Johnny Cash and June Carter were the original power couple of country. Faith Hill and Tim McGraw and Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood later filled their boots. The songwriting powerhouse of Ashford & Simpson (Nick Ashford and Valerie Simpson) was the enduring king and queen of R&B, and Jay-Z and Beyoncé are one of the most powerful couples in music, surpassing a combined net worth in the billions.
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Some couples that didn’t stay together still made some beautiful music together. Bob Dylan and Joan Baez collaborated on several projects throughout their four-year relationship in the early ’60s. Sonny Bono and Cher ruled variety TV, from the 1960s through the ’70s and left behind their iconic hit “I Got You Babe. In the 1990s, the once-coupled Lauren Hill and Wyclef Jean broke the Fugees into the mainstream in the 1990s, while former Mickey Mouse Club cast mates Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake became pop darlings.
Other iconic pairings, the likes of Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull, Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love, among a long list of others, may have been couples but they made music in their own separate ways.
In honor of those who collaborated on some legendary sounds, here are five iconic rock couples who made some beautiful music together.
1. Paul McCartney and Linda McCartney
One word: Wings. It all started when Paul McCartney met photographer Linda Eastman at a Georgie Fame concert at The Bag O’Nails nightclub in London in 1967. The two were married in 1969 and after Linda offered some backing harmony on his 1970 solo debut, McCartney, the two released their only credited collaborative album together, Ram, in 1971, McCartney wanted to form a new band. Taking on former Moody Blues guitarist and singer Denny Laine and Linda on keyboards along with drummer Denny Seiwell, the band released their debut, Wild Life, as Wings, in December of 1971.
The band released six more albums together through Back to the Egg in 1979. Paul and Linda remained married and continued collaborating together until her death at the age of 56 in 1998.
Take a look at the deeper partnership between Paul and Linda McCartney HERE.
2. John Lennon and Yoko Ono
Long before they began making music together, John Lennon was writing a number of songs about his wife Yoko Ono, while in The Beatles, including the Abbey Road track “I Want You (She’s So Heavy),” along with “Don’t Let Me Down,” “The Ballad of John and Yoko,” and “Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey.”
In 1969, the couple formed The Plastic Ono Band, releasing their individual, yet collaborative, debuts John Lennon / Plastic Ono Band and Yoko Ono / Plastic Ono Band in 1970. Both albums also featured former Beatle Ringo Starr on drums. Ono’s release also featured George Harrison on sitar.
The Plastic Ono era segued into Lennon’s and Ono’s individual solo careers. The two remained life partners and collaborators through Lennon’s death in 1980.
Check out John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s Love Story in 10 Songs HERE.
3. Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham
Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks‘ paths first crossed at Menlo-Atherton High School, Palo Alto, California. Nicks eventually joined Buckingham’s band Fritz, and after the band split, the two ultimately became a couple when they both relocated to Los Angeles together in 1972 and released their self-titled album a year later.
“I loved him before he was a millionaire,” said Nicks. “We were two kids out of Menlo-Atherton High School. I loved him for all the right reasons. We did have a great relationship at first. I loved taking care of him and the house.”
Just as Nicks and Buckingham were close to breaking up, they were asked to join Fleetwood Mac in 1974. The couple eventually broke up in 1976, just as they were working on the next album, and all four unleashed the internal tumult, affairs, and aggressions on the band’s 1977 album, Rumours.
Nicks released her solo debut, Bella Donna, in 1981, and continued on with her solo career in Fleetwood Mac, while Buckingham left to pursue his in 1987. He later rejoined the band in 1997 and remained with them through 2018.
4. Debbie Harry and Chris Stein
In the early 1970s, art student and musician Chris Stein met Debbie Harry at her first-ever gig with her band, The Stilettos. Soon after, the two became a couple, and Stein joined the band. After they both left The Stillettos in 1974, they formed Blondie and became regulars on the NYC club scene. Along with The Patti Smith Band, The Ramones, Television, Talking Heads, and others, Blondie was one of the early musical misfits that regularly resided at CBGB.
Blondie and a collection of iconic hits — “Heart of Glass,” “Atomic,” “One Way or Another,” Dreaming,” “Call Me,” “Atomic,” “The Tide Is High,” and more. The band’s 1980 hit “Rapture,” off their 1980 album, Autoamerican, was the first song featuring rap to reach No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Following the release of their sixth album, The Hunter, in 1982, Blondie broke up. Harry embarked on a solo and continued taking acting roles, and later split from Stein in 1987.
The two remained friends, and Blondie reconvened in the late ’90s. They released their seventh album, No Exit, in 1999, and four more releases through The Pollinator in 2017, and have continued performing as Blondie through 2023.
5. Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore
For 30 years, then-husband and wife Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore made lots of noise with Sonic Youth. Coming straight out of the New York City no-wave scene that delivered the bleak and urban visions of director Jim Jarmusch, Lydia Lunch’s musical and spoken word diatribes, and a litany of musical abrasions from Swans, Sonic Youth were experimenting with their own alternative noise rock.
The band—Moore and Gordon, along with guitarist Lee Ranaldo and drummer Steve Shelley—released their fuzzed-out, lo-fi Confusion is Sex in 1983 through their 15th and final album, The Eternal, in 2009.
After 27 years of marriage, Moore and Gordon divorced in 2011 and Sonic Youth disbanded, though the band’s legacy is forever.
Photo: Reg Lancaster/Daily Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
