratifying things we do are when it’s for us, because we have enough pressure to deliver for so many other entities.”
He then referred to “Your Dad,” an extremely sincere ballad dedicated to his daughters that he co-wrote with 2023 American Idol winner Iam Tongi. The song appears on Moana: Voices Across the Ocean, a companion album to his recent live-action Moana movie. Johnson executive-produced the album with his wife, Lauren Hashian.
“You make films, especially the big four-quadrant movies, you want them to do well. But this song, for me, is just a song to my daughters,” Johnson explained. “There’s no pressure of an expectation to deliver something that, ‘Well, how are the sales, and how’s the box office? And how’s the streams?’ It’s just from me to them.”
He certainly makes that evident in the newly released black-and-white “Your Dad” music video, which alternates between footage of Johnson recording the song in the studio and home video with his daughters. Check it out below.
Check out Liz Shannon Miller’s review of this summer’s Moana movie, which unnervingly features Johnson in a muscle suit with long flowing locks.
