The unexpurgated review...an overall look at Shatner's gift to recorded music, taken off the website:

Why I like this album (Shatner's "The Transformed Man" - 1968)

Although he now claims otherwise, I believe the Transformed Man album was released in total po-faced seriousness. Bill really believed he was a true renaissance man at the very height of his powers, that he was creating art. This is what makes the album so delicious - you could just imagine Bill sitting around listening to the finished cut, getting all hyped up while the record company execs who'd commissioned it just tried to keep their jaws off the floor and pander to his massive ego sufficiently in order to get something, anything out that could cash in on the lucrative Star Trek angle. Plus, it was the seventies, and anything went then.
(But really, that must have been a great moment when the powers that be got to hear that record for the first time. The quintessential "What the fuck have we done?" moment. And they go "What will we do with this?" And they release it anyway, because people will buy any old crap!)
But make no mistake about it - it takes talent to be that bad. Shatner was a great Captain Kirk. He looked the part - barking out orders brusquely, not showing much emotion (which was just right for the part - he was captain of a starship and couldn't afford to appear weak in front of his crew - unlike Jean-Luc "More tea vicar?" Freaking Picard!). You could believe he was a captain. Sure he talked in a bizarre random emphasis type way - but hell, he was from the future - people all talk like that in the future. But after he moved onto other parts, it soon transpired that this, in fact, was his only acting style. And, incredibly, his singing style too. You would get booed off the Karaoke stage if you tried to pull a stunt like that, but he somehow pulls it off. It's not bad - it's fucking mega-boss bad. And that's why it's so good.