I Don't Wanna Lose You Trivia Quiz

Answer: Harry Chapin

A folk song from 1974. Harry Chapin knew how to tell a good story and this was one of his best (and one of his biggest hits). It told the story in the first person about the narrator who welcomed his son into the world but was too busy to spend much time with him despite his son's adoration of him: "I'm gonna be like you, Dad" was a recurring line. As the narrator became old and his son had his own children, he had no time to spend with his father.

"And as I hung up the phone, it occurred to me
He'd grown up just like me
My boy was just like me"

The chorus was a metaphor: "The cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon" symbolised the fleeting passage of time and missed opportunities.

Harry Chapin died prematurely in 1981 in a car accident on Long Island. The world lost one of its best-ever minstrels far too soon.

Footnote. Ugly Kid Joe did a creditable rock cover of this song in 1990 but it lacked the emotion (and an apostrophe in the title!) of the original.

Answer: Nine Inch Nails

"Hurt" written by Trent Reznor and recorded by his band, the Nine Inch Nails, conveyed a sense of pain, emotional turmoil and abject regret. The singer hurt himself intentionally to feel something real, using physical pain as a way to escape the emotional numbness of a life of regret. The line about a needle tearing a hole implied either drug abuse as a coping mechanism or a reason for regret.
Even though he tried to numb the pain, the singer noted that he remembered everything, causing his emotional scars and regrets to persist. The song received a Grammy Award nomination for Best Rock Song in 1996.

However...
In 2002, when Johnny Cash covered the song, he was dying of a neurodegenerative disorder. The song was included on his final album (recorded whilst he was still alive) "American IV: The Man Comes Around". With its accompanying video, which featured images from Cash's life (including images and photos of his beloved wife June Carter who died soon after the video was shot), the song took on a whole new meaning and it was as if Reznor wrote the song for Cash. Reznor said in an interview in 2004 with "Alternative Press", "...that song isn't mine any more". The video was named the Best Video of the Year by the Grammy Awards, and the best video of all time by "NME" in July 2011. It was a fitting epitaph for Cash and his accumulated library of music.

Answer: Bruce Springsteen

"The River" by Bruce Springsteen was a heartfelt song that reflected on a young man's life filled with regret and lost dreams. In this song, the narrator, from a working-class background in a valley, met Mary in high school when he was 17. He had dreams of a better life. reflected in their early discussions when they swam in the local river, but when Mary became pregnant and work was short, life became cruel and they were destined to live in the poverty cycle. (The song was about Springsteen's sister and brother-in-law despite the singer singing (necessarily) in the first person). There was a haunting harmonica wailing and weaving through the narrative that added to the melancholy.

"We went down to the courthouse
And the judge put it all to rest
No wedding day smiles, no walk down the aisle
No flowers, no wedding dress"

The memories of better times by the river haunted the singer, and made him question whether dreams were simply illusions: "Is a dream a lie if it doesn't come true / Or is it something worse?"

The narrator filled the song with his regrets over missed opportunities and the burden of unfulfilled dreams. He didn't lose the girl but they lost everything else.

Answer: The Beatles

It would be a crime to have a quiz on songs about regret if the most covered song of all time was not included. "Yesterday" (1965) was a mournful, melancholy ballad that lamented the loss of a relationship:

"Why she had to go
I don't know, she wouldn't say
I said something wrong
Now I long for yesterday"

There was a lot of speculation about the song: Was it about a row McCartney had with his current girlfriend Jane Asher? Was it about the loss of his mother some time ago?
Its origins had little to do with sadness and regrets. This was a song where the melody came to McCartney in a dream. He awoke and played it on a nearby piano before he could forget it. He played this melody for the other Beatles and friends as he thought he had plagiarised it subconsciously. (He hadn't.) As he had no words at that stage the first few notes were sung as "Scrambled eggs, oh baby how I love your legs". The lyrics evolved, "Yesterday" replaced "scrambled eggs" and "All my troubles seemed so far away" soon followed - There are only eleven lines of lyrics but it became such a powerful song and dripped with melancholy.
When he took it to the Beatles they did not think they could add to it - They suggested McCartney sing it himself, solo with an acoustic guitar. George Martin producer, suggested a string quartet to accompany him. All the Beatles were hesitant about this, they were, after all a rock and roll band. Nevertheless, that was how it was recorded - McCartney on acoustic guitar accompanied by a string quartet (Martin wrote the arrangement for the classical section).

