Paul Oakenfold

Music News

INSIDE STORY: Paul Oakenfold on Brittany's Great Musical Potential

Originally posted 12/27/2009 05:30PM

Until Brittany Murphy lent her voice to the penguin Gloria in the 2006 animated hit Happy Feet, the public had gotten only a taste of the chanteuse within the actress on a No. 1 dance club track called "Faster Kill Pussycat," written and produced by Grammy-nominated British trance artist Paul Oakenfold.

"Brittany trained as a singer before she did as an actress," Oakenfold tells PEOPLE. "She was a great actress but she had great vocal potential."

At first, Murphy wasn't so sure she wanted to be attached to Oakenfold's song. She told PEOPLE in 2006, "I've been singing my whole life and [recording] a lot of anonymous vocals. And this was another anonymous vocal, 20 minutes behind the booth in the recording studio two years ago. Then Paul had asked me if I'd put my name on it. The song is so incredible, I said 'Yes,' and we made a video."

But Oakenfold intended Murphy to be the centerpiece of his music video all along. "Her presence on the video is very powerful," he says. "She is very commanding visually and that's what we wanted. We wanted that energy and she did a great job."

Read More