Duets?
Got any suggestions for good songs for two people to sing with each other (in a casual, non-performance context)?
Mary Anne and I like singing together. Last week, we were trying to come up with songs in which two people alternate parts, with some overlap. We're especially interested in showtunes of that sort.
There's “Confrontation” from Les Mis, except I don't know it well enough to sing it (even with a lyric sheet) and I'm not all that fond of it. (Though Mary Anne likes it a lot.) There's “I Know Him So Well” from Chess; unfortunately, Mary Anne knows the London studio recording, while these days I mostly know the American Broadway cast recording. (It's been many years since I've sat down and listened to the London recording all the way through; I really ought to do that again. We got rather tangled up when we tried to sing “You Want to Lose Your Only Friend” and I didn't realize, until M pointed it out halfway through, that we were singing different versions.)
There are plenty of songs that have two voices, but most of them don't have anywhere close to equal distribution of the voices. I love “I See the Light” from Tangled, but Rapunzel sings the entire first half of the song solo (and I think M doesn't like that song as much as I do). I love “Another Suitcase in Another Hall,” from Evita, but (ignoring the extended introduction sung by Eva), most of the song is solo; Che's gorgeous part is only in the choruses. And M doesn't know that show anyway. “Total Eclipse of the Heart” has some of the same kind of thing going on with the “turn around” bits; that's fun too, but I'd prefer something with more for the second voice to do.
It's certainly possible to do non-duet songs as duets. For example, the canonical version of “Good King Wenceslas” in my head is the one described in The Dark Is Rising, so M and I split the verses that way sometimes. And we should probably learn the Glee arrangement of “Don't Stop Believin'.”
Oh, and of course there's always rounds; we like those. But except for the ones I know really well, I do better on rounds when there's another voice (ideally a strong one) singing the same part as me.
Anyway, we're especially interested in songs that are written as a dialogue or other back-and-forth, with some bits solo and some bits with the same lyrics in unison (or harmony) and some bits with different lyrics overlapping.
We looked at a couple of online lists of “greatest duets,” but most of them were songs I didn't know (a lot of them were songs I had never even heard of), and often in genres I don't know much about. I'd be more interested in songs from musicals or folksongs than, say, rock or blues.
Any suggestions?