The most noteworthy collaborations between musical superstars fall into two categories: epic (Aerosmith and Run-DMC, Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, Queen and David Bowie) and epically bad (Lou Reed and Metallica, Jimmy Page and P Diddy, Mick Jagger and David Bowie). Between those poles, however, are instances when musical worlds collided to a resounding “eh”. Here are ten collaborations between musical superstars you probably forgot ever happened.
Dave Matthews Band and Alanis Morissette, “Spoon”
“Spoon,” which closes the Dave Matthews Band’s 1998 album Before These Crowded Streets, is written as Jesus’ thoughts as he hung on the cross, phrased in Matthews’ typical dudeishness. (“Wrist to the elbow / Red blood sand / Could Dad be God?”) It contains a banjo interlude and a verse sung by Alanis Morissette, hot off Jagged Little Pill selling a zillion copies. According to Morgan Delancey’s book The Dave Matthews Band: Step Into the Light, Matthews met Morisette the previous year when they both played Neil Young’s annual benefit for The Bridge School and invited her to drop by the studio, resulting in the Canadian banshee singing a bit of Christ’s internal monologue, as imagined by Matthews. That year, she appeared as God Herself in Kevin Smith’s comedy Dogma.
Madonna and Prince, “Love Song”
A duet between Madonna and Prince should have been the biggest song of 1989. However, “Love Song” (whose title is ironic) was never released as a single. There was plenty of other prime material on Madonna’s Like a Prayer, an album that spawned five top-20 hits. Also, the duet between the two MTV icons was not as amazing as it was in theory. “A potentially fabulous collaboration is wasted on a meandering mid-tempo song that goes nowhere — an exercise in Prince excess,” wrote author J. Randy Taraborrelli in Madonna: An Intimate Biography. Prince composed the song, sang on it and played all the instruments. “Madonna’s role was reduced to sitting in on her own album,” Taraborrelli added. Prince’s guitar work and other touches do pop up more subtly throughout Like a Prayer — so subtly that producer Patrick Leonard can’t remember exactly which tracks feature His Purpleness.
Pearl Jam and Cypress Hill, “The Real Thing”
In 1993, the task of compiling a soundtrack for the middle-budget gang warfare movie Judgement Night fell to Happy Walters, founder of Buzztone Music, home of hip-hop artists like Cypress Hill and House of Pain. Inspired by the collaborations of Anthrax and Public Enemy and Aerosmith and Run-DMC, Walters paired an alternative rock act with a rap artist for every song on the soundtrack: Helmet and House of Pain, Mudhoney and Sir Mix-A-Lot, Living Colour and Run-DMC, Slayer and Ice-T. The most attention-grabbing coupling was perhaps Cypress Hill, who had just hit the top 20 with “Insane in the Brain,” and the multi-platinum Pearl Jam. Their “The Real Thing” closes the album. “[W]e put hard B-boy rhymes on top of some heavy-metal-sounding shit,” Cypress Hill’s Sen Dog told Rolling Stone. “We were talking real street shit like we always do.” According to the book, Pearl Jam Twenty, bassist Jeff Ament and guitarist Stone Gossard played the sludgy song with Cypress Hill at MTV’s Live and Loud New Year’s Eve special, to make up for Pearl Jam’s cancellation due to Eddie Vedder’s illness. The song then disappeared from the public consciousness — along with the soundtrack and the movie.
Tori Amos and Trent Reznor, “Past the Mission”
There’s a wide sonic gulf between the mercurial piano-driven melodies and breathy vocals of Tori Amos and the cacophony of rage and industrial noise that is Nine Inch Nails. But they both have angst in their hearts and Amos and NIN’s Trent Reznor seem to get each other. Reznor said in a magazine interview he “relate[s] to her work a lot.” “She approaches things with a totally different aesthetic than I do, but it’s good,” he said. Amos recruited him to sing backup on “Past the Mission,” from her 1994 album Under the Pink, one of several of her songs about sexual violence. Reznor’s voice is barely audible, yet alone recognizable, but his essence is in there, according to Amos. She is quoted in the biography Pretty Good Years Jay S. Jacobs: “The choice for [‘Past the Mission’] had to be somebody that represented rage and anger, because this was all about a girl trying so hard to work through being a victim.”
The Jonas Brothers and Common, “Don’t Charge Me for the Crime”
The final album of ’00s-era Disney Channel teen idols The Jonas Brothers features an unlikely guest star: Common, the socially conscious rapper who is 15 years senior to the oldest of the brothers. “Don’t Charge Me for the Crime” is a narrative of a bystander who gets caught up in a bank robbery. “There's a song we wrote recently and we were thinking ... it does sound different and kind of strange, and [we'd like to work with] a rapper who has some real meaningful lyrics," Nick, the self-proclaimed "most hip-hop" Jonas, told MTV News. “The way the song is structured, it actually sounds like a story about Common and the Jonas Brothers teaming up to rob a bank,” wrote Tom Breihan of Pitchfork in his evaluations, “which is probably the funniest image I've had in my head all day.”