The Beatles did not want to release a "solo project" as a single. (It was still credited to Lennon-McCartney) so it was not released as a single in the UK but in the US, it was, and it went to number one on the Billboard Hot 100.
By 2013, it had been covered over 2200 times, none of which were better than the original (IMHO).

Answer: The Tremeloes

"Here Comes My Baby" is a 1967 song written by British singer-songwriter Cat Stevens and was meant to be his first single but his record company, Decca, went with "I Love My Dog" instead. (Stevens included the first song on his first album "Mathew and Son"). "Here Comes My Baby" became the first hit on both sides of the Atlantic for the Tremeloes in 1967. However, while Stevens' version was suitably downbeat, The Tremeloes' version was a jaunty upbeat version. The title sounded optimistic as indeed was the first line of the chorus:

"Here comes my baby, here she comes now"
but the optimism is shattered by the next line:
"And it comes as no surprise to me with another guy"

And the next verse:
"Well, here comes my baby, here she comes now
Walking with a love, with a love that's oh, so fine
Never to be mine, no matter how I try"

The narrator admitted to calling his love names and expressing his frustration, but it hadn't changed how he felt - he's still longing for her to come back to him: "I'm still waiting for your heart."

Answer: Britney Spears

In 2000, "Oops!...I Did It Again" by Britney Spears from her second album of the same name, was a dance-pop hit known for its earworm melody and glossy music video. The song was not dissimilar to her previous smash from her first album, "Baby, One More Time". However, this time beneath its pop culture veneer, the singer had some insight into her faults and there was regret expressed.

The singer admitted that once more she has broken someone's heart, which appears to be a pattern but this time regret was expressed as she sang, "I think I did it again, I made you believe we're more than just friends." Part of this ambivalence was Spears trying to project a more 'adult' outlook as she was 16 when she released her first album but 19 when this one was released, and Spears was projecting a more adult if vampish persona ("I'm not that innocent").

Despite the gloss of the album and video she managed to sing that she was feeling regretful for causing emotional pain to her romantic partner. The song, if you looked hard enough, provided an insight into a person who is resigned to her own errors and expresses regret even if it appears as perfunctory flippancy. This was exemplified by the repetition of the lyrics:
"Oops, I did it again to your heart, got lost in this game, oh Baby."

The singer also admitted that her actions were likely to recur in the future and still cause confusion.

Answer: Ben Folds Five

This is one of the saddest songs this author has heard in a lifetime filled with music. What makes it sadder is it is a true story. In their high school teens, Ben Folds and his girlfriend arranged to have an abortion for an unplanned pregnancy. They kept this knowledge from both their parents. The procedure was scheduled for the day after Christmas (they sold their Christmas presents to a pawn shop to pay for the procedure).
Over the length of the song, there is a range of emotions that show how full of remorse and regret this young couple was.

You are gobsmacked when you realise the brick in the song is Folds' girlfriend:

"Now that I have found someone
I'm feeling more alone
Then I ever have before
She's a brick and I'm drowning slowly"

Because of what has happened, his girlfriend, whom he was initially pleased to find, became a brick dragging him under, making him drown because of what has happened.

"Off the coast and I'm headed nowhere"

The abortion has thrown the narrator off track. 'Off the coast' could be interpreted that his life has suddenly gone south and 'headed nowhere' means that becoming a teenage father is not going to get him anywhere in life.

"Then I walk down to buy her flowers"

This was the only time we see that the narrator cared for his girlfriend and in the magnitude of the circumstance, this appeared to be an inadequate token response.

"Can't you see
It's not me you're dying for"

As the listener you are floored when you realise he is talking to his unborn child, and worse when you realise he is not taking any responsibility for the situation.

We feel intense sorrow when we are told of the girl's emotional state about this whole process:

"Now she's feeling more alone / Than she ever has before"

And just when you feel it can't get any worse:

"Driving home to her apartment / For the moment we're alone
She's alone / I'm alone / Now I know it"

We learned that while they went through this dramatic experience, they weren't truly in it together. "For the moment we're alone" allowed you to think the narrator means that the two of them were separated from everyone else but were together, but the last line shows that the situation really was: she was alone, and he was alone.

