Heterarmony

Rusted Wheel - The Belle Brigade (mp3)
At Least I Have You - Mates of State (mp3)
Chances Are - Bob Seger & Martina McBride (mp3)

My single most favorite trend of the past 20 years in music is the surge in male-female musical groups.

Boy-girl duets is nothing new, mind you. Helloooo, Sonny & Cher? Donny & Marie? The history of pop music is replete with duets, from Kiki joining Elton to Rihanna guesting with Eminem or Coldplay.

But the fact is this: You put a male and a female in a song, singing into one another, singing around one another, singing on top of one another, and I’ll give your song five times the chance of success.

The song doesn’t have to be overtly sexual, because the allure of male-female singing goes far deeper than mere genitalia. It follows a rule similar to Jules' explanation of foot massages in "Pulp Fiction." A male-female duet hits me in the same core as bagpipes or African drums; something primal in me is instantly drawn to it.

Trying to name all the current bands on my radar which exploit this weakness is virtually impossible. The Weepies, The Civil Wars, The Rescues, Mates of State, The Belle Brigade, The New Pornographers, Buddy & Julie Miller. Those are all bands who earn chronic rotation in my musical life.

Others include The Ting Tings, Lady Antebellum, Sugarland, Swell Season, Acid House Kings, Sleeper Agent, Black-Eyed Peas, COYOL. These are all without even looking at my iTunes collection. There’s no telling how many I’m missing.

Glee, the entire show, the cultural phenomenon, rocketed into instant success the minute they turned "Don't Stop Believin'" into a male-female duet.

As much as I adore ‘80s music and its place in my heart and history, its male-female combos kinda sucked unless they were one-shot deals. Roxette? Animotion? The Human League? Ace of Base? Just about the only one that comes to mind that earned much respect was Timbuk 3, and that’s a stretch.

The ‘70s and ‘80s seemed better about single-gender combinations, groups where multiple dudes shared singing duties or sang on top of one another. Hall & Oates, Tears for Fears, Wham, Alabama, The Eagles, Flock of Seagulls... the Beatles, even. Almost the only obvious exception that stands out is Fleetwood Mac.

But you sit me down and ask me to start rattling off all the songs from my life I’ve loved that harnessed the power of a male-female duet, and I might never find time to eat a meal again. Here’s what I came up with just on the way home from dinner tonight:

• “Don’t Go Breakin’ My Heart” - Elton John & Kiki Dee
• “After All” - Peter Cetera & Cher
• “The Next Time I Fall” - Peter Cetera & Amy Grant
• “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” - Tom Petty & Stevie Nicks
• “Endless Love” - Lionel Richie & Diana Ross
• “Islands in the Stream” - Kenny Rogers & Dolly Parton
• “Kid Fears” - Indigo Girls & Michael Stipe
• “I Knew You Were Waiting” - Aretha Franklin & George Michael
• “It’s Only Love” - Bryan Adams & Tina Turner
• “Up Where We Belong” - Joe Cocker & Jennifer Warnes
• “Chances Are” - Bob Seger & Martina McBride
• “U Got the Look” - Prince & Sheena Easton
• “Summer Nights” (and most of GREASE) - Olivia Newton John & John Travolta
• “I’ve Had the Time of My Life” - Bill Medley & Jennifer Warnes
• “Don’t Know Much” - Linda Ronstadt & Aaron Neville
• “Almost Paradise” - Mike Reno & Ann Wilson

These all popped up in 15 minutes or less of driving. I’ve thought of at least several dozen more since then, and I haven’t even Googled “greatest duets ever” or anything yet.

I only made this connection, about my deep instinctive love for male-female songs, because I wrote about both Tina Turner and Bryan Adams. The truth is that I love their duet, “It’s Only Love” as much as if not better than anything the two of them created individually. Which is absurd, by the way. It’s not that great. Which means this is more about my own Kryptonite, my own Achilles’ Heel. But I wouldn’t trade it.

Rap and Hip hop men have always sensed the value of a well-placed woman. We would never know Rob Base or DJ EZ Rock if they didn’t enlist the assistance of a woman to tell us exactly What Took Two. C&C Music Factory never sells 10,000 CDs without a woman belting out that chorus. This continues today with B.O.B.’s “Airplanes” and Eminem’s “Love the Way You Lie,” just as examples.

I love all these songs far more than they probably deserve.

I wonder how much longer this trend will last? Or if maybe it’s a longer-term shift in music? Would Oasis even form in 2011 if Noel & Liam didn’t have a cute siren of a sister? Could Hall & Oates have even been born in the 21st Century? Surely they would have had to at least give themselves a different name that dodged emphasizing them as a couple.

Is it coincidence that, as our country and culture gets increasingly comfortable with homosexuality, we increasingly insist that our music resemble Adam & Eve more than Adam & Steve?

What about you, dear readers? Do you have a favorite duet, or a favorite band where the singing duties are shared across gender lines? Give me some names to feed this hunger of mine.

Still Thinkin' About Those Duets

Freedy Johnston and Syd Straw--"Down In Love" (mp3)
Pete Townshend and Eddie Vedder--"Heart To Hang On To (live)" (mp3)

Merriam-Webster bailed me out. I had got to thinking that maybe I wasn't talking about duets at all in that post last Friday. Maybe I was just talking about songs with two singers. Maybe there were some specific parameters as to what constitutes a "duet." But Merriam-Webster's definition says no problem, a duet is simply "a composition for two performers." That's it.

