Sharing duos and duets that I love. And what’s the difference between a duo and a duet, anyway?

Hi friends!  Happy Tuesday. It’s Twisted Mixed Tape day and I’ll be sharing duos and duets that I love. And what’s the difference between a duo and a duet, anyway?

I’m embarrassed to say that yesterday (from a red light because only morons text and drive), I texted Jen about today’s topic. First, I couldn’t remember what it was in the first place.

Huh. Turns out, I didn’t immediately know the difference between a duo and a duet. Which, in hindsight, seems unbelievably stupid as, once I knew, I couldn’t believe that it was briefly confusing. Still though, Jen’s reply was a little bit confusing, right?

First, yes, I know that “we’ll” in this case should be “well.” As mentioned, I was at a red light and auto-correct was being mean, making me look even dumber than I am. Anyway. See my smiley-face reply? That means that I still didn’t really “get” it and did, indeed have to Google what the difference between a duet and a duo was. Now that it’s clicked, I do realize how utterly ridiculous my confusion was. I blame it on lack of sleep, okay? Because even I am not usually that dumb. I figure that the rest of you already know, but just in case you don’t, the difference between a duo and a duet:

A duo is two people singing a song (as in Jen and moi singing this hop),

and a duet is the actual song.

Ok moving on. And, I am dumb.

I went to college in Oakland, California. My dad had this thing about how if I wanted to go to a state school, I could go to Boulder. If I wanted to leave – which I desperately did because remember me telling you about Jane? – I needed to go to a private school.  Because I procrastinated in finding one, I ended up at Mills College – a private all-girls’ place. I think I may still have a t-shirt with their slogan:

“Mills is not a girls school without men
It’s a women’s college without boys”

(I totally don’t still have it because I never owned it, instead believing that college would be much more fun with boys and whatever)

To address the “we need boys” situation, the college provided free transportation to and from Berkeley by means of a van, or The Fruck. The Fruck was driven by a person named Monique (I say person because, to this day, I have no idea whether Monique was a man or a woman). The Fruck ran until 2am (I think) and then began to wrangle the walk-of-shamers the next morning at 7am, so that we could get back to campus in time to attend classes.

Why do I bring this up? Because those are the years when I relied on the comfort of Simon and Garfunkel to lull me to sleep on the nights that I was safely tucked into my dorm room and not instead at a party, telling a joke:

That year at Mills was when I really began to love them. I’m not sure what my favorite song is but this one is definitely on the list.  Of course, it was years before I realized that they weren’t saying “Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and I.”

Prior to living in Oakland, this duet by Human League was often playing at high school parties and in sticky, smoke-filled, overcrowded cars:

There are more duets that I’ve come to enjoy over the years. While I used to despise country music, my husband introduced me to Lady Antebellum (I love Need You Now and Hello World). He also introduced me to the heartbreak of Whisky Lullaby by Brad Paisley Alison Krauss. Warning: massively sad.

I also really like Just Give Me a Reason by Nate Ruess of Fun and Pink which I’m sure somebody else must have included today, so I won’t because I really want to make sure that you all know this next one. Have you heard Son of a Gun by the Vaselines? I love it. Catchy and awesome.

THIS has to be the best duo and duet ever though. Like ever:

Parodie Eddie Murphy & Joe Piscopo by PeteRock

This has been a Twisted Mixed Tape Tuesday production, Einsteined by Jen Kehl. Come, join us and tell us what your favorite duos and duets are!