He Said/She Said: 20 Boy-Girl Duets for the Ages

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A soulful romp between Carla Thomas and Otis Redding finds her lamenting how he’s too poor and just not sophisticated enough to be her man. “Look here/You ain’t got no money/I got everything/You can’t buy me all those minks and sables and all that stuff I want.”

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You can’t get much smoother than this bossa nova gem with Tropacalia masters Caetano Veloso and Gal Costa. No matter where you listen to this track, it’s sunny and sultry.

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Universally hailed as one the best duets, “Some Velvet Morning” is a sultry psychedlic masterpiece delivered stunningly delivered by Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra. The lyrics consist of the male part describing a mysterious, powerful woman named Phaedra, who educated the speaker in the ways of love. The male part alternates with the female part, who identifies herself as Phaedra and speaks over ethereal, twinkling music about beautiful nature imagery — “flowers growing on a hill / dragonflies and daffodils” — and about the secrets held by an unknown collective “we.”

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The quintessential collaboration between Johnny Cash and June Carter, “Jackson” tells the tale of a married couple who find that the “fire” has gone out of their relationship. The song relates the desire of both partners to travel to a city named Jackson (possibly Jackson, Mississippi or Jackson, Tennessee) where they each expect to be welcomed as someone far better suited to the city’s lively night life than the other is.

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Erotic to the core, this duet was originally sung by Gainsbourg and his ex, Brigitte Bardot, but she pleaded with him not to release it fearing repercussions by her then husband, Gunther Sachs. A year later, Gainsbourg re-recorded the song with his new lover, English actress Jane Birkin. The song was controversial for its suggestive lyrics (”I come and I go, in between your loins”) and simulated orgasm sounds. It was banned from radio play in Italy, Poland, Portugal, Spain, and the UK, and denounced by the Vatican in a public statement.

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This is a somewhat rare Ike and Tina track from the early seventies when Ike was starting to experiment with more funky arrangements and advanced recording techniques. He was a fairly early adopter of the ARP and drum machine, taking a cue from Herbie Hancock and other cosmic funksters. I first heard this song quite recently on the wonderful compilation, More Dirty Laundry: The Soul Of Black Country. Pure genius!

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I never tire of this track, one in a long line of brilliant collaborations between Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris. Their voices seem to have been made for each other. Listen to this song and you’ll know what I mean.

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Taken from Tom Waits’ boozy, bluesy album Foreign Affairs, “I Never Talk to Strangers” is a humorous romp with the pre-cheesy torch singer, Bette Midler. It’s basically a dialogue between two lonely singles at a bar, delivered with the gruff resignation of Tom Waits and the zippy jazz vocals of Midler.

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X’s Los Angeles is one of the great recordings of the punk era, thanks in part to the perfect vocal team of John Doe & Exene Cervenka. Add to that the ace rockabilly guitar work of Billy Zoom and Doe’s poetic lyrics and you got one of the decade’s most exciting, and underrated, bands.

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Taken from Gabriel’s hit album, So, “Don’t Give Up” describes the despair of a man who feels that the economic system has no place for him, and the support and wise counsel sung in the refrain by Bush. It’s a beautiful ballad with an ultimately uplifiting message that serves, over 20 years later, as a great anthem of our current economic times.