Since Keanu Reeves is such a successful, well-known actor in Hollywood, many of his fans have been wondering what else he can do. He already acts and does his own action stunts, but can he also sing?
Keanu Reeves is both an actor and a musician, and he can sing. Keanu was actually in a pretty successful band for ten years in the 90s called Dogstar. In some of their performances, Keanu can be heard singing back up or sometimes taking over as lead singer. He has also sung in various films and projects as well.
Continue reading to find out more about Keanu’s singing ability and when he has performed.
Former Band: Dogstar
In 1991, Keanu Reeves met the drummer Robert Mailhouse at a supermarket. They became friends based on their love of hockey as Keanu used to be a goalkeeper and Mailhouse was wearing a Detroit Red Wings hockey sweater.
They then learned that they both had musical talent, Mailhouse with drums and Reeves with bass guitar, so they started playing together.
Later, another man joined them, Gregg Miller, by playing lead guitar and singing. Then, the rest was history.
Keanu explains the band’s origin like this: “You know, we started in a garage, and then you end up starting to write songs, and then you’re like ‘Let’s go out and play them!’, and then you’re like ‘Let’s go on tour!’, and then…you’re playing.”
The band started with the three men, then Bret Domrose joined as an additional guitarist and vocalist three years later in 1994.
When the band was on tour in 1995 across the United States and Asia, they were quite popular. They opened for David Bowie at the Hollywood Palladium.
They also covered a song for Pink Floyd and toured with Bon Jovi. It was on these tours that Keanu often took over the mic to sing some of their songs, like the song Isabelle.
Other than that, he would support the band with backup vocals as well.
The band had two albums: Little Visionary and Happy Ending. They were classified as alternative rock.
The band was together from 1991 but broke up in 2002 when they had their last performance in Japan.
This was not the end of Reeves’ singing career though as he went on to have a more leading role as a singer in his acting career.
Singing In Films
Before the band Dogstar started actually, Keanu Reeves had his singing debut in film in the movie Babes in Toyland.
The film was a Christmas musical released in 1986 and in it, Keanu sings an Ode to Cincinatti. He also had another song, but it was deleted from the final film.
Fifteen years later, just before Dogstar broke up in 2001, the film Sweet November was released. It was an American romantic drama starring Keanu Reeves and Charlize Theron as love interests.
In the film, Keanu has a performance where he sings Time After Time by Frank Sinatra to Charlize’s character on stage.
Keanu seems to actually enjoy singing as he was recently disappointed when he couldn’t in an upcoming project.
The project is the video game Cyberpunk 2077 which is set to come out in late 2020. The video game is a role-playing game and Keanu Reeves has a starring role in it.
In the game, he plays the character Johnny Silverhand that accompanies the character that users can play as.
Johnny Silverhand is the lead man in a band called Samurai that actually performs in the game. Keanu was disappointed that the creators of the game would not let him sing as they found a band that they liked to perform instead.
He said that he would try to have some influence with the band though to let him sing, we’ll have to see if he was able to once the game is released.
So, not only is Keanu Reeves a talented actor, but he is also a talented singer and bass guitar player.