It Takes Two

I think it's high time music industry bigwigs rediscovered a rare and much underappreciated genre: the pop male vocalist duet. Pop duets in general flourished in the 1980s, which was also the period in which the pop male vocalist duet reached its zenith, with the release of the two most undisputedly awesome pop male vocalist duets of all time:

To All the Girls I've Loved Before - Willie Nelson and Julio Iglesias
The Girl is Mine - Michael ("I'm a lover, not a fighter") Jackson and Paul McCartney

Let's just take a moment, shall we, and bask in the glory of those two masterpieces.

OK, moving on--it's time for the pop male vocalist duet to make its triumphant return on the contemporary music scene. For those studly male pop stars out there keen to take the plunge, I will disclose to you the secret of pop male vocalist duet success: the more incongruous the duet pairing, the higher the Grammy-winning potential. Here's a few couplings that I think might just have the makings for pop male vocalist duet magic:

Justin Timberlake and Clay Aiken
Bono and Axl Rose
Ricky Martin and Toby Keith
Usher and Kid Rock

You get the idea. It's a one-way ticket to solid gold.

Just messin' with ya, eh!

Above: The classic rabbit-duck optical illusion
Below: The Canadian version

What do you see?