Big Red Machine release their second album later this month. It’s a fine name for ten tonnes of agricultural apparatus but perhaps not quite so persuasive for a pop group, particularly one with a considerably lower profile than most of its members. A collective formed by the National’s Aaron Dessner and Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon, Big Red Machine has corralled the likes of Robin Pecknold (Fleet Foxes), Sharon Van Etten and Taylor Swift into making a collaborative record called How Long Do You Think It’s Gonna Last?.
It sounds intriguing on paper, but the quality of musical collaborations is notoriously hard to gauge from the cast list. Unlike film, in which significance and potential accrue according to the sheer weight of star quality mustered, musical collaborations often fall prey to negative creative equity. The sum is not one of multiplication, but division.
For artists, collaboration throws up an awkward proposition: if it’s too successful it looks like you need help
They come in many forms. One of the biggest songs of the past 12 months is ‘Levitating’ by Dua Lipa featuring rapper DaBaby. This kind of quick’n’dirty double-header is a staple in the worlds of pop, hip hop, R&B and country, where the ‘guest feature’ denotes freshness, kudos and — crucially — a doubling of demographic reach. From Aerosmith and Run DMC’s ‘Walk This Way’ in the 1980s to Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s ‘Crazy In Love’ in the noughties, over three minutes this collision of ambition and excitement can be explosive.
Stretch it over an evening, or an album, and the success ratio plummets. We’ve all witnessed the one-off multi-artist tryst beloved of experimental contemporary music events which end up sounding under-rehearsed, over-hyped and faintly disappointing. It’s hardly surprising. Fording the spaces between genres and working modes requires more than good intentions.
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