Michael Cera will always be George Michael Bluth in the hearts of just about every TV fan, but like many actors before him, he’s also taken a stab at music. Among other endeavors, he played mandolin and sang backing vocals on Weezer’s 2011 single “Hang On,” and he released a solo album of lo-fi home recordings on Bandcamp in 2014. His latest effort is probably be his best yet, though: He just shared a fun new synth pop single called “Best I Can” that features Sharon Van Etten on vocals.
The song comes across like a mix of video game music and early 2000s, electronic-leaning indie bedroom pop, with lovely string flourishes and a soft and pretty vocal performance from Van Etten. It’s featured in the film Dina, and Van Etten said their collaboration came about after the two happened to run into each other three times in the same day while exploring Brooklyn. From there, a relationship developed, and they eventually talked about playing music together:
“[Michael and I] started taking about how he’s been doing music and looking for a place to play piano because having a piano at home had been hard for him to work. And I told him, ‘Well, I actually have a piano in my space, and I just got the space a week ago.’ He was very interested, and it all happened very organically. That’s how we really got to know each other.”
Cera said the song initially came about when the directors of Dina, who Cera met through a mutual friend, weren’t sure if they’d be able to clear “Only You” by Yazoo for use in the movie:
I said, ‘Well, let me make an original song for there, just in case, and it’ll be a different kind of option for you.’ They tried to use ‘Best I Can,’ and it didn’t work as well for them. They had fallen in love with the Yaz song, and then they ended up clearing that. My song was ultimately rejected, but after that, they thought, ‘Well, since we have it and you made it, why don’t we release it and give it its own kind of life, so it doesn’t just kind of die and nobody ever hear it?’
Listen to “Best I Can” above.