R.E.M. and Patti Smith, “E Bow the Letter”
“E Bow the Letter” is Michael Stipe’s dour, freeform letter to actor/musician River Phoenix after his overdose death. It’s also the one collaboration between R.E.M. and one of their formative influences, Patti Smith. “There was this kind of girl-group chorus we needed someone to sing, other than myself,” Stipe told Johnny Black for his book Reveal: The Story of R.E.M. “So Patti was the most obvious choice because a lot of her music is inspired by the girl-group ‘Be My Baby’ kind of pop song.” Smith’s haunting cries of “I'll take you over” hardly sound like anything from The Supremes or The Crystals, but perhaps take the same structural place in the song. The unconventional song was the lead single from R.E.M.’s 1996 album New Adventures in Hi-Fi and stalled at 49 on the Billboard 200. Thom Yorke beautifully filled in for Smith at the 1998 Tibetan Freedom Concert.
Eminem and Marilyn Manson, “The Way I Am” (Danny Lohner Remix)
Marilyn Manson and Eminem probably made the CDs most hidden from parents in the ’90s. “The Way I Am,” from 2000’s Marshall Mathers LP, is Em’s response to the criticism heaped on him after his debut, The Slim Shady LP and namechecks Manson. While the skinny shock-rocker didn’t appear on the original track, he made a cameo in the video and played guitar and added vocals to a remix from producer and NIN associate Danny Lohner. The two also performed the song live on MTV. But don’t take that to mean Manson approves of everything Eminem has done. According to a Spin interview, the rapper asked him to appear on “‘97 Bonnie & Clyde,” his infamous early about killing his wife and shoving her body in his car truck, but he found the song “too misogynistic.” Even Marilyn Manson has standards.
Eddie Murphy and Michael Jackson, “Whatzupwitu”
“Party All the Time” is likely all you know of Eddie Murphy’s singing career (and perhaps that’s for the best). The comedian tried a few times to duplicate the success of the 1985 number-two hit. His third album, 1993’s Love’s Alright features a duet with the biggest star on the planet at the time, Michael Jackson. The song is “Whatzupwitu,” a mush-up of “What’s Up with You?” that comprises more than half the song’s lyrics. Murphy even recruited the Harlem Boys Choir to repeat the question at the song’s final bit. According to an interview in Jet, Murphy sold Jackson on the guest role while they filmed the “Remember a Time” video. The clip for “Whatzupwitu” featured the two singing in front of a green screen-enabled cloudscape as cartoon hearts, peace signs and musical notes flutter by, enabled by the best digital graphics 1993 had to offer. Even with the King of Pop’s assist, the song barely dented the charts and Love’s Alright is, to date, Murphy’s final album.
Metallica and Marianne Faithfull, “The Memory Remains”
Marianne Faithfull was like the Selena Gomez of the British Invasion. In the mid-60s, the fresh-faced singer scored a string of hits, starred in movies, made magazine covers and was envied as the girlfriend of Mick Jagger. In the decades after, she became more like the Courtney Love of the British invasion, battling eating disorders and drug addiction while living on the streets of London. (Literally, she was homeless for spells.) Starting with the acclaimed 1979 album Broken English, she reestablished her career with a huskier voice and darker tone.
In 1997, heavy-metal juggernauts Metallica recruited her to their song enhance “The Memory Remains.” “We needed someone charismatic … weathered in every possible way,” drummer Lars Ulrich told the authors of Metallica: The Music and the Mayhem. Faithful’s wordless na-na-nas were the first guest vocals ever featured on a Metallica song. She appeared in the music video, playing a crank organ on a giant mechanical swing. As the lead single of the album, Reload, the song got some radio play, but soon retreated from airwaves and mostly from set lists. Some fans vaguely remember it, leading to this fairly harsh “related search” when Googling the song:
Howlin’ Wolf and Eric Clapton, The London Howlin’ Wolf Sessions
Six-foot-six, guttural-voiced bluesman Howlin’ Wolf didn’t record a song until 1951, by which time he was past 40. Two decades later, the man born Chester A. Burnette was a top influence to a crop of hip rock musicians half his age. The Yardbirds, Cream, The Doors, Led Zeppelin and The Rolling Stones had all recorded songs he popularized. His label, Chess Records, wanted to cash in on Howlin’ Wolf’s youth appeal, so in 1970, they paired him with Norman Dayton, a 20-something academic who studied blues through the University of Chicago’s folklore program.
Dayton took Howlin’ Wolf and his longtime guitarist Hubert Sumlin to London to rerecord some of his best-known songs with Eric Clapton and two fashionable rhythm sections: The Rolling Stones’ Charlie Watts and Bill Wyman and Ringo Starr with Beatles associate Klaus Voorman on bass. Things did not go well. According to the biography Moanin’ at Midnight: The Life and Times of Howlin’ Wolf, Watts and Wyman could only play a few days of the weeklong session, Starr didn’t know how to play blues shuffles, and Clapton was aghast that he would be playing lead guitar, meaning essentially a demotion for Sumlin, one of his idols. Dayton coaxed Clapton to stay and the resulting album, The London Howlin’ Wolf Sessions featured him on every track. It sold well for a blues record, climbing to 79 on the Billboard 200, but isn’t the best-remembered work of either artist. Capturing the spirit of the sessions, squabbling between the musicians is track nine of the album.
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