From “The King of Pop” employing glam metal rocker Eddie Van Halen to play guitar on “Billie Jean;” to fellow international popstar Justin Timberlake recording “Say Something” with country singer Chris Stapleton, then memorably offering a special edition live performance of the latter’s “Tennessee Whiskey” and so forth. The list goes on – with the pulse of modern music never made more measurable than when two stars from different orbits collide.
Every revolutionary act that has made a significant dent in pop culture has borrowed from that which came before them to give birth to anew. The current generation rebels against their elders, who refuse to offer a stamp of approval upon its music – naturally in preference to die on the hill where their own early-formed tastes reign supreme; an ofttimes unbreakable cycle.
But what happens when what’s old and new – those expected to compete as bitter rivals because their respective catalogs are targeted at opposing demographics – decide to act in concert?
A most profound result: music progressing together, and with parallel precision, instead of apart. Allow the following moments in collaborative history to remind you how pillars of indirectly related genres can sing musical evolution into existence.
Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley, 1960
Having likened Elvis’ music earlier to “lewd, dirty lyrics” made for “sideburned delinquents,” crooner Frank Sinatra ultimately let bygones be bygones when he agreed to welcome “The King” home from military service in duet fashion on “The Ed Sullivan Show.”
He’d quip, “we’re working the same way, only in different areas,” before modifying Elvis’ “Love Me Tender” to match his (Sinatra’s) vocal style, alternated with Elvis’s reciprocation: a swoon-inducing rendition of “Witchcraft.”
Aerosmith and Run-DMC, 1986
The hip-hop reconfiguration charted even better than its predecessor, peaking at no. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts. It would also earn no. 4 on VH1’s 2008 assemblage of their 100 Greatest Hip Hop Songs.
Run-DMC regularly freestyled over the track before reluctantly agreeing to producer Rick Rubin’s suggestion that they remake the song alongside Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler and Joe Perry. The fusion of hip-hop and classic rock helped solidify one group’s staying power, and restore the other to past glory.
Santana and Rob Thomas, 1999
The 2000 Grammy Award winner for Best Record of the Year, Best Song the Year and Best Pop Collaboration ranked no. 2 on Billboard Magazine’s top songs of its first fifty years, yet somehow did not place on any iteration of Rolling Stone Magazine’s ‘Top 500 Songs’ list.
The Latin jazz legends teamed up in an unforeseen way with Rob Thomas, lead singer of the “alt-rock” Matchbox Twenty, to record the ageless track that The Onion would later joke had swept the Grammys for the 13th year in a row.
Linkin Park and Jay-Z, 2004
With similar timelessness, the most remembered release on an entire album’s worth of nu-metal/rap crossover material also took home a Grammy – for Best Rap/Sung Collaboration – in 2006.
That same year, filmmaker Michael Mann chose to open his “Miami Vice” reboot starring Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx with a “Numb/Encore” “needle drop;” a testament to the song’s objective iconography, as the original 1984 series is oft-remembered as the first of its kind: a scripted drama cut to contemporary radio hits (namely Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight” in the pilot episode).
Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett, 2011-2021
Despite Tony Bennett’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis, he and his frequent recording partner, pop singer Lady Gaga, entered the studio together yet again to wax jazz on “Love for Sale,” released to acclaim in September.
If “A Star is Born” had not adequately shown how beyond mainstream pop the singer’s reach extends to, then her decade-long mutual affinity shared with the 95-year-old master of showtunes sure does.
