It takes two

Or so it did during the heyday of the pop duet. With rhythm, not melody, now calling the shots, where did the love go?

(Maury Phillips/WireImage for BET Network) Chris Brown (left) and Jordin Sparks have one of the few current hit duets on the charts with "No Air."

Ever since their breakup, she's suffocating and he feels lost at sea. Both wonder how they're supposed to breathe without each other.

That's the musical question posed by Jordin Sparks and Chris Brown in their current smash duet, "No Air." Hearing the intertwined voices - the anguish! the drama! - of these two teen soul-pop sensations is a reminder of previous hit duets throughout the years, when singers would come together to create a fusion either playful or romantic.

From Diana Ross and Lionel Richie rhapsodizing about "Endless Love" to Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder using the keys on the piano as a metaphor for racial harmony on "Ebony and Ivory," duets have represented some of the most popular R&B, pop, and country songs of the past 50 years.

But if it takes two to make a thing go right, then something hasn't been quite right for a while. Of the 24 entries on the current Billboard Hot 100 chart that have two names attached to them, only two are technically classified as duets. "No Air" continues to cling to the top 20, and "This Is Me," the new single from Demi Lovato and Joe Jonas, from the duo's Disney Channel film "Camp Rock," made a splashy debut at No. 11 this week.

For the sake of satisfying our definition of duet - two people trading sung vocals - we'd also include "4 Minutes," by Madonna featuring Justin Timberlake, and "If I Never See Your Face Again," by Maroon 5 featuring Rihanna in our accounting.

So what happened to the hit duet? Following a peak in the 1980s - when more than 30 twosomes claimed spots on the year-end Hot 100 chart - the form began to fade as musicians started to team up in new ways as mainstream tastes shifted from conventional pop to hip-hop.

From 2000 until the present, a meager seven traditional partnerships have made the year-end grade, including "Picture" by Kid Rock and Sheryl Crow and "Beer for My Horses," by Toby Keith and Willie Nelson.

"I think what happened in the '90s was [that] the definition of a duet changed," says Chuck Taylor, senior correspondent for Billboard. "The way that we personified what a duet was became something different. Since hip-hop was so pervasive as the pop music of the '90s, I think in large part you lost a lot of the melodic music that once would've commanded the top spots on the charts and radio."

That evolution fed into our increasingly accelerated culture. So what we have now are duets for the shuffle generation where pop songs are lent a dash of edgy cool by hip-hop cameos, like "Crazy in Love" by Beyoncé featuring Jay-Z. Gruff-voiced raps are broken up by hooky, softer choruses, like "Over and Over" by Nelly featuring Tim McGraw, and, presumably, no one gets bored.

"The audience nowadays is different, and their attention span is very short, so rap songs are usually much more aggressive. So the duet thing probably doesn't work," says Michael Mitchell, an executive at Time-Life, whose infomercials you've probably seen peddling compilations of the hits of yesteryear. "That's how society is now: Everything's compartmentalized."

Although the "featuring" phenomenon had already begun to make its presence known - notably in 1991 with "Good Vibrations" by Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch featuring Loleatta Holloway - Taylor points to the 1997 hit "I'll Be Missing You," a rap-sung collaboration between Puff Daddy (as hip-hop mogul Sean Combs called himself then) and singer Faith Evans as the critical juncture. "I think if you're pinpointing a song that made everyone's eyebrows raise, that would be one," Taylor says of the tribute to rapper Notorious B.I.G.

Another reason these potential partnerships have been on the wane is record-company red tape.

"In the '80s it was funny. I guess there was more reciprocity you'd call it between the labels," says Harvey Mason Jr., co-writer and co-producer of "No Air" and a huge fan of duets. "People would cooperate and say, 'You can use my artist and I'll use your artist.' Now if they're not on the same label, it's really hard."

Mason - who, as a member of the production team the Underdogs, has written and produced for everyone from Pink to Beyoncé to a Grammy-nominated match-up of Mary J. Blige and Aretha Franklin - also cites organizational hurdles as a factor.

"Those types of songs take a little bit of forethought; you have to plan them out as opposed to the new wave of duets, which seems to be one person sings the song and you throw somebody else on a feature which doesn't take a lot of thought. It also takes a little more work logistically because you have to get two people into the studio," says Mason, who brought Sparks and Brown back into the studio repeatedly but separately. "A lot of people don't have that luxury where you can go back and forth so you make sure you get a great performance." (Sparks and Brown never actually performed the song together until an April appearance on "American Idol.")

A different type of change altered the country music landscape, long a home for classic couplings from George Jones and Tammy Wynette to Tim McGraw and Faith Hill. This week's country singles chart boasts a lone entrant: Reba McEntire and Kenny Chesney's divorce lament, "Every Other Weekend," which is credited only to McEntire and has shown no crossover potential.

"That may be a function of the fact that country radio is very strong right now, and it's leaning a little pop," says Billboard's Taylor. "You've got Jewel, Jessica Simpson, and Taylor Swift appealing to a whole new generation of country listeners. So [with] the gimmick factor [of duets], I think country radio and labels they don't even need that right now because playlists are so strong with newer artists."

As a form of expression, traditional you-sing-I-sing-we-both-sing duets certainly never vanished. In the past few years album-length collaborations have explored the power of two in literally every genre from indie rock to jazz. Alison Krauss and Robert Plant topped critics' lists last year with "Raising Sand." Legendary harmony singer and duet partner Emmylou Harris joined Dire Straits leader Mark Knopfler in moody perfection for the 2006 album "All the Road Running," and actress Zooey Deschanel and indie rocker M. Ward recently paired up as She & Him. Even Willie Nelson and Wynton Marsalis are getting in on the act: This Tuesday the country singer and the jazz trumpeter will release the live album "Two Men With the Blues." Marsalis even steps up to the mike on one song.

Taylor sees the success of "No Air" paving the way for future traditional twosomes on the charts. The fact that there are four near the top of the Hot 100 at the moment, the most in several years, suggests audiences are warming up to the idea of two peas in their iPod.

"When a song like [that] hits No. 1 on iTunes, radio is now getting with the program and realizing they need to put that on the air," Taylor says. "So I think we are seeing a turn toward more variety, and thus we are getting some of those traditional style duets again. And 'No Air' is a perfect example. It's contemporary with enough of an R&B edge to appeal to youth, but it's also entirely melodic."

"I definitely think there is [an audience], provided that the duet is written the right way and makes logical sense," says Mason, who in addition to "No Air" points to Leona Lewis's hit "Bleeding Love" as a harbinger of melody returning to the charts. He looks forward to more songs with "good singing, a good lyric, and people singing about love and relationships. I think that's coming back, and I'm excited, because that's what I enjoy doing."

And isn't doing it with two better than one?