Words: Fleur Kas (she/her)
‘The two made each other better, until, of course, they didn’t.’ This line from the show Daisy Jones & The Six (with a much too modest 70% Rotten Tomatoes rating, in my opinion) describes the tumultuous relationship between Daisy Jones and Billy Dunne, lead singers of the semi-self-titled fictional band. Brought together by producer Teddy Price, the duo fight all the time yet have undeniable chemistry: they suffer and thrive from tantric collaboration. Tantric collaboration goes beyond the sensation of a celebrity couple or feature song. It’s the admiration between Joan Baez and Bob Dylan watching each other perform backstage in A Complete Unknown, the bed-in protests of John Lennon and Yoko Ono: it refers to artists whose legacies are defined by each other. Yet how do so many of these cherishable bonds crumble beneath the spotlight of the music industry?
Moving on from musicals, let’s examine some remarkable tantric relationships across history. Recently passed Marianne Faithfull was defined by the famous Rolling Stones song ‘As Tears Go By’, in spite of her individual talent, as exemplified by the lyrics she wrote to ‘Sister Morphine’ and her 1979 album Broken English. This was perpetuated by the cultural myth that Mick Jagger wrote the song for her. In actuality, Andrew Oldham (the Stones’ manager at the time), locked Jagger and Keith Richards in a kitchen for a couple of hours, sapping the lyrics out of them. Faithfull recounts their relationship, or as she terms it an ‘alliance’, in her eponymous autobiography. Despite her fond memories of being Jagger’s partner, the media largely reduced her to being his ‘rockstar girlfriend’ rather than the influential woman artist she was. ‘The role of a muse is one of the acceptable ones for women, but it’s terrible,’ Faithfull recalls. This aesthetic continues to be glamorised today, limiting women artists’ agency and damaging their self-esteem by subsuming their talents within the personas of their rockstar boyfriends.
Fortunately, to foster a tantric collaboration doesn’t necessarily require romance: these connections are also powerful through platonic love…and hate. Take The Velvet Underground & Nico, aka the “banana album” because of Andy Warhol’s iconic cover art. As their producer, Warhol’s objective wasn’t to top the charts, but to blend music and art as a pioneer of the art-rock genre. However, his relationship with the band quickly soured. Following the poor commercial success of the now-acclaimed album, front man Lou Reed sacked Warhol. Yet after Warhol’s death, the story took a turn when Reed and John Cale paid homage to him in their 1990 album Songs for Drella. In several songs, such as ‘Open House’ and ‘Nobody but You’, Reed adopts Warhol’s perspective in an attempt to unravel the enigmatic character of his friend and foe, both Dracula and Cinderella (Drella). Beyond that, Songs for Drella marked the double reconciliation between Reed and Cale after being estranged for many years. The intimacy that pervades the album shows how tantric collaborations can turn tense from jealousy and greed, but may continue to live happily – or rather, amicably – ever after.
So, what can history tell us about the music industry today? According to a 2023 article from the University of Navarra, collaborative songs receive twice as many streams per week on average. A peek at the Global Top 50 on Spotify today shows Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars’s ‘Die With a Smile’ at number 1, followed by Kendrick Lamar and SZA’s ‘luther’ and ‘APT’ by ROSÉ and Bruno Mars, again. Coincidence? I think not. Notably, ‘Die With A Smile’ also won the Best Pop Duo/Group Performance award at the Grammys this year, but does this achievement celebrate a tantric collaboration or a publicity pull? Different listeners can debate this, but much of musical collaboration, then and now, does revolve around increasing the social capital of artists, driven by economic forces. It’s an opportunity to widen audiences and boost promotion. This does serve many benefits, particularly for smaller, solo artists: Daisy Jones only gained her deserved recognition by joining The Six. But let’s not turn a blind eye either to the fact stars usually don’t collaborate by mere chance. They’re star-crossed by the business needs of music management and labels.
In our globalised and digitalised world today, it is easier to collaborate than ever before. Nevertheless, does this facilitation reduce the tantric potential of collaboration? Every case is contestable, as much of the relationship is also based on the listener’s interpretation and idolisation. While a tantric collaboration may fuel a consumer fantasy, this can also disrupt, or enhance, the careers and personal lives of the artists. We easily forget that these seemingly perfect pairs are also human, experiencing inevitable emotions of envy, fear, and anger, as in any other relationship. It’s also important to ask ourselves which stories are remembered and which voices we listen to more closely – women artists in particular are prone to being villainised or overshadowed by their male counterparts. Listen with wonder but also your rational mind; there’s always more than meets the ear.