Ben Folds explained on his "Ben Folds Live" album: "I didn't really want to write this song from any kind of political standpoint or make a statement. I just wanted to reflect on what it feels like. So, anyone who's gone through that before, then you'll know what the song's about."

He certainly made his point. One hopes his girlfriend recovered but doubt lingers long after the song finished

Answer: Walker Brothers

"No Regrets" was a song by UK folk singer/songwriter Tom Rush. It was the last song on his album "The Circle Game" (1968) and was a minor hit in the UK. However when the Walker Brothers recorded it as part of their comeback in 1976 (They had disbanded in 1967 after "Walking in the Rain" was a hit), they discarded Rush's sparse arrangement and went for the full lush orchestral sound. But here's the rub - the lyrics stated quite plainly that the narrator had no regrets about a relationship break-up:

"There's no regrets / No tears goodbye
I don't want you back / We'd only cry again / Say goodbye again"

However the music 'stated' the exact opposite. Here the original D Chord was replaced with the D Minor chord (perhaps the saddest chord of all). Factor in lush strings, discordant guitar solo, and subtle pedal steel guitar swirling around Scott Walker's serene, calm, baritone singing.

"I woke last night and spoke to you
Not thinking you were gone
And it felt so strange
To lie awake alone"

When you heard "strange" it explained everything and nothing about the singer's experience of loss. The lyric was vague yet precise and all-encompassing. However, when Walker sang, the words betrayed the voice - there was nothing but regret.

Another almost perfect song of regret was their 1967 hit "The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore" which featured more 'truthful' lyrics lamenting a lost relationship.

Answer: Gotye featuring Kimbra

This Grammy Award-winning 2011 worldwide number one song written and sung by Australian Gotye and featuring New Zealand singer Kimbra, showed another angle on a song of regrets - it showed both sides of the broken relationship. In the first verse, we saw the protagonist realise something was not right in the relationship:

"I told myself that you were right for me
But felt so lonely in your company"

By the second verse, the narrator was glad it's all over but was pleased to stay friends:

"You can get addicted to a certain kind of sadness
Like resignation to the end, always the end
So when we found that we could not make sense
Well, you said that we would still be friends
But I'll admit that I was glad it was over"

However, we now hear from the other party who sees things rather differently. Kimbra sang:

"Now and then I think of all the times you screwed me over
But had me believing it was always something that I'd done
And I don't wanna live that way
Reading into every word you say"

She wanted a clean break but our protagonist feels cheated:

"But you didn't have to cut me off
Make out like it never happened and that we were nothing (aah-ooh)
And I don't even need your love (ooh)
But you treat me like a stranger, and that feels so rough (aah)
No, you didn't have to stoop so low (ooh)
Have your friends collect your records and then change your number (aah)
I guess that I don't need that, though
Now you're just somebody that I used to know"

The last line is delivered in a plaintive wail - A perfect representation of the unevenness of relationships - especially when they end. The vocal performances in this song contributed to the high esteem this song about regrets is still held, in contemporaneous times.

Answer: Heart

This 1990 song was not written by Heart's Wilson sisters but by Mutt Lange, a renowned record producer who usually collaborated with his musicians (but not this time). In the song, the singer (Ann Wilson) told a story about picking up a hitchhiker on a rainy night to have sex with him in a motel, so she could get pregnant. Before he woke up, she had left but had written a note:

"I am the flower you are the seed
We walked in the garden
We planted a tree" [groan]- author's editorislation.

Cue the third verse where the driver and hitchhiker meet again and he can see the child they made together.

"You can imagine his surprise / When he saw his own eyes
I said please, please understand / I'm in love with another man
And what he couldn't give me / Was the one little thing that you can"

The song was one of Heart's biggest hits reaching number two on the Billboard Hot 100. Our protagonist had no regrets, and no remorse whatsoever about her actions so where is the regret?

It's not in the song but in the singers:
In the '70s, Heart reached the top of the rock game with songs Ann and Nancy Wilson wrote themselves (Eg "Barracuda"). When the hits were lacking in the early '80, they used external writers with songs like "These Dreams" and "Alone." The hits returned, albeit with a loss of creative freedom for Heart members. Ann Wilson hated the lyric "All I Wanna Do Is Make Love to You" but felt pressured to sing it as its hit potential was obvious.

So the band were prepared to trade their creative integrity to maintain a presence in the charts. They came to regret that decision. Maybe it was better to fade away than rust.