Rockwell is all about our favourite stars of music teaming up to perform some unique collaborations, so each week in the run up to the concert we're going to look back at some of our favourite collaborations of the past.
OK, we admit it. When we put together our favourite collaborations of the '80s, we left quite a few out. Most tragic though was our complete lack of inclusion for Kylie & Jason's 'Especially For You'. How could we forget the relationship of the decade? The love song of the century? Thankfully Kylie went on to do lots more collaborations so we're going to make it up to her in the '90s and 2000s.
Kylie Minogue & Nick Cave - Where The Wild Roses Grow : In our humble opinion, this 'murder ballad' is one of the greatest collaborations of all time and certainly the pop princess's best. By now, Kylie had ditched her girl-next-door image, dumped Jason for wild rocker Michael Hutchence, waved Pete Waterman goodbye and cut her hair off. Things were beginning to look a bit odd and her chart positions were plummeting. Then, as if to further annoy her fans, Kylie teamed up with moody, hairy Australian rocker Nick Cave for this love duet all about the tragic demise of Ms Eliza Day. It might have only reached #11 in the charts in 1995 and was creepy and weird, but it was utterly brilliant.
Eternal & Bebe Winans - I Wanna Be The Only One : If you're of a certain age, this is the pop song of the 90s that turned your lunchtimes at school into a dance-off. Gorgeous girl group Eternal were the soul queens of the day with members of Boyzone on one arm and a huge collection of Smash Hits Trophies under the other. For their third album, 'Before The Rain', Grammy Award-winning gospel singer BeBe Winans joined the group for this sing-off of boys vs girls. It gave Eternal their only #1 and became the most played song on radio in all of Europe in 1997.
Youssou N'Dour & Neneh Cherry - 7 Seconds : One of the most influential artists in today's pop world, Neneh Cherry followed the success of debut album 'Raw Like Sushi' with this huge comeback single in 1994. Senegalese musician Youssou N'Dour wrote and performed the duet with Neneh incorporating lyrics in English, French and African language Wolof. A political song about racial intolerance, it went on to sell 3 million copies worldwide. Neneh's next hit was 'Love Can Build A Bridge' - another collaboration, this time with Cher, Eric Clapton and Chrissie Hynde for Save The Children.
Puff Daddy & Faith Evans ft 112 - I'll Be Missing You : Classic Police song 'Every Breath You Take' was revamped for this huge #1 in 1997, released to celebrate the life of rapper Notorious B.I.G who had recently passed away. His best friend Puff Daddy looked after the rap, while B.I.G's wife and soul singer Faith Evans sung the euphoric chorus. It proved to be the start of a huge career for Puff Daddy who as well as changing his name about seven times, has since collaborated with Usher, Mary J Blige, Christina Aguilera and Pharrell Williams, to name but a few.
Could you imagine Joss Stone & Sir Tom Jones or Beverley Knight & Dan Gillespie-Sells singing any of these classics?
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