"I would even like to be able to sing a duet with myself.
I would like to be here (Sing along with myself in a song)!"
I would like to be here (Sing along with myself in a song)!"
— Guido, Nine (Musical), "Guido's Song"
A character sings a duet with themself.
Compare other instances of Let's Duet. Also compare Self-Backing Vocalist, where a singer overdubs himself or herself to create a backing vocal.
Not to Be Confused with Un-Duet where one person performs only half a duet by themselves.
Examples:
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Advertising
- One WeightWatchers commercial has Jennifer Hudson singing a duet with herself from her American Idol days, in part to show off her changes in weight from then to now.
Anime & Manga
- Bleach: The character song "Zan" is technically a duet between Ichigo and Zangetsu, although only Ichigo is singing while Zangetsu is just speaking. There is a part during the song where Ichigo does have a duet with his Inner Hollow, meaning that Masakazu Morita is doing a duet with himself.
- In episode 23 of Cardcaptor Sakura, the SONG card copies Tomoyo's singing-voice, and in order to capture it, she has to sing a duet with it, to perfection. Naturally, she does so, and it actually does sound quite beautiful...
- In one episode of Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch, the Black Beauty Sisters duplicate themselves and sing both of their songs at once.
- The Lucky Star ending theme collection album has Konata singing a full version of "Sore ga Ai Deshou", the opening theme from Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu. First she imitates the original version and then she invites herself to sing a duet. "Sugoi ne, atashi?"
- Ranma ½:
- Odd example in one album, specifically "Love Letter from China", where Ranma sings while changing genders thanks to being repeatedly splashed by Akane and Ryōga. The last few lines however are sung by both Megumi Hayashibara (female Ranma) and Kappei Yamaguchi (male Ranma) together while still in character.
- In a related occasion, the Character Christmas song is performed in character by all major anime voice actors, which includes both Megumi Hayashibara and Kappei Yamaguchi. Even Akane wonders how this is possible — Ranma waves it off saying that it's a dream.
- In High School Star Musical season 2 episode 7, when Hoshitani is realizing his feelings for Otori, after realizing that Otori was the senpai he admired all along, he sings the duet that Otori and Hiiragi are supposed to sing in the play they're rehearsing, by himself. It's the first time Hoshitani is able to sing (diegetic) with real emotional delicacy, something he's been trying and failing to manage since the beginning. He ends up replacing Hiiragi and being the one to sing the duet with Otori in the play.
- One of the Digimon Adventure 02 Image Songs qualify as this — Megumi Urawa sings as both Iori and Armadimon for "Mirai e no Message".
- In one of the later episodes of Outlaw Star, Melfina sings a song that resembles one of the ending credits songs in a moment to herself.
- In My-HiME Fumi and Mashiro's character song is a duet with both parts sung by Yukana since she's the one who voices both characters. No such opportunities in My-Otome since Fumi's only in the back story.
Films — Animation
- In Make Mine Music, Willie the Whale has the ability to sing with multiple voices.
- There's a version of "Somewhere Out There" from An American Tail on an obscure album called Fievel and Friends where Fievel sings the song himself, which was originally meant to be a duet.
- Cinderella sings "Sing Sweet Nightingale" in harmony with soap-bubble reflections of herself.
- Frozen: For "Reindeers are Better than People," it's supposed to be a duet in which Kristoff is the lead and Sven is supposed to be the second part. Except, Sven is a reindeer and can't talk, so "he" is actually Kristoff with a goofy voice.
- Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: "I'm Wishing" is a duet between Snow White and her own echo.
Films — Live-Action
- Disney's Mary Poppins: both "in movie", when Mary Poppins sings with her reflection, and then "in production", when Julie Andrews dubbed in the robin-whistles in the same song.
- In Rock A Bye Baby, Jerry Lewis sings a duet with his childhood self (played convincingly by son Gary).
Live-Action TV
- In the Glee episode "Duets", Kurt sings "Le Jazz Hot" as a duet with himself. Two seasons later, "Naked" features a duet between two versions of Rachel, before and after her makeover.
- In an episode of How I Met Your Mother, Ted, Barney, 20 Minutes-from-Now-Ted, 20 Minutes-from-Now-Barney, 20 Years-from-Now-Ted, and 20 Years-from-Now-Barney sing Billy Joel's For the Longest Time, and it's awesome.
- The second time Jimmy Fallon hosted Saturday Night Live he opened the show with a quadret featuring himself, Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney and David Bowie...except all of the others were "stuck in traffic" so Fallon did all the voices by himself.
- On one of her 1970's TV specials, Cher performed "The Jet Song" from West Side Story singing all the parts herself as the different characters.
- In 2013, the BBC invited Gary Barlow to perform a number of his greatest hits. One of these was A Million Love Songs, which he performed as a duet with his 1993 self.
