Cher Duets

Listening to Barbara Mandrell the other day, I came across one of her hits "Woman to Woman." Suddenly an idea for a Cher duet album came to me.

I remember being slightly perturbed by the story that Cher considered doing a duet on the Tony Bennett album but it didn't work out.

Isn't Cher too big to be on some man's cast of duets? Pah-leeese!

No, Cher shouldn’t be appearing on no stinkin' duet albums of some old men. She should be front-and-center on any duets album. She should be the main duet-ee. She's the legend, for Chrissake! Why are men mostly doing these things anyway?

Cher is particularly suited for doing a duets album because she has a history of dueting with an assortment of people on her TV shows and albums and, least we forget, she was part of arguably the most famous boy/girl duo. No one deserves a duet album more than Cher.

And this fantasy duet album should have an age spread. I know she's been cavorting around with a lot with young starlets: Christina Aguilera (oddly, no duet was made there…in the package of a musical no less), Lady Gaga, Pink, etc. This is all well and good. It's very generous and friendly and it keeps her in the realm of coolville. But does she really need youth-dust to stay cool? No. Besides, respect should be give to her favorite colleagues as well as her living idols: a celebration of mothers, sisters and daughters.

Or she could do songs with all men. Or she could do all-female duets of songs made for men. I recently saw a gay punk band in Madrid do a show of awesomely fierce songs they were told women couldn’t cover like Aerosmith's "Dream On."

Please just no duets with Muppets or any dead people besides Sonny. Read Talking Head front-man David Byrne's essay on Barry Manilow's latest album of duets with the dead.