Sex Pistols Songs - In Other Words Quiz

Answer: Pretty Vacant

Besides appearing on the Sex Pistols' only studio album, "Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols," the song "Pretty Vacant" was the third single released by the Sex Pistols. It's been covered by other bands many times. The "New Musical Express" magazine declared it as its Single of the Year for 1977. It was somewhat infamous for singer Johnny Rotten's pronunciation of the word "vacant" in the lyrics.

Answer: Liar

Besides being catchy, this song is most noticeable for its use of the words "lie" or "liar" a full 28 times in the lyrics! It can be found on side one of both the original 11-track and also the 12-track version of "Never Mind the Bollocks."

Answer: New York

This song was openly a diatribe directed at the New York Dolls, especially David Johansen and Syl Sylvain, and the New York punk scene. The mid 1970s were marked by heated competition for the right to lay claim to "creating" the punk scene and punk music, and the rivalry between New York and England was fierce.

Answer: No Feelings

Before the record company A&M backed out of its contract with the Sex Pistols, some pressings of the single of "God Save the Queen" had been done. The B-side of the single was "No Feelings," though it was a rough version of the song and was (perhaps by mistake) titled "No Feeling" (singular). A more finished version of the song was released on "Never Mind the Bollocks."

Answer: Holidays in the Sun

This is the fourth single released by the Sex Pistols, and was inspired by their "vacation" away from London to the Isle of Jersey and then, more importantly, to Berlin. It was the last single recorded by the band until 2007 when they did cover versions of two of their songs for video game soundtracks.

Answer: Seventeen

"Seventeen" is the closest thing to a personal anthem or manifesto the Sex Pistols ever produced, with its lyrics focusing on life's being short, the band's desire to make noise, their lack of caring about convention, and their lack of desire to work but rather to "just speed."

Answer: Bodies

The song was about abortion and about a young woman named Pauline, from Birmingham, who had been in a mental institution and who, both in the institution and later, had several abortions. She would talk about her abortions with John Lydon (Johnny Rotten) and perhaps the other band members as well.

Answer: God Save the Queen

One of the band's most famous songs, "God Save the Queen" was originally titled "No Future." With its talk of England's "fascist regime" and "no future in England's dreaming," it was a powerful protest to conditions in the 1970s. It has been named one of Rolling Stone magazine's "500 Greatest Songs of All Time" and placed third on Q Magazine's list of "100 Songs That Changed The World."

Answer: Submission

If John Lydon is to be believed, the interesting story about this song is that the band's manager, Malcolm McLaren, wanted John and Glen Matlock to write a song about "submission" in its "subjugation" or "bowing down before" sense, supposedly as a symbolic tie to his "S&M anti-fashion" clothing store, "Sex." But Lydon and Matlock instead wrote one as a play on words of a "sub" (for submarine) "mission" and centered it on thoughts about a woman.

Answer: Anarchy in the U.K.

Along with "God Save the Queen," this is perhaps the Sex Pistols' most explicitly political song. The lyrics urge a violent, anarchist orientation. Ironically, John Lydon has admitted that he used the word "anarchist" because it was the closest rhyme to "Antichrist" (from the song's first line) that he could come up with. "Anarchy in the U.K." was the Sex Pistols' first released song, in 1976.