Musical collaborations help artists take their songs to a new level they might not have been able to achieve alone, and these classic rock features where the guest artist steals the show are no exceptions.
Collabs distribute creative weight and bring fresh ideas to the table. Sometimes, these musical mash-ups help elevate an artist whose celebrity pales in comparison to the track’s headliner. Simply put, they’re a wealth of musical innovation, community, and plain good music.
Here are some of our favorites.
Merry Clayton in “Gimme Shelter”
We’d like to humbly argue that at no point in Mick Jagger’s decades-long career as the Rolling Stones frontman did he ever produce a vocal take with as much pain, power, and presence as Merry Clayton in “Gimme Shelter.” (And frankly, we’d guess that Jagger would agree.) Her intensely emotional vocal delivery added a whole new layer to the Stones’ 1969 track from Let It Bleed. Even more amazingly, Clayton managed to get these iconic …