Late career is when the rules stop applying. With nothing left to prove and nobody left to impress, artists sometimes make their most surprising and most honest music. The partnerships on this list were not calculated crossover moves. Most of them grew from genuine mutual admiration between people who had spent decades traveling parallel roads without quite meeting. When they finally did, the results were usually worth the wait.
#1: Loretta Lynn and Jack White
White produced Van Lear Rose entirely with his own band, stripping away the polished Nashville production that had surrounded Lynn for decades and letting her voice sit raw over electric guitars and drums. Released in 2004, it won two Grammy Awards including Best Country Album. Lynn was 71 and had not released new original material in years. White gave her the most critically acclaimed record of her career.
