Somewhere, in some vault, are a handful of unreleased “rough tracks” featuring two-time Emmy-nominated actor Matt Bomer and legendary 17-time Oscar-nominated songwriter Diane Warren.
In a conversation with Josh Horowitz for Happy Sad Confused, the Fellow Travelers star revealed that he has an unreleased EP of songs tied to 2015’s Magic Mike XXL.
The whole thing kicked off following the massive success of Steven Soderbergh’s 2012 original. During downtime between setups, co-star Joe Manganiello encouraged Bomer to entertain the background artists by singing — and Bomer delivered, pulling out a Jodeci cover of Stevie Wonder’s “Lately.” Channing Tatum and the producers were so blown away that they made it a point to get him singing in the sequel.
What’s worth noting here is that Bomer was no stranger to performing. He had already sung alongside Darren Criss on Glee, where the two tackled a Duran Duran “Hungry Like The Wolf/Rio” mashup, and in a 2010 episode of White Collar, his character Neal Caffrey performed a song a cappella — while drugged, no less. But Magic Mike XXL marked his first big-screen singing moment — and it turned out to be a two-song deal.
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In the film, Bomer performed Bryan Adams’ classic “Heaven,” where his character Ken serenades a woman in one of the movie’s most memorable scenes. He also covered D’Angelo’s “Untitled (How Does It Feel)” — a track he once described as “the sexiest song of all time.” Bomer later admitted at the XXL London premiere that performing while dancing was honestly the scariest thing he had ever done — but having such a supportive cast around him made it all work.
“So we recorded a couple of songs for the soundtrack, kind of just on a lark — although one of them was recorded by Ludwig Göransson, who just won his [third] Oscar, because he was working with Donald Glover, who was also on XXL,” he recalled. “I guess the songs did really well on Spotify — the D’Angelo cover actually hit No. 8 domestically and No. 6 globally on the most viral tracks chart — which was never something I planned for. Then the folks at Tower Records came around like, ‘Would you ever want to record a full album?’ And they asked, ‘Do you write your own music?’ And I was like, ‘I’ve been writing music since I was a kid.'”
Bomer went ahead and wrote three original songs, and was told he’d be connected with some producers to make it happen.
“If you think the entertainment and acting world is crazy, the music industry is like, ‘No, no, dog — watch this.’ It is a whole other level of madness,” he said.
But the project never made it out into the world. The White Collar alum said the decision to walk away came down to the business side of things getting way too complicated: “People wanted such a big percentage — between the lawyers and everything else, it just got to be too much. And on top of that, I had kids.”
Bomer also got the chance to work with what he called “total legend” Diane Warren, recording songs together that also never saw a release.
“I knew that if I put those songs out, I was going to have to go on talk shows and perform them, tour the country, do the whole thing. And I thought — I love her music, but if I’m going to do this, it has to come from me,” he said. “So we never released it.”
Gautam contributed to writing this article.
