Let's Duet

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Alice: There’s lots of ways to show your love, But one that can’t go wrong…
Bob: Is looking in your lover’s eyes, And singing a love song!
Both: It’s a duet, A musical composition for two people,
A duet,
There aren’t many words that rhyme with people!
To throw some romance in the mix,
The best way is to add lyrics,
To prove love, lovers don’t use tricks--
They do it in duet.

Self demonstration out of the way, a duet is any piece of music made for two singers or instruments. They show up mainly in music-oriented media, like songs, musicals, and opera.

Due to the intimacy that comes with sharing a song, by far the most common form of duet is the Silly Love Songs type, where the two participants are meant to be lovers. Some composers play on this intimacy to give the duet a humourous or unsettling feel—for example, having two Heterosexual Life Partners sing about their bromance, or giving the hero and the villain a duet to show they’re Not So Different.

Of course, that's only the thematic reason for duets; there are many other reasons for having them, including boosting a song by having two star performers lend their voices to it. Compositionally, duets are nice because the performers can harmonize, adding an extra layer to the song that would otherwise have to be achieved with backup singers.

The Award Bait Song is often a duet. Compare Serenade Your Lover.

Sub-tropes:

Examples of Let's Duet include:

Please only include parodies, lampshades, and particularly interesting examples, since there are so very many straight examples.

Film

Let's duet, in ways that make us feel good.
Let's duet, and make that sacred sound
Put two and two together, perfect harmony we found.
We know it's only natural, let's duet!

  • In Enchanted, Giselle and Prince Edward sing "True Love's Kiss" together when they meet and fall in love in their fairy-tale world:

Edward: You're the fairest maid I've ever met.
You were made
Giselle: ... To finish your duet!

Live-Action TV

  • The musical episode of Scrubs has J.D. and Turk sing "Guy Love," a duet about their bond as Heterosexual Life Partners.
  • Episode 2 of Mongrels has a wonderful duet about the Jail Bait Wait here.
  • Glee, of course. They even had an entire episode featuring duets that played with the concept. Most of the duets were with romantic couples, but a few were fairly unique—like Kurt's duet, which he sang by himself, and the Mercedes/Satanna duet (they're usually enemies).
  • Jeeves and Wooster got some comedy out of Bertie getting Jeeves to sing with him while he played a duet on the piano.

Music

  • The Walk Hard example above is probably inspired by Cole Porter's equally Double Entendre-filled duet, "Let's Do It (Let's Fall in Love)"
  • "Dueling Banjoes", of all things, is itself a duet.

Tabletop Games

  • Magic: The Gathering had "Love Song of Night and Day", a duet poem, read by two lovers. The full piece is here; snippets of the poem can be found in the flavortext of several cards across the Mirage and Visions expansions.

Theatre

Web Comics

  • Lamp shaded and parodied in one strip of Questionable Content. When Marten specifically requests that their band not devolve into sappy love songs, his two bandmates (who are dating) break into spontaneous song about how they met at a mosh pit when she knocked out his tooth.
  • Kevin and Kell sing a song together in song written for Bill (the strip's creator) by Tom Smith. The song retells the story of how they met each other in a chat room and then agreed to see each other in person. More information is available here, and lyrics can be found here.

Web Original

Joss pays his debt / with this cheesy duet...

Western Animation

  • The SpongeBob SquarePants song "Without You".
  • Aladdin has duet in "A Whole New World."
  • Tangled follows up with "I See The Light." In context, it doesn't melt into love song until Flynn starts singing though one wouldn't assume it listening to it straight.
  • In the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic episode "May the Best Pet Win", Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash start off the songs of Season 2 with an epic duet about picking out the best pet.
    • In "A Canterlot Wedding", Cadence and Chrysalis wrap up the season with a legitimately epic Villain Song duet about the latter's plan to imitate the former and use Shining Armor for her own nefarious purposes.
  • "Dancing on Air", the first in-universe song in the original My Little Pony pilot, is a duet between Megan and Firefly. Up until the end Megan isn't buying Firefly's assurances that she will be of help to the talking ponies.
  • In the Waynehead episode "No' Mo Money", Damey and Roz starts off the rap song with a rap duet.