The Singer Not the Song Trivia Quiz

Answer: Buck Owens

"Giant doin' cartwheels, statue wearin' high heels
Look at all the happy creatures dancin' on the lawn
Dinosaur Victrola list'nin' to Buck Owens
Doo, doo, doo, lookin' out my back door"

The Bakersfield sound is a brand of country music that originated around Bakersfield, California in the mid- to late 1950s that was greatly influenced by rock and roll. It thusly utilized a significant reliance on electric instruments and a defined backbeat. Buck Owens was a pioneer in this genre as was Merle Haggard, and the song "Lookin' Out My Back Door" emulates their sound.

Answer: Bobby Womack

"I can't sleep at night when you are on my mind
Bobby Womack's on the radio singing to me
If you think you're lonely now, wait until tonight
Boy I'm feeling all out of my element
Throwing things, crying, trying to figure out where the hell I went wrong
The pain reflected in this song is not even half of what I'm feeling inside
I need you, need you back in my life, baby (let's go)"

The lyrics in "We Belong Together" borrow from Bobby Womack's 1981 song "If You Think You're Lonely Now" so he is even given songwriting credit on the song.

Answer: Bob Dylan

"Put on a little Dylan sitting on a fence
I say that line is great, you ask me what I meant by
Said, I shot a man named Gray, took his wife to Italy
She inherited a million bucks and when she died it came to me
I can't help it if I'm lucky
I only wanna be with you
Ain't Bobby so cool
I only wanna be with you"

This song borrows heavily from Dylan's "Tangled Up In Blue" and "Idiot Wind". "Only Wanna Be With You" is on the album "Cracked Rear View" which became the biggest-selling album in the history of Atlantic Records. Hootie & the Blowfish became big on pop and adult contemporary radio stations.

Answer: Gwen Stefani

"I'm sorry that it took so long to see
They were dead wrong trying to put it on me
I'm sorry that it took so long to speak
But I was on tour with Gwen Stefani."

The song references a performance at a club in Trinidad And Tobago where Akon danced very suggestively on stage with a 15-year-old girl, and was widely chastized for it, losing Verizon's sponsorship of the tour in the process. In "Sorry, Blame It On Me", Akon apologizes to friends and family about the event.

Answer: Amy Winehouse

"Amy" is the last song on Green Day's album iDos! and was written as a tribute to Amy Winehouse. As frontman Billie Joe Armstrong explained: "I didn't know her, I just thought it was a real tragic loss...It's interesting because if you think about 'iDos!', it's a party record and so at the end of it maybe 'Amy' kind of comes across as the consequences of the party." He further said, "I just thought her music and her taste in music was so connected to old soul music and the original Motown and Otis Redding and Sam Cooke and things like that...And I think that was a major loss."

"Amy don't you go
I want you around
Singin' woah, please don't go
Do you wanna be a friend of mine?
Do you wanna be a friend of mine?"

Answer: Otis Redding, Tina Turner, Bell Biv DeVoe

Kanye also mentions "Biggie", as in Biggie Smalls "Anita", as in Anita Baker, and a host of others. Twista released the track as the lead single from his 200 album "Kamikaze" and Kanye West used it as the second single from his debut album "The College Dropout".

Answer: Marilyn Monroe

"Goodbye Norma Jean
From the young man in the twenty second row
Who sees you as something more than sexual
More than just our Marilyn Monroe"

For the Lady Di version, "Goodbye Norma Jean" was changed to "Goodbye England's Rose." A lot of other lyrics were changed such as "Though I never knew you at all / You had the grace to hold yourself / While those around you crawled" becoming: "May you ever grow in our hearts / You were the grace that placed itself / Where lives were torn apart." And really most of the lyrics underwent a change. Sadly, some remained pertinent to both women: "And it seems to me you lived your life / Like a candle in the wind / Never knowing who to cling to / When the rain set in" changed only slightly to "And it seems to me you lived your life / Like a candle in the wind
Never fading with the sunset / When the rain set in."

Answer: Neil Young

People have made more of this "feud" than was actually the case. Yes, Neil Young did make cutting remarks about the South and what he viewed as a racist culture in his song "Southern Man" but far from hating each other Neil Young and lynyrd Skynyrd Ronnie Van Zant had a lot of repect for each other. The lyric in "Sweet Home Alabama" that people point to as harboring ill will goes like this:
"WELL I HEARD MISTER YOUNG SING ABOUT HER/ WELL I HEARD OLD NEIL PUT HER DOWN/ WELL, I HOPE NEIL YOUNG WILL REMEMBER/ A SOUTHERN MAN DON'T NEED HIM AROUND ANYHOW"

Van Sant has said regarding the controversy: "We didn't even think about it. The words just came out that way. We just laughed like hell and said, 'Ain't that funny.' We love Neil Young. We love his music." Van Sant grew up listening to Neil Young's music and even wore a Neil Young t-shirt on the cover of Lynyrd Skynyrd's album "Street Survivors" as well as to many of their own concerts. Conversely, Neil Young isn't crazy about his own lyrics in the song causing the controversy. He said in his memoir: "I don't like my words when I listen to it today. They are accusatory and condescending, not fully thought out, too easy to misconstrue."

Answer: Jessica Simpson

"The waiter just took my table
And gave to Jessica Simp- (!)
I guess I'll go sit with tomboy
At least he'll know how to hit."

"So What" has a very catchy sing-along chorus and won the MTV Europe Music Award for the Most Addictive Track in 2008. The song also became Pink's first solo #1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. I say "solo #1" because Pink previously found herself at #1 on the charts when she teamed up with Christina Aguilera, Mya and Lil' Kim in 2001 to remake Labelle's "Lady Marmalade".

Answer: Mick Jagger and P Diddy

The song opens with "Wake up in the morning feeling like P Diddy (Hey, what up girl?)
Grab my glasses, I'm out the door; I'm gonna hit this city (Let's go)"
and several verses later includes the lyric:
"And now the dudes are lining up 'cause they hear we got swagger
But we kick 'em to the curb unless they look like Mick Jagger"

Diddy actually speaks some lines in the song. He says "Hey, what up girl?" and "Let's go!" "Tik Tok" was #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for nine weeks, which was the most for a single by a female artist since Debby Boone's "You Light Up My Life" which spent ten weeks at #1 in 1977.