Pete Yorn

You can't blame Pete Yorn for wanting to cut an album with Scarlett Johansson. After all, the Match Point actress is freakin' hot. Still, that doesn't mitigate the fact that Yorn cut an album with Scarlett Johansson. What's the big deal? Well, imagine if Michael Chabon agreed to co-author a novel with Ethan Hawke. Yeah, it's like that, except that the 35-year-old singer-songwriter didn't have the critical capital to marginalize in the first place. Since hitting with the widely admired Day I Forgot long-play in 2003, Yorn has released two underwhelming solo albums: Nightcrawler (2006) and Back and Fourth, which dropped in June and failed to chart a single. Now, Yorn tinkles away what little juice he has left to fuel an A-list starlet's Hummer-sized musical vanities? Good luck to you, sir. Personally, I've always felt that Yorn's success had more to do with photo-readiness and female-demo intangibles than the middlebrow rock songs that populate his albums. His 2003 show at the Celebrity Theater was patently lackluster; special only because the opening act, Granddaddy, proved revelatory. This time around, he's touring with folk-rock wunderkind Isaac Russell. Starlet not included.