W
Duets
UNSUCCESSFUL
e love nothing more than when celebrities collaborate — huge star power coming together. It’s supposed to be amazing. And, it’s supposed to be a good business idea for the celebs — combining their fan bases and, consequently, expanding their own. Sadly, it doesn’t always work out perfectly. Some musical collaborations become near hits and others huge misses — but, either way, they just don’t hit the mark. Here are our favorite misses! Justin Timberlake and Madonna’s 4 Minutes may have earned itself two Grammy nominations and been a euro smash. But, here in the states the sex power of the two celebs just didn’t seem to stick. Most felt that there was just too much going on in that one song to really get into it, thanks to Timbaland’s “marching band on meth” approach to production. This made it a poor choice not just for radio play, but also for DJs, who couldn’t get out good club remixes of the already jumbled song. Busta Rhymes and Mariah Carey’s I Know What You Want did not do any favors to Mariah Carey. While the song had its share of commercial success, it relegated Carey and all her vocal talent to that of a glorified backup singer. She got a miniscule part in the song, whining in the chorus, and was completely unable to showcase her abilities. Let’s just say, Busta Rhymes got the better end of the deal. But, our ABSOLTE FAVORITE, guilty pleasure of a musically collaborative miss was We Are the World 25 for Haiti. This was an ambitious update (on the original 1985 song) to begin with. It had hope — with some awesome voices and huge efforts – and did earn a good amount of money that went to Haiti. But it was destroyed by critics. Most dismissed the “rap verse” as pure pandering and the extreme autotuning as “straight-up tacky.” The inclusion of many “sub-celebrities” was also noted. And, many comedy shows like Saturday Night Live parodied the song and pointed out the D-listers excitedly. Other people pointed out ridiculous absurdities that ate at the song’s credibility – (1) who gave Justin Bieber the opening verse?! (2) who thought that the auto tune they used on Akon sounded natural?! (3) who chose to include Whyclef Jean’s incomprehensible yodeling? (4) who noticed even Jamie Foxx not being able to control his own laughing at being forced to pull out his stale Ray Charles impression?! Yeah, we love to hate this song (hence the extra long paragraph dedicated to it).
Want to advertise in Insight? Visit myinsightmag.com to learn how. April 2013•Insight 19