While endless archives of music have been made to stir the heart and ignite the soul, there is a uniquely transcendent value in two artistic forces unifying in the name of a new creative path. Collaborations and guest appearances are frequent occurrences these days, but a select few rise to the top of our collective consciousness when the question of true inspiration arises.
If your goosebumps haven’t had a workout in a while, you’re in luck. We’ve sorted through the archives of remarkable team-ups in music to bring you a collection of the Most Inspiring Musical Collaborations in recorded history.
Queen & David Bowie: “Under Pressure”
What may be the greatest rock collaboration of all time was the result of some superstar spontaneity. David Bowie had visited Queen during the summer of 1981 when both acts were Montreux, Switzerland, and with the help of drugs & alcohol, a 24-hour marathon recording session took place. Built around John Deacon’s distinctive bass line, the song was mostly written by Freddie Mercury and Bowie..
“We felt our way through a backing track all together as an ensemble,” recalled guitarist Brian May. “When the backing track was done, David said, ‘Okay, let’s each of us go in the vocal booth and sing how we think the melody should go–just off the top of our heads–and we’ll compile a vocal out of that.’ And that’s what we did.” Many of these vocal improvs, including Mercury’s pivotal scatting vocal, would make the finished track.
In the most fascinating turn of events, Bowie also insisted that he and Mercury shouldn’t hear what the other had sung, swapping verses blind, which helped give the song its cut-and-paste feel. The result is one of the greatest rock anthems ever, despite reports of Mercury and Bowie arguing ferociously over the final mix.
Kanye & Jay Z: Watch The Throne
With melodrama on high and an appetite for spirited lyrical one-uppery, Hova and Yeezy swing for the fences while backed by a tapestry of production contributors. The result is a bacchanal of depth, decadence and vanity, an album that set a new bar for rap collaborations. Two rap kingpins have managed to both throttle and rein their gargantuan egos and supreme grandiosity, resulting in a largely fantastic body of work over a fittingly decadent sonic mural shaped by far-reaching contributors.
As everyone with eardrums expected, the hotly anticipated Watch The Throne collaborative album possessed all the glory and gaudy gluttony of two kings, the two most iconic Hip-Hop figures of our generation who no longer have a need for dreams as commoners experience them. Kanye West and Jay-Z have lived the fantasies of millions, and revel fully in the knowledge that they epitomize modern day living legends as they help lay the foundation for the future of music.
Tori Amos & Maynard James Keenan: Muhammad, My Friend
As sociopolitical conflict rages around the world and religious tension is at an all-time high, artists rise to the occasion with transcendent musical connections. One such moment took place during a live performance of Tori Amos’ remarkable track “Muhammad My Friend” from her 1996 Boys For Pele record, with Maynard James Keenan of Tool.
Keenan, who at this point had not yet launched his more delicately emotive band A Perfect Circle, was known for being a cerebrally driven lyrical powerhouse with the best wailing voice in the business. But the delicate nature of the song/collaboration brought out an entirely new side of the Tool frontman for fans. When the interweaving lyrics conflict on the third repetition – Amos sings “we both know it was a girl back in Bethlehem” as Keenan sings “we don’t know it was a girl…” goosebumps rise like wildfire in a forest. The subtlety of the song and its accompanying theological labyrinth is compelling enough, but with two vocal powerhouses intermingling, it becomes the inspiration for legend.
Neil Young & Pearl Jam: Rockin’ In The Free World
Pearl Jam was the biggest band in the world, heading into a ferociously intense and wildly successful sophomore album, Vs. Neil Young was stepping fully into his role as a punk-rock statesman, a veteran mentor to Pearl Jam as the young Seattle rockers dealt with the avalanche of superstardom. But during the 1993 MTV Video Music Awards, the two forces joined for an unprecedented powerhouse performance of Young’s iconic song “Rockin’ In The Free World”.
Just as Pearl Jam finished a blistering performance of “Animal” for the first time anywhere, they ushered out Neil as surprise guest for an onstage collaboration. As PJ fans howled with excitement, those familiar with the incendiary sociopolitical anthem witnessed a breathtaking evolution of intensity and power in the shared performance.
Neil was an untethered, revitalized live wire of energy, pogoing around the stage like a man three decades his junior as Pearl Jam schooled young viewers on the art of collaborative tribute. But it was Eddie Vedder who served as the mesmerizing focal point of the performance; a tightly wound knot of furious passion, he spat the second verse of the song with such maniacal intensity, such dark urgency, it would’ve hardly been a surprise to see him spitting out chips of his own teeth between lines. But rather than sabotaging his dental work, Vedder directed his feelings at a mic stand, smashing it repeatedly into the floor until it was a mangled mess. The rest of the band followed suit, destroying their gear and leaving the VMAs stage an apocalyptic, feedback-soaked mess.
