Flipping through the idiot-box wasteland one fine evening, I came across one of those frightening, out-of-control, mega-glitzy showbiz production numbers, the kind that seem to scream like a vein-popping drill sergeant, “We are now entertaining the living hell out of you!” I think it was the Grammys. Worse yet, it was a duet, confirming something I’ve long suspected: duets kind of blow. And although there was genuine horror to be found in the pairing of an emoting P-1000 Popbot such as Beyoncé Knowles and a still hurricane-force Tina Turner, there are actually worse ideas with worse results out there.

It’s a bizarre breed, really. Sounds good on paper? I think I’d rather listen to the paper. The pop duet is essentially nothing more than musical stunt casting without the imagination of a wigged-out music nerd—suit music, vanity project, possible coke party. It’s two zillionaires like Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson having their people talk to each other and sign papers and then having a bunch more people focus all their attention on their stinking idea. And later the results can be conveniently held up as low points in pop history. “Say, Say, Say”—what were they thinking?

I remember wondering the same thing watching the Spin Doctors on Letterman a few years ago and having no answers as to why the band’s dopey perma-grinning vocalist would voluntarily team up with Roger Daltrey on “Substitute” and have himself completely pulverized under the power of Daltrey’s superior pipes. Perhaps it isn’t a coincidence that the band vanished shortly thereafter. (No word on the grin’s whereabouts.)

All in all, it’s a roll call of wretchedness: Tom Petty and Stevie Nicks, Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton, Mick Jagger and David Bowie, Busta Rhymes and Mariah Carey, Bono and, well, anyone. As far as the A-list Top 40 stuff goes, you’d be hard-pressed to come up with a measly EP’s worth of listenable content. That is, unless you get starstruck over the idea of two icons taking time out of their busy schedules to phone it in for your mindless consumption. Throw in a little Sting on hurdy-gurdy, and you might even fill a whole CD.

It might have all been downhill from Sonny and Cher and “I Got You Babe” if it weren’t for Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra. Here on the more durable end of the disposable-pop spectrum, the psychedelic cowboy genius and Barbarella-headed fruit of Frankie’s loins cooked up some of the strangest and most indelible duets in music history, culminating in 1968’s “Some Velvet Morning”, an unmatched masterpiece of dark, rumbling weirdness that seemed tailor-made for a David Lynch film.

You can hear the Hazlewood/Sinatra influence in some of Nick Cave’s stuff, with Stuart Staples and the Tindersticks, and with Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips, to name a few, reminding us that there are some gems lurking under the usual pop slag. For every chunk of cheddar like the Joe Cocker/Jennifer Warnes hit “Up Where We Belong”, you might uncover a Tom Waits/Keith Richards nugget or Björk/PJ Harvey oddity. Shane MacGowan and Kirsty MacColl’s “Fairytale of New York” has even, in time, risen above its humble and decidedly non–top 40 origins to become something of a classic. In fact, I may have to rethink my position—who wouldn’t want to see Kenny and Dolly tackle that one?