Literature
- In Maskerade, Agnes gets hired by the Ankh-Morpork Opera House because she can sing in chorus. With herself. Among other prodigious vocal talents.
- In The Belgariad prequel novel Polgara the Sorceress, a young Polgara performs not just a duet, but a complete choral arrangement, all by herself, using magic to sing in multiple voices at once. The purpose is, effectively, to scare away a herd of ardent admirers that she's outgrown, in a manner both impressive and stylish.
Music
- Brad Paisley's "Born on Christmas Day" is a "duet" between the present-day singer and a recording of him singing the song at age twelve. This one also qualifies as Self-Backing Vocalist, as he sings a harmony over top the childhood vocal at the end.
- Bob Dylan's cover of "The Boxer" is hoarse folkie Dylan singing a duet with smooth country boy Dylan.
- Say hello to Nick Pitera.
- Gigi D'Agostino's song "L'amour Toujours" features two voices performed by soul musician Ola Onabule: a female-like artificially pitched voice in the first verse followed by his normal voice in the second verse.
- Jeff Foxworthy's novelty Christmas release "Redneck 12 Days of Christmas" involves two characters, both voiced by Foxworthy.
- Ray Stevens has done countless songs where he both sings about the song's central character and voices him. A notable example is "The Streak", where he voices a news reporter and a man who's being interviewed, then returns to sing the chorus. He also does this on "Sex Symbols", where his "duet" with Julio Iglesias is just Ray imitating Julio's voice.
- Tiny Tim once did a cover of Sonny & Cher's "I Got You Babe" in which he sang both parts, employing a baritone as well as his more familiar falsetto.
- In the song "On The Old Front Porch" Tiny Tim not only sings the parts of the would-be suitor (baritone) and the fair maiden (falsetto) but speaks the part of her father {"Will that young man go home tonight or have his breakfast here?!").
- Aled Jones recorded a cover of "Walking in the Air" from The Snowman. Over 20 years later, the now-baritone singer recorded new vocals along with his child-tenor vocals, much like the Paisley example.
- Steven Sharpe Nelson of The Piano Guys has songs with him playing 2, 4 and even 12 separate parts of a song simultaneously on his cello.
- Emilie Autumn in "I Don't Understand", from the Rock Opera "Fight Like A Girl". She uses her natural contralto voice for the part of Thomson, and a fake soprano for the part of Emily.
- Rush does this a lot, and not just in the studio. When the band plays live, Geddy Lee's background vocals are played through samplers.
- On at least one occasion, Yusuf Islam has performed "Father and Son" this way, performing the father's half of the song live while archive footage of his younger self performs the son's half.
- Blind Guardian singer Hansi Kürsch records vast choirs of backing vocals all by himself.
- mothy's 'Screws, Gears, and Pride', though the Vocaloid is pitched slightly differently for the different parts.
- Normally a Distant Duet, on the An American Tail Image Song album "Fievel and Friends", Fievel sings "Somewhere Out There" by himself to the music of the Linda Ronstadt version.
- On the Barbra Streisand box set, Just For The Record, the last song is "You'll Never Know" which has Streisand duetting with her younger self, from the very first recording she ever made.
- Also, on her album Barbra Joan Streisand, she sings "One Less Bell To Answer/A House Is Not A Home" with herself.
- "Mother and Child", recorded for the abandoned Concept Album Life Cycle of a Woman, has her singing the parts of both the mother and child.
- One of her concert specials had her sing a duet with a teenage girl who was portraying a younger version of her, which evolved into a trio when a video recording of Streisand singing in Yentl was brought out.
- When Roger Waters performed The Wall live in 2010, the song "Mother" features him performing with a recording of himself from 1980.
- Robert Alfons of TR/ST performs Soprano and Gravel duets with himself.
- The finale of Interface's The Perfect World, "Back to the Beginning", has Eric Eldredge sing a solo Counterpoint Duet with the refrains of "It Begins Today" and "Square One".
- Croatia's entry in the Eurovision Song Contest in 2017 was My Friend by Jacques Houdek. Part of the lyrics saw him singing in English with a head and falsetto register, with the rest of the lyrics sung in Italian using his chest register.
- Victoria Wood's "Ballad of Barry & Freda" is a Bawdy Song that alternates between the POVs of a sexually frustrated housewife and her bewildered husband.
- Chicago: "Byblos" (Terry Kath).
- Klayton, who runs not one, but three one-man bands, Celldweller, Circle of Dust, and Scandroid, occasionally does crossovers between these projects, resulting in this.
- Usually Eminem's character work involves him rapping as another character for a brief interjection of a couple of lines, but he does have some more involved songs which involve him duetting with himself.
- "Kim" is a Murder Ballad duet between Marshall and Kim, where Eminem plays both the homicidal husband and the terrified, screaming woman he slits the throat of.
- "My Darling", a Relapse bonus track, is a duet between a reforming Slim and the Monster, in which the Monster attempts to seduce and turn Slim back to his old self. He succeeds.
