Back to Black Multiple Choice Quiz | 10 Questions

Answer: Back to black

The 2006 album "Back to Black," Winehouse's second, was critically acclaimed and commercially successful. With songs like "Rehab" and "Tears Dry on Their Own," it earned a Grammy Award for Best Pop Vocal Album. Like much of Winehouse's other work, the title song (which she wrote with Mark Ronson) evokes a dramatically dysfunctional romance, lifting the singer to heights of passion before plunging her "back to black." Sadly, Winehouse's life was no less tumultuous, and she died at 27 in 2011. "Back to Black" was the final album released in her lifetime.

Answer: A red door

"I see a red door and I want it painted black.
No colors anymore, I want them to turn black.
I see the girls walk by dressed in their summer clothes;
I have to turn my head until my darkness goes."

"Paint It, Black" did quite well for the Stones, rising to the top of both the UK Singles Chart and the US Billboard Hot 100 in 1966; the album, "Aftermath," did well too. The somewhat nihilistic lyrics clearly struck a chord. It's been argued that the song describes the first and all-encompassing stage of a deep grief:

"Maybe then I'll fade away and not have to face the facts
It's not easy facin' up when your whole world is black
... If I look hard enough into the settin' sun,
My love will laugh with me before the mornin' comes."

Answer: Waiting for this moment to arise

A similar waiting game is recounted in the second verse:

"Blackbird singing in the dead of night,
Take these sunken eyes and learn to see.
All your life,
You were only waiting for this moment to be free."

"Blackbird," written by Paul McCartney (but credited to Lennon/McCartney as with all their compositions during the Beatles era), was released on "The White Album" in 1968. The song is a peaceful one; the gentle vocals are accompanied only by guitar, a tapping sound, and birdsong. Nonetheless, in its reference to perseverance and hope despite dreams delayed - and in its description of a blackbird rather than, say, a bluebird - the song is a clear allegory for the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

Answer: Veil

This is "Long Black Veil," written in 1959 by Danny Dill and Marijohn Wilkin and memorably performed by a number of singers; my favorite is a duet between Joni Mitchell and Johnny Cash, but Bruce Springsteen, Joan Baez, and many others have also done it very well.

The first few verses tell a spare, hard story. The narrator is falsely accused of murder, but he can't prove his innocence without admitting where he was at the time: committing adultery with his best friend's wife. So he goes to the gallows, and she grieves in secret for the rest of her life. Who is more haunted: the ghostly narrator or his mourning lover?

Answer: Fleetwood Mac

Peter Green, a member of Fleetwood Mac, wrote the song. After releasing it as a single in 1968, the band included it on two 1969 compilation albums: "English Rose" (for release in the US) and "The Pious Bird of Good Omen" (for release in the UK). But the song didn't really take off until Santana re-arranged it in 1970, mixing it with the music of "Gypsy Queen" for their album "Abraxas." The Santana version reached as high as number four on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart, and it's that cover (or variations on it) that receives the most radio play by far.

Answer: Extra-terrestrials

In the chorus, the MIBs are described as "galaxy defenders"; in the verses, Smith drops such subtle clues as "Guard against extra-terrestrial violence" and "We're your first, last and only line of defence against the worst scum of the universe." Lines like "They won't let you remember" refer to a device that the MIBs use to wipe the short-term memory of human witnesses to the presence of aliens on planet Earth; this is one of the film's more charming running gags.

The music video pulls extensively from the set and costuming of the movie, even using movie footage at times. The tie-in makes sense; after all, Will Smith starred in the film, portraying the secretive government agency's newest man in a "black suit with the black Ray Bans on."

Answer: Les Misérables

With music by Claude-Michel Schönberg and lyrics by Alain Boublil and Jean-Marc Natel, "Les Misérables" has been a global phenomenon since its first performance in 1980. (The first English-language performance, with lyrics adapted by Herbert Kretzmer, came in 1985.) Based on Victor Hugo's 1862 novel, the musical tells the story of two generations of people who struggle to define goodness and find redemption in a world that's often casually cruel. "Red and Black" belongs to the younger generation's story. An idealistic student, Enjolras, sings to rally his friends toward a revolution - the ill-fated historical uprising of 1832. Then young Marius, who has just fallen in love, joins in and gives the colors a different meaning:

"Red ... I feel my soul on fire!
Black ... My world if she's not there.
Red ... The color of desire!
Black ... The color of despair!"

Answer: Elvis Presley

The 1989 song starts with Elvis's birth, in "Mississippi in the middle of a dry spell," and then continues through his peak as a popular singer: "Mama's baby's in the heart of every schoolgirl/`Love Me Tender' leaves 'em cryin' in the aisle." ("Love Me Tender," from 1956, is still one of Elvis's best-loved songs.) Elvis's sudden death in 1977 is treated too - "In a flash he was gone, it happened so soon" - but the bulk of the song is its memorable chorus, a hymn to Elvis's charisma and presence:

"Black velvet and that little boy smile!
Black velvet with that slow southern style!
A new religion that'll bring you to your knees:
Black velvet, if you please."

"Black Velvet" was written by David Tyson and Christopher Ward. After spending a few weeks at the top of the US Billboard Hot 100 chart, it earned Myles a Grammy for Best Female Rock Vocalist.

Answer: Nina Simone

Simone was a tremendously versatile and expressive singer; this song, which she wrote with Weldon Irvine, was one of the many civil-rights standards Simone sang in the 1960s and 1970s. "To Be Young, Gifted and Black" is a paean to the tremendous potential of a generation of black youngsters:

"In the whole world you know
There are a billion boys and girls
Who are young, gifted and black,
And that's a fact!"

Shortening the title to "Young, Gifted and Black," Aretha Franklin made the song the centerpiece of her album by the same name in 1972. Her stirring rendition earned her a sixth straight Grammy Award for Best Rhythm and Blues Female Vocal Performance.

Answer: Johnny Cash

Cash, a country-music star, soon acquired a reputation for wearing plain, dark clothing on stage, in contrast to the bright colors and sparkly rhinestones of many of his peers. Purportedly, the tradition began because a young Cash and his bandmates all happened to have black shirts, but this coincidence became a tradition and then a statement. As Cash explains it in "Man in Black":

"Well, we're doin' mighty fine, I do suppose,
In our streak of lightnin' cars and fancy clothes,
But just so we're reminded of the ones who are held back,
Up front there oughta be a Man In Black."

Much of the rest of the song is a listing of some "of the ones who are held back," from "the sick and lonely old" to "the prisoner who has long paid for his crime / But is there because he's a victim of the times." "Man in Black" was released in 1971, as part of an album with the same title.