And that's good, because I like songs where both singers do the entire song in harmony, like Emmylou Harris and Ricky Skaggs on "Green Pastures" and I like songs where one person sings the song for the most part but the other comes in at key moments, like the way Michael Stipe echoes lines on Syd Straw's "Future 40's" or how Linda Rondstadt sings the stunningly gorgeous descant on Warren Zevon's "Empty-Handed Heart."

So the rules are looser than I thought and the doorway is open and, if you are prone to comment, I'd like to hear some of your favorite duets.

I've listed two new ones here that both work a little bit differently. Freedy Johnston has Syd Straw sing all of the verses of his song, and then he sings what functions as a chorus while she repeats the title of the song. Pete Townshend has Eddie Vedder take the part that the late Ronnie Lane originally sang; they take turns with both verse and chorus. Eddie is kind of a duet/guest performer whore--he's the Michael Caine of popular music--since he'll show up and play with just about anybody at any time. But you know what, I kind of like that. I kind of like when Eddie's voice comes in on other people's songs more than I like many of his own entire songs. Huh. Maybe that makes him kind of a Bono-wannabe. But better?

One of my favorite pairs is Tom Petty and Stevie Nicks. I don't know much about Stevie's career post-about-25-years-ago, but I do know that she came back for Tom Petty's 30th anniversary concert down in Gainesville, Florida. And while he while he gives her one of his best songs, "I Need To Know," to sing and tells the crowd that this is the best version you'll ever hear, it isn't, in fact, it kind of sucks, but she redeems herself by dueting with him on "Insider" and even sings the female vocal part on "Don't Come Around Here No More." Some of it, especially "Insider," is spine-tingling. They do a great cover of "Needles and Pins" on Pack Up The Plantation, too.

I don't really know how long I'll keep working this duet thing, but it does have me searching through my stacks of cd's seeing what else I have. It also has me, as this post confirms, evaluating my duet philosophy. Is sampling a vocal track a duet? My only real rule on duets--I don't really do that "duets with dead people" thing, but, who knows, there will probably come a song where I think it works and I'll have to throw that rule out. But until Jim Morrison and Rhianna get together, I'm holding fast to that one.

"Down in Love" is off of Freedy Johnston's breakout cd, Can You Fly? The live Pete and Eddie track is from a benefit show performed in Chicago a few years ago. I think it was a limited cd and I think it's out of print. Shame.

May I Sing With You?

Carlene Carter and Robert Ellis Orrall--"I Couldn't Say No" (mp3)

If I were a Nashville hitmaker, I'd be mining the ever-popular duet, looking for one of those old songs, like the ones that worked for Allison Kraus and Robert Plant.

And even if I weren't in Nashville. Note the hit "Young Folks" from a couple of years ago, or the Ben Folds-Regina Spektor duet on Folds' latest cd. Heck, even 80's crap like "Don't You Want Me" survives because the man and woman create a relationship in the song.

I love duets, especially when at least one of the singers actually wrote the song. Then they know how it should be sung. For my money, the greatest duet writer working right now is Steve Earle. He has those songs that women want to sing with him, and he's had plenty of them agree to join forces--Emmylou Harris, Lucinda Williams, Stacey Earle, Allison Moorer, Sheryl Crow, and several others.

If I were a Steve Earle hitmaker, I'd release a cd of nothing but his duets with other people. Imagine getting "Poison Lovers," "You're Still Standing There," "Comin' Around," and all of the others on one cd. He can trade verses with men, too--Marty Stuart, Greg Trooper, and Jason Ringenberg.

Actually, though, I have the perfect duet song in mind, and you see it at the top of this post. " I Couldn't Say No," written by Robert Ellis Orrall is a song that I can't believe hasn't gotten a second life and hasn't made a bunch of money for a bunch of somebodies. I first heard it in Chicago in 1980, where, if it wasn't a regional hit, it was at least a song that got a bit of airplay on their true FM stations, like WXRT. I had no idea who Orall was, but I was well-acquainted with his singing partner, Carlene Carter. Carlene is a daughter of June Carter from a previous marriage, I think, though she considers Johnny and June her parents. So much so that in a New York club, when she introduced a song by saying, "Here's one that will put the cunt back in country," she was mortified to find out that her parents were in the audience. Carlene Carter has a classic country voice, but she has often flirted with the rock and roll lifestyle, in particular in relationships with Nick Lowe in the 80's and with Howie Epstein (bass player for Tom Petty and producer of her cd's) in later years. The latter association led to some difficulties with heroin, I think.

But back to the song. It's a great song, unheard of for the most part, but you can hear Tim McGraw and Faith Hill doing it or the Sugarland vocalists or some odd couple pairing like Plant and Kraus. It's a catchy song, based around just a couple of chords until you get to the chorus, and though they're working it on the piano, you could imagine it in any number of settings played on whatever instrument you wanted. Both in its verses and its chorus, the narrative payoff is ultimately about the failure of the singers' relationship; it's a kind of bittersweet "feel good" song. And it isn't a song where you get the feeling that there's a kind of artificial trading of verses. The two singers go back and forth in a game of romantic one-upsmanship where nobody ends up winning. But you revel in the tragedy of how things don't work out because the music is so good.

So, viva la duet, and somebody please remake this one. It won't be as good as the original, of course, but at least it will be out there.

"I Couldn't Say No" by Carlene Carter and Robert Ellis Orrall is no longer in print, but you can see the cheesy music video here.