10 Completely Insane Musician Team-Ups (That Actually Happened)

10. Bing Crosby And David Bowie Sing A Christmas Classic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiXjbI3kRus This one probably isn't so surprising, but that doesn't stop it being innately odd. I mean, for one thing it's an elderly crooner who was big in the 50s duetting with a sexually liberated glam rock star. And they're singing a Christmas song. And half of the video is an awkward scripted conversation about the virtues of "contemporary music" vs the "classics" and Bowie looking about as out of place as The Man Who Fell To Earth does in basically any other context than a stage, a recording studio or in the Goblin Kingdom. The story behind Crosby and Bowie's Little Drummer Boy, performed on a Christmas special filmed in London, is equally as bizarre. Bowie didn't actually like the song, and initially refused to sing it; he later said that he only turned up in the first place because his mother was a fan of the ageing crooner. The Specials's producers threw together the counter-melody and lyrics to "Peace On Earth" that he sings whilst Crosby's in the corner pah-rumpa-pum-pum-ing, and that just about satiated him. Playing the video for the newly-released "Heroes" afterwards helped sweeten the pot some too. Despite the weirdness of it all, the duet became a classic and was heavily bootlegged until it finally got an official release in the late eighties. Bowie had already moved onto kidnapping babies by then (in films, of course), and Crosby was...well, not singing White Christmas anymore, put it that way. He was dead, to put it another, more obvious way.