20/02/2026
Before he was the Hey Girl feminist meme and one-time internet boyfriend, he played the ukulele and stole all our of hearts for a minute in Blue Valentine.
He was also part of the Mickey Mouse Club with 90s heavy hitting pop stars like Justin Timberlake. Yet, Gosling’s greatest musical project to date though was Dead Man’s Bones with fellow Hollywood pal Zach Shields.
Dead Man’s Bones surfaced in October 2009 with a full-length self-titled record and it’s actually good!!!
It was among the crop of so-called eclectic, quirky actors who took to the recording studio for a stretch like Zooey Deschanel (She & Him) and Scarlett Johannson (remember her Tom Waits covers album and her record with Pete Yorn?) Gosling’s Dead Man Bones, though, that errs on the side of concept album: it is soulful rock that is mostly, if not entirely, about death in some way. There’s the confusingly sexy “My Body’s a Zombie For You”, “Werewolf Heart”, “Lose Your Soul”, and closing love song “Flowers Grow Out Of My Grave.” The video for lead single “Name in Stone”, which doesn’t appear on the record, features Gosling and co. playing music in a graveyard somewhere in Los Angeles.
There’s even a baby in a skeleton onesie. Dead Man’s Bones really took this bit to their dead hearts: when they toured this album in 2009, at their Toronto show, their opening act was a literal ghost magician. Gosling shares singing duties with Shields and takes to the piano or guitar, generally melting your spooky heart in the process.