Pete Yorn and Scarlett Johansson Perform Live on the Interface

Posted on Sep 25th 2009 11:05AM by Melinda Newman
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The inspiration for Scarlett Johansson and Pete Yorn's duets album, 'Break Up,' may have been Serge Gainsbourg and Brigitte Bardot's 1968 record, 'Bonnie and Clyde,' but the pair say they are more like 'Tom and Jerry' or 'Rocky and Bullwinkle' than flirty French lovers.

"[Our record] almost sounds like a Saturday morning cartoons thing," Yorn told Spinner at a recent Interface taping in Los Angeles. "You think of this super sexed-up Serge and Brigitte thing and when I hear our record, it deviates very much from that. It's more of a school kid, innocent thing."

Yorn and Johansson have known each other for years and, unlike Gainsbourg and Bardot, they display more of a brother-sister vibe than songwriter and sex-kitten muse. In fact, an even more innocent relationship helped bring about the album's conception, after Yorn was going through a state of "acute anxiety" that left him with insomnia.

"It just would not go away," he says. "I was not feeling well at all and I was trying to fall asleep in one of my brothers' homes. I was curled up in a ball on the bed and I was like, 'Think nice thoughts.' I was thinking about my little niece that I love so much ... I must have passed out for like 30 seconds, and I just came to. My heart was racing and I had this feeling like you would have if you left the oven on, that kind of anxious feeling, but it was 'I've got to make a duets record.' It happened like a flash."

Pete Yorn and Scarlett Johansson on the Interface