Artist Collaborations featuring "Featuring"

Following on the Elvis and Drake discussion and "featuring" songs, on a recent retro 1970s American Top 40 show, Casey mentioned how Odia Coates had moved up over the years from appearing uncredited Paul Anka on "(You're) Having My Baby" to appearing "with" him eventually to being Paul Anka "&" her on later hits.  He mentioned that that reflected more status for Coates and more royalties.

For such equal status duets, using the "&" makes such multi-artist collaborations seem more like regular recording duos, ala Hall & Oates or Simon & Garfunkel.  In addition to status, seeing an "&" usually means a roughly balanced duet, while a "with" artist may simply sing only a single verse.  The late 70's began a major stretch of equal status duets.

In such collaborations, the first artist listed generally sings first and is the bigger star, but almost always reflects that the recording first appears on their album (though if the secondary artist later achieves a Greatest Hits album, the song is often there).

As late as the 80s, the distant 3rd choice for collaborations was "featuring" which originally meant a group trying to highlight their lead singer (Dawn featuring Tony Orlando), a one-off vocalist for an instrumental group (Art of Noise featuring Tom Jones), or the very rare producer big enough to get top billing (Quincy Jones often "featured" or "introduced" vocalists).

But with the advent of rap, "featuring" became the go-to word for either singers on a rap record or a rapper on an otherwise sung record.  If a singer features a rapper, the rapper’s part is usually not integral to the song, allowing record companies to market both with and without.  These have been ubiquitous for the last 25 years...the first #1 of this type I found was "Gangsta's Paradise" by Coolio featuring L.V. from 1995.

In the UK, many more producers are famous in their own right, including some who've crossed over to the U.S. like Calvin Harris.  Their vocal records may have an uncredited singer, but if credited are usually "featured," with "&" generally implying a traditional duet if the producer also sings.

A more recent 4th choice for collaborations is “vs," (or equivalently "x") usually with two collaborating DJs or a DJ doing a radical remix but still prominently featuring the main artist.  JXL (a producer/DJ) vs. Elvis was the first I remember with "A Little Less Conversation," bringing us full circle.  I think Drake definitely needs to work with the Presley estate... :-)