Aerosmith & Run D.M.C.: Walk This Way
Steven Tyler and his Aerosmith bandmates found themselves waiting around for a special delivery one day in 1975, and in their downtime wrote the framework of a song that would spark a rap-rock revolution and introduce hip-hop to an entirely new demographic.
Aerosmith’s “Walk This Way” collaboration with legendary Queens rap crew Run-DMC began with a funk rhythm laud down by drummer Joey Kramer at a soundcheck in Honolulu. Soon enough guitarist Joe Perry had picked out the signature lick, and Tyler sketched out a vocal, but found a new challenge in the sound design.
“The groove kind of lent itself to rap,” he explained. “It kind of pissed me off at first that they weren’t following the lyrics, but they were following the rhythm. But I would scat, and then write the lyrics in after. I wrote them on the hallway wall. They were so rhythmical that I didn’t have a melody line to follow so it was more ‘backstreet lover, going under cover.’ I didn’t really know too much about hip-hop at the time.”
Superproducer Rick Rubin came up with the collaborative idea of bringing in a rap crew to spice up the song. The only problem? Run DMC wasn’t feeling the song. But they eventually gave into the rhythm, and soon enough a recording session took place that most would give their firstborn to witness. The Beastie Boys were reportedly in the room as well, messing around during recording.
The only problem? Steven misplaced the words. “I actually lost the lyrics in the cab from the hotel to the studio,” Tyler admits. “I had a bag in left in the back of the car. I didn’t have any paper in the studio so I thought ‘f*ck this’ and wrote them on the studio wall. “
With the writing literally on the wall, one of the most inspiring genre-splicing collaborations of all time was born.
David Bowie & Mick Jagger: Dancing In The Street
The golden age of MTV during the ’80s was almost too goofy to be true. There were no rules, no cultural bar of judgement demanding a formula adherence, and as a result we were witness to a truly magnificent explosion of weird. Naturally, in the midst of such fascinating chaos, two of the biggest personalities in music took the ridiculous party to an entirely new level: David Bowie and Mick Jagger‘s hilariously silly promotional clip for their cover of Martha and the Vandellas’ “Dancing in the Street”.
The vanilla party anthem brought a kaleidoscope of 80s good-time vibe, but it’s the video that carries the weight of true inspiration. With the song hastily recorded for the Live Aid benefit, the duo headed to the London Docklands to cut the video – which had no budget, and no real production plan in a run of empty warehouses. With very little time to shoot amid the stars’ hectic schedules, Bowie and Jagger resorted to jumping around and preening in each others’ faces with hilarious exaggeration. The result was a level of adorable, endearing silliness that was only amplified by the fashion: Bowie, not to be outdone by Jagger’s silk shirt/mullet combo, rocks a cheetah-print jumpsuit.
Metallica & Lou Reed: Lulu
Sometimes, inspiration comes in the form of critical error. Such was the case of Metallica and Lou Reed’s ill-fated Lulu album collaboration, an album so irredeemably atrocious that both artists and industry alike have made short order of purging from our musical tapestry. On its face, Lulu is an odd union of two iconic cross-generational powerhouses (even if in name only), for no discernible reason other than to send one act off into his accelerating obscurity on a power-chord buzz. If it stands as a matter of personal indulgence in creative experimentation, it also stands as an inside-joke that pitifully few will appreciate. It’s a club-handed ode to high art from a century ago, translated for the hordes of morebetterfasterNOW.
Digging into the root peripherals where the album takes its cues – specifically German expressionist Frank Wedekind’s early 20th century plays “Earth Spirit” and “Pandora’s Box” – one finds a thin sheen of redemption in theme only. The plays, originally published in 1904 and set in Germany, Paris and London in the 1890s, are alternately told from the perspectives of Lulu, a doomed dancer/whore trapped in the cycles of desire and abuse, and those unfortunate enough to be in love with her. Spoiler alert: the story concludes as Lulu meets Jack The Ripper.
Chuck Klosterman said it best: “We don’t live in a vacuum. We live on Earth. And that means we have to accept the real-life consequences of a culture in which recorded music no longer has monetary value, and one of those consequences is Lulu.”
