Colour-Matched Song Titles Trivia Quiz

Answer: Purple

"Purple Haze" was the second single off the Jimi Hendrix Experience album released in March 1967. It made number three on the UK Official Singles Chart but only made it to number 65 on the US Billboard Hot 100.

The popularity of the song was no doubt enhanced by ambiguity surrounding the lyrics. Hendrix claimed the song was inspired by a dream he had about walking under water. The public thought the song was about an acid trip or hallucinations caused by LSD. Hendrix emphatically denied this.

The song contains one of the most well known Mondegreens in rock history:"Scuse me while I kiss the sky" was interpreted as "Scuse me while I kiss this guy." Hendrix contributed to the ambiguity by sometimes singing it the alternative way and pointed to a band member.

Answer: Silver

"Silver Thunderbird" was the second single for Marc Cohn and was released in 1991. The song peaked at number 63 on the Billboard Hot 100. It followed the hugely successful autobiographical "Walking in Memphis" (1991) which reached number twelve on the Billboard Hot 100. Both tracks were from Cohn's eponymous 1991 album which reached number 38 on the Billboard 200 Chart and was certified Gold in February 1992, and certified Platinum in April 1996.

The song is not so much about a car but about Cohn's father who died when he was twelve. In a 1992 interview Cohn said his father was a Willie Loman-type character (from "Death of a Salesman") "A guy out there working a seven-day week and not able to support his family. He's 'the man with the plan and the pocket comb' in the song. Only the plan never panned out. But he did have a silver Thunderbird". In other words, a man who never quite made it but his one luxury was his silver Thunderbird. The song explains how the singer never got to know his father, how he left for work in the morning and took all his mystery with him:

"Down the road in the rain and snow
The man and his machine would go
Oh the secrets that old car would know..."

Cohn wrote fifteen songs called "Silver Thunderbird" before he was happy to record the version we all know.

Answer: Red

"Little Red Rooster" or "The Red Rooster" as it was originally known, was attributed to Willie Dixon and was first recorded by Howlin' Wolf in 1961, and later by Sam Cooke who added a verse and changed the lyrics slightly.

The Rolling Stones were very much influenced by Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters in their music. They recorded a version which was much more faithful to the original than the Sam Cooke version. It was one of the songs they played on the "Ed Sullivan Show" in 1965.

The song was released by the Rolling Stones in 1964 and reached number one on the UK Singles Chart. It was the first blues song to reach the top of the charts in the UK and, in fact was the only blues song to do so in the UK in the twentieth century.

The song did not chart in the the US as it was banned for sexual connotations; the Sam Cooke version was played and subsequently charted.

Answer: Yellow

"Yellow"(2000) was the second single for Coldplay (following "Shiver) from their inaugural album "Parachutes" released in 2000. The song went top five in the UK Singles Chart and reached number 48 on US Billboard Hot 100 but ultimately achieved gold record status there, despite its lowly peak chart position.

A lot of remarks have been made about the the meaning of the lyrics: They range from a story about unrequited love to being totally meaningless, where the word has been attributed to the Yellow Pages being the first thing songwriter Chris Martin saw when he wrote the song. in 2011 in an interview on the "Howard Stern Show", Chris Martin explained the use of the word yellow was meaningless and that the "L" sound was the sound they were looking for.

The video was supposed to be about the band wandering through a busy sunny beach with lots of beach-goers around. However the band's drummer's mother died so the set was changed to show Mr Martin wandering along a lonely beach. The film was shot at a high shutter speed necessitating Mr Martin to lip-sync to the song played at high speed.

Answer: Orange

"Orange Crush" was a song from R.E.M.'s "Green" album of 1988. It was released as a single where it reached number 28 in the UK Singles Chart, but despite it reaching number one as a promotional single on the U.S. Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks, it was never released in the US as a single.

The song belies its upbeat tempo and is actually about the horrors of war, where a young man used to the comforts of home goes to fight the Vietnam War. The story is a composite fictional narrative where "orange crush" is a reference to Agent Orange.

Critics who lauded the song as the band's first protest song about the Vietnam War were mistaken. That distinction went to "Body Count", a song not released by the band (a bootleg version is available on the net) but a staple at their live shows.

Answer: Green

"Green River" was a single from Southern Rock band Creedence Clearwater Revival released in June 1969 just before their album of the same name. The song went to number two on the Billboard Hot 100 and number 19 on the UK single charts.

The song is autobiographical. While the band was classified as Southern or Bayou Rock, all four band members were from California. Green River, the place, was explained by band leader John Fogerty in a 1993 "Rolling Stone" interview: '"Green River" is really about this place where I used to go as a kid on Putah Creek, near Winters, California. I went there with my family every year until I was ten. Lot of happy memories there. I learned how to swim there. There was a rope hanging from the tree. Certainly dragonflies, bullfrogs. There was a little cabin we would stay in owned by a descendant of Buffalo Bill Cody. That's the reference in the song to Cody Junior.'

