One Scene Wonder / Music

• Dire Straits's "Money For Nothing" is well known for the background singing that Sting does in it. You know, "I want my emmmmmmmm teeeeeeee veeeeeeeeeee......." (in the same tune of "Don't Stand So Close To Me")
• Rockwell's only hit "Somebody's Watching Me" featured Michael Jackson (notably in the chorus).
• Tom Waits pitch-perfect turn as Tommy in Primus' "Tommy the Cat."
• Queen: David Bowie joining up for "Under Pressure". Steve Howe playing a relatively short (compared to Yes and Asia standards) flamenco guitar solo on "Innuendo", which has become a classic and one loads of people around the world try to learn and replicate (oddly appropriate given that Brian May asked Steve to do it because he couldn't manage it). Also, the half-minute operatic section on "'Bohemian Rhapsody" is arguably one of the first things people recall about Queen in spite of being very different to 99% of things the band did before or since.
• On the Frank Zappa album Broadway the Hard Way, Sting comes on halfway through and performs "Murder by Numbers".
• "Weird Al" Yankovic does this a lot.
  • When Al did his pastiche of Frank Zappa, "Genius in France," for the album Poodle Hat, who did he get to provide solos satisfactorily reminiscent of Frank's? Dweezil, the son of Frank Zappa.
  • Ben Folds provides an ornate piano solo on the same album's "Why Does This Always Happen to Me?"
  • And when he recorded a parody of The Doors ("Craigslist") for the Internet Leaks EP, he enlisted none other than Ray Manzarek to contribute the keyboard parts.
  • On "Taco Grande" (a parody of Gerardo's "Rico Suave" which appears on the album Off the Deep End), Cheech Marin provides a Spanish spoken-word bridge.
  • Mary Kay Bergman performs less than two seconds of "Pretty Fly For A Rabbi" on Running With Scissors. Specifically, the "for a rabbi" before the second verse.
  • From UHF, we have the Beverly Hillbillies theme, which is a parody of Money For Nothing. Fitting, then, that Mark Knophler from Dire Straits plays lead guitar on the track. (Weird Al says Knopfler gave his permission only if he could play on the track.)
• 80s pop singer Tiffany had a surprise guest appearance by rapper Krayzie Bone on the song "I'm Not Sleeping," on her 2001 "come back album" Color Of Silence''.
• Slash's guitar solos on TLC's "Red Light Special" song.
• Bone Thugs-n-Harmony's guest appearance on Mariah Carey's Butterfly album, the most jarring however being ODB on her previous record.
• Anytime two highly acclaimed rappers team up, and make a legendary memorable collaboration. This article explores the phenomenon in more detail.
  • Eminem is so infamous for upstaging other artists in his features that a rapper getting generously outrapped by their guest rapper is called getting renegaded, in reference to Em stealing the scene on Jay-Z's "Renegade". (Nas mentioned this on his Jay-Z Diss Track, "Ether"' - "Eminem murdered you on your own shit!") Renegading other rappers has become a major part of Eminem's persona.
    • Eminem on 50 Cent's "Patiently Waiting".
    • Eminem on The Game's "We Ain't" even has Game reference "Ether" after going back to his verse — "Lo, get Dre on the phone quick — tell him Em just killed me on my own shit!" Game would later regret this statement after dissing Eminem for attention in 2022.
    • Eminem showing up Kanye West, Drake and (arguably) Lil Wayne on "Forever" was enough to serve as a Career Resurrection for him after taking years off to deal with a drug addiction in between dropping two initially reviled albums. Notably, both Kanye and Drake rewrote their verses extensively just to avoid getting blown off the track, and still failed. "Forever" became a sports anthem, but people generally only rap Eminem's verse. After appearing to perform his verse live with Drake on the Detroit leg of his tour, Drake ended the song by prostrating himself before Eminem, acknowledging the winner. Eminem bragged about this in 2010's "No Love", where he mocks other rappers for having to rewrite their verses to keep up with him, and also in 2018's "Fall", where he brags, "the fans waited for this moment like that feature when I stole the show... sorry if I took forever".
    • Eminem on Lil Wayne's "Drop the World" is generally considered either: the highlight of Rebirth, the only good part of Rebirth, or one of only two good parts of Rebirth (the other being Nicki Minaj's verse).
    • Eminem on Nas's "EPMD 2" is also generally considered to be the high point of the well-received album, and was even cited by Pitchfork as an example of great music made by Eminem in his uneven midlife career.
