Minnie Driver
Oct 12, 2014

The actress and singer-songwriter, Minnie Driver's third album, Ask Me to Dance, her first since 2007's Seastories, and third overall for Rounder/ Zoe, will be a cover album. Releases on October 7th, the collection includes numbers by the late Elliott Smith ("Waltz #2"), whom Driver befriended when both were in the early stages of their careers. She takes a jazzy approach to The Cure's "Close to Me," while also covering Neil Young ("Tell Me Why"), John Prine ("Speed of the Sound of Loneliness") and Neil Finn ("Better Be Home Soon"). The album's lead single is currently a cover of Elton John's "Love Song".
"This is something that I've always wanted to do," Driver says of the project. "Every single song on it has enormous resonance for me, for one reason or another. It's called Ask Me to Dance because a lot of it is my entire teenage experience of standing at the side of a dark dance hall, just willing someone to ask me to dance. Some of these songs are the ones that helped me through being a teenager."
Since her last album, Driver has been busy raising her now-five-year-old son and earning acclaim for the FX TV series The Riches, for which she was nominated for an Emmy and a Golden Globe Award as Best Lead Actress. She also starred in the 2010 BBC series The Deep, and appeared in the feature films Conviction and Barney's Version, for which she won a Genie Award for Best Supporting Actress.
Driver recently starred in the Lifetime television movie Return to Zero, the true story of a couple's anguish over losing their baby after a turbulent pregnancy, for which she was nominated for a 2014 Critics' Choice Television Award, as well as a 2014 Primetime Emmy Award. She's currently one of the stars of the NBC series About a Boy, which will premiere its second season on October 14th.