Answer: Brown

The Stranglers emerged in the UK punk era in 1975, supporting US punk acts such as the Ramones and Patti Smith. Although labelled a punk band, the four musicians had musical backgrounds that belied the simplicity of punk rock: Guitarist Hugh Cornwall was a blues musician; bass player JJ Burnel was a classical guitarist, who had performed in symphony orchestras; Jet Black's musical background was jazz drumming; Dave Greenfield had played on German military bases. The British musical press were suspicious of their punk roots because of musical dexterity and the intellectual nature of their lyrics.
"Golden Brown" (1981) seemed to verify these suspicions: The song is actually written in 3/4 waltz time with a conventional 4/4 time signature on the fourth bar. Harpsichord is the prominent musical instrument.

"Golden Brown" peaked at number two on the UK Singles Chart, their biggest hit and EMI's biggest selling UK record for many years. The song was controversial as it was thought the song title was a reference to heroin. This was denied by the band until 2001, when lyricist Cornwall admitted it was about heroin and a girl, the girl being of Mediterranean descent with golden brown skin. The girl was Cornwall's girlfriend at the time.

Answer: White

Jefferson Airplane, from San Francisco, formed in 1965 in the midst of the Haight-Ashbury counterculture movement; they became symbols of that movement. The band was not commercially successful until Grace Slick replaced original vocalist Signe Toly Anderson in October 1966.

The group's second album, "Surrealistic Pillow" was released in February 1967. The album featured two songs, "Someone to Love" (1965) and "White Rabbit" (1965), both of which were brought by Slick from her previous band, The Great Society. Both songs were released as singles, "Someone to Love" peaking at number five and "White Rabbit" at number eight on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart. The album peaked at number three in the US Billboard album chart and was certified gold. It became the quintessential album representing the psychedelic 60s.

"White Rabbit" was written by Slick after taking LSD and listening to Miles Davis' "Sketches of Spain" {1960) (The song she wrote had a Spanish beat). The song is about Lewis Carroll's "Alice In Wonderland" (1865) a book Slick maintained had plenty of drug references.

Answer: Gold

Neil Young's third solo album "Harvest" (1972) and a single from it, "Heart of Gold" (1972) both reached number one on the US Billboard charts, the only time in over fifty years of recording that Young achieved a number one hit or a number one album. "Heart of Gold" was recorded in Nashville where Young was to appear on the Johnny Cash television program. Also in town were Linda Ronstadt and James Taylor who were to appear on the same program.

The owner of a local recording studio invited Young to record in the studio.

A group of musicians including Ronstadt and Taylor were assembled and the genesis of "Harvest" began. The album, when released was upbeat but contained one song which was a harrowing tale of fatal heroin addiction, "The Needle and the Damage Done", a tribute to Young's friend and band mate, Danny Whitten, who died from an overdose. "Heart of Gold" is ostensibly about a musician coming to terms with fame. Ironically it was this song and corresponding fame that caused Young to have trouble adjusting to same. On the liner notes of his 1977 greatest hits album "Decade", Young wrote "This song put me in the middle of the road. Traveling there soon became a bore so I headed for the ditch." The next three albums, which occurred in times of personal tragedy for Young, were collectively termed "The Ditch" as they were very introspective and bleak in temperament. Young later qualified his statement in a "New Music Express" interview saying he did not mean to demean "Heart of Gold" and that "I think 'Harvest' is probably the finest record I've made."

Answer: Blue

New Order were the remaining members of Joy Division after the suicide of Ian Curtis. Gillian Gilbert became the fourth member. The original group had decided the name would not be used again if anyone left the band.

New Order, by the time they were recording their second album, "Power, Corruption & Lies" in 1983, had eschewed the conventional drums, guitar, bass sound to incorporate synthesizers to create some sort of fusion of electronic dance music with post-punk. "Blue Monday" (1983), recorded at the same time as the album, incredibly does not appear on the album despite it being the biggest selling twelve inch single of the twentieth century.

This song could to be about either drug addiction, child abuse or a relationship gone bad. The lyric, "How does it feel? To treat me like you do" is vague and could be attributed to either of the three scenarios.

The title, typical of New Order songs, does not appear in the lyrics. The song's title is taken from Kurt Vonnegut book "Breakfast Of Champions". In it there was an illustration reading "Goodbye Blue Monday," referring to the invention of the washing machine which "improved housewives' lives".

The band released its tenth album "Complete" in 2015.