  • Bone appearing on Biggie's "Notorious Thugs" track, which is considered a classic.
  • 2pac appearing on Bone's "Thug Luv" track months after he died.
  • Phil Collins showing up in Bone's music video for "Home".
  • Nas and AZ appearing together on the track "Life's A Bitch" on the classic Illmatic album
  • Jay-Z on Biggie's "I Love The Dough" song from his Life After Death cd.
  • Nicki Minaj's verse in Kanye West's "Monster". Ye initially didn't want to include the song as he was ashamed of how badly he had been outrapped, but eventually swallowed his pride to go through with it.
• A rarer-example of the above example is when a high-profile rapper appears as a featured artist on a pop or R'n'B (or occasionally more left-field) song.
  • Kanye West on Estelle's "American Boy"
  • Jay-Z on Rihanna's "Umbrella" - has the first verse (lasting less than a minute) and disappears for the rest of the song (and album, since "Umbrella" opened up Good Girl Gone Bad)
• Whenever Andre 3000 turns up on a track, you know he's gonna leave the rest of the song (and arguably album) in his wake.
  • Rick Ross' "Sixteen"
  • Kelis' "Millionaire"
  • Gorillaz' "DoYaThing"
  • Andre 3000 is even capable enough to be a on songs from his own group. Mamacita and Y'All Scared, two rather generic, guest-driven tracks from Aquemini that are generally considered as Album Filler, have Andre 3k stealing the spotlight and completely reworking the message on both of them.
• Mariah Carey doing back up vocals for Babyface on a track called "Every Time I Close My Eyes".
• Jamie Foxx's video for "Blame It" has scores of celeb appearances. Ashley Scott from Jericho (2006), Ron Howard, Forest Whitaker, Jake Gyllenhaal, Samuel L. Jackson, Quincy Jones, Cedric the Entertainer, Morris Chestnut, Clifton Powell, Alex Thomas, DeRay Davis, Joe (R&B singer), Mos Def, Tatyana Ali, Jalen Rose, Bill Bellamy, Electrik Red, Dawn Richard, Keshia Knight Pulliam and LeToya.
• Eddie Van Halen providing the guitar solo for Michael Jackson's "Beat It".
  • Also Slash on "Give In to Me" and Steve Stevens on "Dirty Diana."
• Vincent Price for the closing speech, and the laugh, in "Thriller".
  • Not to mention his opening speech in Alice Cooper's "Black Widow" a decade earlier.
• Avantasia: Roy Khan on "Twisted Mind" from The Scarecrow, Klaus Meine on "Dying for an Angel" from The Wicked Symphony.
• Clare Torry's wordless wails on Pink Floyd's "The Great Gig in the Sky," on The Dark Side of the Moon. On an album that is completely full of awesome, she is possibly the most awesomest part of it.
  • Not the only example from Pink Floyd: The Judge from the song The Trial from The Wall, who only appears in that song, and only for the last minutes or so.
  • Roy Harper singing on "Have A Cigar" also counts.
• Eric Clapton's guitar solo on The Beatles' "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", and in turn, George Harrison's rhythm guitar playing on Cream's "Badge".
• In turn, Elton John plays piano, organ and sings backing vocals on "Whatever Gets You Thru The Night" by John Lennon, and John playing guitar and singing backing vocals on Elton's cover of The Beatles' "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds" They made a bet that if both got to number one, they would appear in concert together, which came true in 1974, when Lennon appeared onstage at an Elton show in Madison Square Garden to sing both songs and "I Saw Her Standing There". It would prove to be Lennon's last public concert performance.
• Blake Shelton in Cady Groves' "This Little Girl" music video. He plays a towtruck driver who tows Cady's car while she is still inside it.
• Ian Knutson wrote less than 1/4 of "Religion Song (Put Away The Gun)" by Everything Else.
• Sandy Denny's vocals on Led Zeppelin's "The Battle of Evermore", the only guest vocalist on any Zeppelin song. Played live the part was usually sung by John Paul Jones.
• David Crosby and Phil Collins flipflopped this trope; Crosby sang backup on Collins' "Another Day In Paradise", while Collins returned the favor on Crosby's song "Hero".
• Jimmy Page's guest performance as the lead guitarist on Michel Polnareff's "La Poupeé Qui Fait Non" is an incredibly emotional performance to remember.

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