Someone recently asked me what I'd nominate as the worst duet of all time. It took a while for my brain to compute the long list of possibilities but I eventually settled on this jaw dropping disasterpiece. For those of you too young or too stoned to remember the mid-90s, Merril Bainbridge was briefly the golden girl of Australian pop. Her double platinum debut album spawned a couple of massive hits and she surprised just about everyone by repeating her success in America, where "Mouth" went on to become an unlikely top 5 hit. Merril looked set for big things but sadly it wasn't to be. Her second album peaked outside the top 50 and she never bothered the upper reaches of the charts ever again. You can blame changing tastes and the patchy nature of "Between The Days" (an album that I still love, by the way) but I think the real culprit is the unlucky diva's abysmal duet with Shaggy.A rancid cover of Sonny & Cher's seminal classic, "I Got U Babe" is the musical equivalent of being raped with a chainsaw. It's inhumane and unbearably painful. There's nothing wrong with an odd couple but unlike Seiko and Donnie Wahlberg - this is NOT the right combination. These two have no chemistry whatsoever and their voices are a match made in Cheryl Cole's recording studio (ie. hell). Merril's soft, little girl voice is all but trampled by Shaggy's Jamaican twang - rendering the song utterly ridiculous. And yet, as bad as it is, I'm still glad to have this stunning #62 smash in my collection (above). I love car crash pop and I wish Merril would come out of hiding. She's a great songwriter and the world is ready for "The Garden Part 2"!
So tell me, what duet makes you want to pierce your eardrums with a rusty knitting needle? I can think of a few other contenders....
Source URL: http://popmusicrecords.blogspot.com/2010/09/worst-duet-of-all-time.html
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