Scott Walker’s Legacy as a Vocal Auteur

Scott Walker’s career disproves F. Scott Fitzgerald’s line that there are no second acts in American life. An Ohio boy who became an idol in the smiley ’60s trio the Walker Brothers, Walker transitioned into making auteurist chamber pop, vanished from the public eye, and reemerged in the ’90s with acclaimed experimental compositions involving hammered meat, executioner-blade shings!, and fart sounds. After his death at 76, he’ll now be remembered as having pulled off one of the greatest shape-shifting acts in any artistic medium ever.

But maybe his career should not. Walker’s voice was a prime model in a great American line stretching through lounge legends and Andrew Lloyd Webber hambones. In a tone as pungent and thick as hair gel, his phrasings presumed that “conversational” could never be a virtue. At first, he capitalized on that style’s accessibility. Then he laid bare its strangeness.