I was elated to come across Andrew Collins' Guardian column revolving around what he deems to be pop music's "new 'F' word"—featuring. I'm so there with you, Andrew!
He goes on about how many songs in the charts feature "featuring" these days, as well as the different spellings (feat., ft., etc.), and laments the underuse of plain old "and" when it comes to duets. Think Estelle featuring Kanye West, Madonna featuring Justin Timberlake (despite the actual single sleeve saying just Madonna & Justin), Timbaland featuring OneRepublic.My own constant dilemma with "featuring" is with my iPod. For instance, when one downloads or upload Madonna's new album, if you leave the Madonna feat. Justin Timberlake billing as is for "4 Minutes," the song gets knocked to the bottom of the tracklisting. Actually, it gets knocked to the end of all Madonna songs overall.
One shady way around this is to retype it as "4 Minutes (feat. Justin Timberlake)," leaving just Madonna in the artist column. Lame. That's not what the song is really called. And you're messing up my LastFM mojo by doing it that way.There's always the option to leave out Justin's name altogether, theoretically solving all problems of song title and rearranged tracklisting. Again, total bullshit. Justin's on there singing. I can hear his nasally voice. Plus, it's like erasing part of history, man!
Then sometimes you get these out of the blue billings like "No Air" by Jordin Sparks "duet with" Chris Brown. Which Captain Obvious came up with that?
Life's a constant struggle when dealing with duets and iPods. And screw "featuring." I like the other "F" word much better.