Sing It With Me: Allison's Duet List

I love love love love duets. They make me feel warm and fuzzy inside.

1. Alphabeat - 10,000 Nights of Thunder
Let's start a band. We'll sing cute songs like these. And it will be awesome. And poppy. It's got to be poppy.


2. The Anniversary - All Things Ordinary
Most of my entries of this list will be bands with two singers - something I know Evan strayed away from. I love the dynamic of a guy and a girl singing. The Anniversary is one of the first bands that I encountered that did this in a way that made sense to me. And since that fateful evening, I've been obsessed with the idea of this kind of band.


3. Mystery Jets - Young Love
This is a cute song. I like cute things. Therefore, I like this song.


4. Chairlift - Bruises
Yeah, so this was in an iPod commercial, but it's a little subversive while still being a beee-boopy pop song. Beee-boop!


5. Broken Social Scene - 7/4 (Shoreline)
Kevin Drew is a lucky man. He often enjoys the pleasure of song with ladies like Amy Millan, Emily Haines, and (in this track) Feist. How does one guy get so lucky?


6. The Teenagers - Homecoming
This one is just tongue-in-cheek fun. "I fucked an American slut." v. "I loved my English romance." Perfection.


7. Jason Collett - Hangover Days
I think Canada must have just those three girls: Amy, Emily, and Leslie. I believe this is Emily here (on the recording - the video is Feist). I'd give just about anything to be one of these girls.


8. Finley Quaye & William Orbit - Dice
I know nothing about these two other than this song was used on The OC. Does that make it automatically good? Sure. As long as it involves a cute Seth Cohen moment.


9. Damien Rice - 9
This woman's voice is hauntingly beautiful. I saw Damien Rice play before 9 Crimes came out, and he brought her along. The audience was breathless with every note she sang. It's unbelievable.
10. Jimmy Eat World - A Praise Chorus
And now for something completely different. Davey, sing me something I know!


11. Stars - Midnight Coward
Stars will probably go down as one of my favorite bands of all time. I love the Torq/Amy combo. Their songs are stories and their lyrics are often conversations.


12. The Kills - U. R. A. Fever
The Kills are like the anti-Stars. While Stars write mostly whimsical love songs, I mostly expect the two in The Kills to be constantly engaged in a fist fight.


13. Mates of State - Everyone Needs an Editor
An early track from these indie-darlings. They do everything together it seems: music, live, work, make babies, raise babies. It's all them all the time. I don't know if I think that's awesome or insane.


14. Rainer Maria - Breakfast of Champions
Kyle & Cait. Another great pairing of voices.

15. The New Pornographers - Adventures in Solitude
A non-Neko Case New Pornos track. I like the addition of this new gal. She compliments A.C. Newman very well.


16. Phil Collins - Separate Lives
OOOOOOOOH YES. Here my Phil sings with Marilyn Martin. (I don't know who that is.) And they sing themselves a nice power slow jam ballad. It's awesome. And it deserves to be the closing track because of how awesome it is.

2 Become 1: Evan's Duet List

The duet is a tricky beast. First and foremost, the song needs to be good. And I don't mean "good enough" (like a Yanni or a John Tesh song), I mean it has to be a good goddamn song (like something written by Bob Dylan or Bruce Springsteen). Then comes the difficult task of not only picking two singers who are talented and right for the song, but two singers who somehow fit together really well (or clash appropriately). This duet chemistry can usually be attained by making your singers have sex with each other (see half the songs below).

I started writing about why most duets these days are awful, and blah blah blah I sounded like an asshole. So I'll just leave it to the list.

[note: I'm tired, so most of the write-ups are pretty short and weak, much like most of the people who live in this city. That also means no youtubes (which make the pages load like shit, anyways)]

1 - queen and david bowie - under pressure
This one is a given. It has to be on here. I'm not saying that like it inconveniences me to put it up here, or that I'd rather not. It's just that you can't really make this list without this song. It's like having a list of songs with "Lesbian" in the title and not having "Lesbian Seagull."

2 - m ward and zooey deschanel - when i get to the border
This is where it all started between Matt and Zooey, and to be honest, this is what I was expecting from Volume One. Don't get me wrong, I thought the first release was great, but I'd rather hear them singing together more. "When I Get to the Border" is still my favorite from the duo.

3 - dustin kensrue and josh moore - atlantic city
[lazy comment] I think this is the only song on here that hasn't been recorded, but it's fantastic.

4 - nancy sinatra and lee hazelwood - summer wine
[lazy comment] Does Nancy wear a wig? If not, how does her hair look like that?

5 - the pogues (shane macgowan and kirsty maccoll) - fairytale of new york
[lazy comment] This will undoubtedly make its way onto any x-mas list (if we make one), and definitely deserves a spot here.

6 - johnny cash and june carter - it ain't me babe
So it was between this and Jackson, but I feel you can't go wrong with either. Knowing their history makes any June/Johnny duet that much more meaningful and believable.

7 - two tongues (chris conley and max bemis) - tremors
[lazy comment] This song made me go back and give Say Anything another shot.

8 - the postal service (ben gibbard and jenny lewis) - nothing better
Welp...another postal service song. Ben and Jenny sound awesome together. I wish that bastard had married her and not stolen Zooey away from the rest of us.

9 - jane birkin and serge gainsbourg - je t'aime... moi non plus
This is one of the sexiest songs of all-time. It probably should've found a way onto the Seduction list, but I was operating on a non-sexy level that day. From wiki: "The explicit eroticism of the song was declared offensive at the time of its release. The lyrics are commonly thought to refer to the taboo theme of engaging in sex without love, and were delivered in a breathy, suggestive style.
The song culminates in simulated orgasm sounds by Birkin: mostly because of this, it was banned from radio play in Italy, Poland, Portugal, Spain, and the UK, and denounced by the Vatican in a public statement."

10 - against me! (tom gabel and tegan quin) - borne on the fm waves
The tension in this one is palpable. Probably one of the better male/female duets of the 2000's. It's one of the few songs that when it comes on, I hit pause and go online and watch the video. The video is perfect.

11 - jeff buckley and elizabeth fraser - all flowers in time bend towards the sun
[lazy comment] Another great example of a duet that is believable based on personal history.

12 - david gray and annie lennox - full steam
This one just came out and I already love it. David Gray has been less than fantastic for some time now, but this is promising. Annie Lennox is cool, too.

13 - joe cocker and jennifer warnes - up where we belong
[lazy comment] Come on...the 80's was the decade of fucking movie duets, so I had to include at least one of those on here. Joe Cocker takes this one above all.

14 - morrissey and siouxsie - interlude
[lazy no comment]

15 - peabo bryson and regina belle - a whole new world
This one goes out to Scott, but in a totally non-i-wanna-do-you way. If Scott ever made a sex tape, you would hear this playing in the background on repeat. The tape would also probably feature his chest hole in some creative and totally sexy way.

16 - glen hansard and markéta irglová - falling slowly
I mean, this is basically a movie about duets, but unlike "Duets," it doesn't totally suck. In fact, I really enjoyed this film and would recommend it to anyone

17 - stars (torquil campbell and amy millan) - one more night
If there was one Stars song I'd have to recommend to a new listener, this would be it. They masterfully hide raw emotion and intense subject matter under otherwise steady and soothing melodies.

i love you.