Iggy Pop is an amazing and prolific collaborator. His most recent collaboration is with himself (sort of).
This is the second commercial he's done for for this insurance company.
(The last one he did was taken down by the UK Advertising Standards Authority because the company actually excludes musicians and entertainers—like Iggy Pop—from taking out insurance policies with them. Twelve people complained that the ad was misleading and so it got banned. Punk!)
Now let's look at some of his other amazing collaborations. There are so many to choose from: from his early work with
David Bowie, to the frankly gorgeous pas de deux with Tom Waits in the film
Coffee and Cigarettes, to his delicately calm, impromptu collaboration with a blaring pool filter (I think?) in the
trailer for last year's Francophilic album,
Preliminaires.
But for the sake of taxonomy I am going to refine the topic even further and focus today on some of
the best duets he’s done with the ladies. Here are three oldish and three newish songs, with a special bonus duet at the very end.
Debbie Harry and Iggy Pop ‘Well, Did You Evah’
After a childhood characterised by entire weekends spent watching the movie
High Society over and over, this cover of 'Did You Evah' hit me like some sort of revelation from God when the album
Red, Hot & Blue appeared in our household in the early nineties. It takes the drollness and silliness of the
original Frank Sinatra/Bing Crosby song to a new level, updating it for the kids while raising money for AIDS awareness to boot. I think Cole Porter would have loved it.
Kate Pierson and Iggy Pop ‘Candy’
One of the most heart-wrenching sentences a blogger can ever come across while assembling the day's post is: 'Embedding disabled by request’. It is for this reason that you're either just going to have to grab the person sitting closest to you right now and reenact this song for yourselves in some moving office party duet (please do this as it will be quite entertaining for your work colleagues), or else click
here to actually watch it.
In place of the video, may I offer to you instead one of the best YouTube comments I have ever read. It appears underneath this very clip:
It's the summer of '91 or '92. I'm about 8. It's a fresh morning on the coast of Montenegro where we used to have a house (I'm from Serbia). I can't wait to go to the beach and this song is playing on a Hitachi cassette player that is still rocking to this day. My parents look like they're 17 and I'm unaware of their sacrifices to make things work for me, unaware of the war churning just a few hundred miles away, unaware of so many things, and so happy. Now, I know too much...
'Candy' makes me feel exactly like that too, even though I was never eight in 1991 or living in Montenegro with 17-year-old parents. But now I know too much and I almost wish I had been.
Francoise Hardy and Iggy Pop ‘I’ll Be Seeing You’
I am having some really bad YouTube luck today. For this beautiful song, you have two choices: This really boring static film clip, above, that is essentially an ad, or another really boring
film clip, made by a fan. I
suggest you just press play and leave the page momentarily while the song carries on exquisitely in the background and you go and get some other work done (why not create a new film clip for 'I'll be Seeing You' if you have nothing better to do? Please?)
Oh and for god's sake, please don't read the comments underneath
this clip; you will feel sad in all sorts of ways to realise how many grieving people find the YouTube comments section an appropriate place to dedicate songs to their dear dead loved ones.
Ida Maria and Iggy Pop 'Oh My God'
Last year, Iggy got himself inveigled in so many duets that you can't help but feel a bit ripped off that he didn't do one with you. Norwegian Ida Marie was one of the lucky ones—'Oh My God' is a song off her album
Fortress Round My Heart which she has re-recorded with Iggy. I think it's rather catchy.
Jemina Pearl and Iggy Pop 'I Hate People'
The former Be Your Own Pet singer first convinced Iggy to do vocals for the choruses in this song, and then she got Thurston Moore to be in the film clip. All I can think of is that if I had that much influence in the world I would try to do something better with my fringe.
Peaches and Iggy Pop 'Kick It'
This is my favourite duet ever, even more favourite than Barbra Streisand and Donna Summer's
'No More Tears (Enough is Enough').
If you're interested, you can also watch Peaches do this song
live with a huge, projected Iggy singing along with her on a screen on stage. He's wearing some really tight pants, which at certain angles reveal even more of his sinew than we are used to seeing! It's compelling viewing.
BONUS DUET!
Finally, Iggy’s collaboration with Iranian artist/director Marjane Satrapi is nothing short of a duet; she got him to be the voice of her uncle in the film of
Persepolis and he got her to design the cover of last year’s
Preliminaires. Nice collab, guys!
Here's what she
says in an interview about working with Iggy:
It was so incredible to
work with him because he was one of the sweetest people I’ve ever met
in my life. He’s extremely nice, extremely gentle, and very articulate
and cultivated. Plus he has that great body.
I hope that is incentive enough for plenty more Iggy Pop duets to come in the future, although preferably fewer involving puppets and more with real people please Iggy.