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James Franco releases new song with his Smiths-inspired band

James Franco is a man of many trades. He’s spent considerable time within both the film and publishing industry (who could forget the NY times op-ed he wrote on fellow actor Shia Lebouf?), and now he’s trying his hand at music.

Franco, along with his old schoolmate Tim O’Keefe have started a band called Daddy, and are currently gearing up to release an album entitled Let Me Get What I Want next year. The LP is based on The Smiths-inspired lyrics, penned by Franco in his book Directing Herbert White: Poems. Just this week, the band dropped a sneak peek of the album in the form of new track, You Are Mine.

According to a press release, the album and film follow “three characters as they weave through the dark ways of high school: love, death, and dreams.”

In a statement, Franco described the meaning behind the album’s lyrics, “High school is a time of longing for the unattainable. We dream big, but we’re still too young to make anything significant happen. At least I was too immature and sensitive to be the person I wanted to be. You Are Mine is about one teenager dreaming about another, even though they’ll never be together.”

Tim O’Keefe also added, “Transforming James’ poems to songs took on it’s own creative process which was a new direction for me. Because the words weren’t written by me, I had to take on the character of the individual whose perspective I was singing from. You Are Mine like many of the songs on Let Me Get What I Want expresses experiences that were relatable to my own high school experience, and therefore I had a lot of my own emotions to pull from.”

Franco also somehow managed to get actual The Smiths bassist Andy Rourke on board for the project, which lends a little bit more integrity to the project that could have easily been written off as a poorly executed side-project of Franco’s (think his Lana Del Rey novel). You Are Mine is a new wave, garage-esque track that showcases Franco’s vocals as he harmonises with O’Keefe. It’s surprisingly not too shabby.

Take a listen for yourself below.