Oscar-winning actress Gwyneth Paltrow is flexing her musical muscles in her latest flick ‘Country Strong‘, in which she plays a washed up country diva looking for a comeback. Accompanying the movie-musical is an all-star soundtrack, with Gwyneth herself scoring the lead single. One listen to the powerful “Country Strong” and it’s pretty easy to forget that it’s actually Gwyneth who’s singing, with the actress sounding more like an authentic Nashville born-and-bred country singer rather than a A-list movie star.

Prior to filming the flick, Gwyneth took private singing lessons, and even learned to play guitar from her husband and Coldplay frontman Chris Martin.

Co-starring alongside Gwyneth in Country Strong” is country chart topper Tim McGraw, and Gossip Girl actress slash struggling pop star Leighton Meester, who plays a beauty queen turned aspiring singer. Both McGraw and Meester will feature on the soundtrack with Gwyneth, as well as country singer-songwriter Sara Evans and a few others.

“Country Strong” will be sent to country radio next month, with the soundtrack due on October 26. The film will then hit US theaters on December 22.

This is actually one of my most anticipated movies of the year, and now after hearing the title track, the soundtrack has been bumped up to one of my must-have albums.

Fun fact: Gwyneth released two singles back in 2000 — “Cruisin” and “Bette Davis Eyes” — both of which were big hits in Australia and several other parts of the world.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 27th, 2010 at 4:19 am and is filed under New Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.