What’s so great about Strut by Steven Seagal? Well, first off, let’s get something straight: there are levels to irony, and then there’s Strut, which is an entire Olympic event.
Here’s a song from Steven Seagal, a guy who made his career by breaking people’s arms in movies, pairing up with a Jamaican artist named Lady Saw to make dancehall music. And not just any dancehall music—a song that repeatedly features Seagal singing (and I use the word singing here in the loosest possible sense) the line, “Me wan’ the poonani.” Let that sink in for a second.
The same guy who starred in Above the Law and Under Siege is out here crooning about poonani over a dancehall beat. That alone deserves its own chapter in the history of bizarre artistic choices.
But here’s where it gets weird. The song isn’t just bad—it’s so confidently bad that it becomes good. There’s this strange commitment to the bit. Seagal doesn’t seem like he’s in on the joke, and that’s why it works. It’s the musical equivalent of watching The Room—it’s so sincere, so oblivious, that you have to respect the effort. It’s like the guy really thinks he’s making the next dancehall anthem, but instead, it’s a fever dream where a middle-aged action star gets way too comfortable talking about sex in patois.
But, and this is the thing with Seagal, it’s not just about the song. Strut is Seagal as a whole: a man who lives in a bubble of his own delusions, completely unaware of how he’s perceived by the outside world. This song could only exist in a world where Steven Seagal genuinely believes he’s both a dancehall legend and a martial arts demigod—two roles he’s absolutely not, but God help him, he’s going to try. And that’s what makes Strut great. Not the music, not the lyrics, but the sheer audacity of it all.
At the end of the day, Strut is less of a song and more of an artifact from an alternate dimension, one where Steven Seagal’s fantasies became reality and we all just happened to be along for the ride. And that’s why it deserves a permanent spot in the museum of unintentional cultural brilliance.