About the duo: this was a once-off (one album) cooperation between Elvis Costello (1954), British post-punk singer-songwriter, and Anne Sofie von Otter (1955), Swedish mezzo-soprano, famous for opera and art songs. This duo currently has one song in my list of about 200 best pop/rock songs of all time.
About the song: at first sight, this 2001 album For the stars is a weird cooperation. Upon further reflection though, von Otter, although rightly famous for interpretations of songs by Berlioz and Mahler and the like, had shown in her CD of Kurt Weill songs that she can handle lighter material, whilst Costello had already ventured successfully into the classical cross-over genre in his cooperation with the Brodsky Quartet. Anyway, the result is fantastic, especially in the cunning amalgamation of Tom Waits's Broken bicycles and Paul McCartney's Junk - you would swear that this is one single song! Run time 4:06.
