Thank God For Duets

The duet is a peculiar beast. So delicate, so unpredictable. So much risk, so much reward. So much potential for masterpiece, and for ridicule.

The fact of the matter is, you never really know.

Though Elton John's 1976 pop duet with Kiki Dee, "Don't Go Breaking My Heart" remains to be gold karaoke standard thirty years later, the much anticipated pairing of John, The Killers and The Pet Shop Boys' Neil Tennant for 2008's holiday menage a talent, "Joseph, Better You Than Me" was, in most opinions, a letdown. In the same vein, Frank Sinatra's album Duets housed both a breathy, annoying and unsettling rouse of "I've Got You Under My Skin" with hit-making machine Bono and a surprisingly moving cut of "All The Way/One For My Baby (And One More For The Road)" with Jacuzzi Jazz dumbass, Kenny G.

We could play this game all day.

Androgynous space alien, David Bowie contributed to both "Under Pressure" and "Dancing In The Street".

Pop virtuoso, Justin Timberlake was a part of the sultry sexjam "Dick In A Box" and the downright retarded "4 Minutes".

When all is said and done, we've got some real gems, and some real turds, but maybe that's just how it works. Maybe genius + genius doesn't always equal supergenius. Maybe, sometimes 1 + 1 = 0.

While this may be true, I wouldn't necessarily say that we are at a complete loss. I would like to think that, through the trials and errors of the musical duet, we've learned at least one very, very important rule of nature.

1. Everything that Paul McCartney touches turns to shit.



So it is now that I pose this question to my cohort, Ms. Free Pizza:

Who would you most like to be accompanied by in a duet (provided that the recording session would be followed by the customary cocktails and love-making) and what would be the song title?


Until next time,
Open Bar