- "Evil Twin" from The Marshall Mathers LP 2 involves Eminem trading verses back and forth with Slim Shady, with increasingly subtle changes of content, delivery and voice. By the end, Eminem/Slim reveals that they were always just the same person all along.
- "Jimmy, Brian and Mike" is based on an unfinished song from 2000, which Eminem decided to finish in the 2020s. It's therefore opened with a guest verse from the middle-aged Slim of 2022, before proceedings are hijacked by the bratty, South Park-inflected Slim of 2000.
Theater
- "Guido's Song" in Nine (Musical) has the protagonist wishing for, among other things, "another me to travel along with myself/I would even like to be able to sing a duet with myself." He then proceeds to do just that, with moderate success.
- Almost any stage musical in which there's more than one actor playing a single character (usually as a young child and as an adult) will invoke this trope at some point:
- Nine
- Violet
- Follies: The only true Solo Duet is "One More Kiss," sung as a duet by 80-year-old Heidi Schiller and her younger counterpart. The older and younger voices overlap for a few seconds in "Waiting For The Girls Upstairs," but only for the sake of entering and exiting a flashback. There are also a few numbers danced simultaneously by the White Dwarf Starlets and their younger counterparts.
- In The Musical of The Pictureof Dorian Gray, Dorian sings a duet with his painting.
- Shrek: The Musical has Fiona singing a solo trio with her child self, her teenage self, and her current self in "I Know It's Today".
- In the musical Floyd Collins, the titular character is in a cave and sings a round with his own echoes. Not magical, but still pretty awesome.
- "Hey There" from the musical The Pajama Game. Sid uses a dictaphone to provide his second voice.
- The Confrontation, from Jekyll & Hyde is either sung with Hyde's lines as a recording and Jekyll's done live, or both parts done live. Some versions mix the two styles, as well.
- Sméagol and Gollum sing at least one of their arguments in the musical version of "The Lord of the Rings."
Video Games
- In Final Fantasy X-2, during the 'Yunapalooza' concert, Yuna uses the Songstress dressphere to sing and unintentionally summons forth Lenne, the long dead summoner and Songstress whose spirit was still bound within the sphere. Through Yuna, they sing a duet together, though they are technically different people.
- Happens in The iDOLM@STER when you put both Ami and Mami on stage with both twins being played by Asami Shimoda. Example here.
- An unused song in Friday Night Funkin' used to test the game's interface, fittingly known as "Test", features the player character facing off against his PlayStation 1 style self from Week 6 in a techno-funk jam that even features the two selves harmonizing with each other.
Web Original
- In the Whateley Universe, some Siren mutants can sing duets, choirs, or even whole orchestras.
Web Videos
- Charlieissocoollike does one of these, appropriately titled "Duet with Myself."
- In Phantom Fear's Friday Night Funkin': Corruption series, the main character does a duet with his own soul in order to fend off the oncoming corruption.
Western Animation
- On The Brak Show, Brak posed as a girl to sing a duet with himself in one episode.
- In an episode of Family Guy, Brian does a one-man (one-dog?) impression of a barbershop quartet.
- In Total Drama World Tour, during the song 'This Is How We Will End It', Alejandro sings a duet with a puppet version of himself being controlled by himself.
- In the Daria episode, "Daria!", Quinn sings a duet with herself in the mirror about what she should wear to school. This being Quinn, her reflection tells her to just wear anything, she'll still look great. The duet with Quinn and Helen also counts in the "in production" sense, as the two share a voice actress.
- In Adventure Time, when the Ice King is singing to his recently put together "princess monster wife" as he shows her around his castle, he pulls out a tape recorder and plays some prerecorded falsetto lines alongside his live singing.
- In Futurama, Zoidberg sings a duet with his Hermes puppet in "The Six Million Dollar Mon", and proceeds to start harmonizing with it. Amy points it out when it happens, twice. The rest of the crew decide not to question it.
- A Phineas and Ferb centered around Candace being split into two entities that personify her two greatest desires, busting her brothers and being with her boyfriend. Naturally, there's a song about how the two Candaces are no longer holding eachother back. Unfortunately there was no singing when she was accidentally split into thirteen Candaces after a bungled attempt at becoming one again.
- In Central Park, Season 1 "Dog Spray Afternoon", when Helen sings the first part of "If There's a Will", she does a duet with herself by imitating Bitsy ordering her around while she calmly obliges to it.
- In My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, the song "This Day Aria" is a Distant Duet between Princess Cadance and a mysterious shapeshifter disguised as Princess Cadance. Lampshaded by the song's title, as an aria is by definition a solo song, and technically this one is.
- Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure: In "Rapunzel's Return", Cassandra sings a reprise of "Waiting in the Wings" with her child self. In this case, since both Casses are at different ages, two different actresses are singing.
