Downright Catchy 2010s Hits Trivia Quiz

Answer: Telephone

Lady Gaga - also known as Stefani Germanotta - and Beyoncé Knowles were both American artists born in 1986 and 1981 respectively. Lady Gaga had originally written this song for Britney Spears' "Circus" album - who'd rejected it - and had originally considered asking Spears to perform the part that Beyoncé ultimately performed. According to an MTV interview, the telephone represented fear to Gaga. Fear of having to be drawn back to work during her time off, but also the fear from inside her own head telling her that what she was doing wasn't good enough.

The music video for the song is also of note - it's a continuation from where "Paparazzi" (with Jonas Akerlund as the director) left off and makes a number of nods to other art movements, products and movies. That could almost be a quiz of its own, but a scene I personally liked was where Gaga and Beyoncé enter the Pussy Wagon from "Kill Bill vol.2" lent by Quentin Tarantino who heartily endorsed Gaga's ideas. Beyoncé feeds Gaga a honey bun, and she eats it very aggressively - a nod to and subversion of the trope that objectification is sexy.

Answer: Beautiful

One Direction at the time were a British boy band consisting of bandmembers Louis Tomlinson, Niall Horan, Harry Styles, Liam Payne and Zayn Malik (whose surname being the same as my username is entirely coincidental). They had originally auditioned for the Boys category in 2010 but were eventually rejected as individuals but instead offered a space as a manufactured boy group, which they accepted. This also happened the next year in the show with girl group Little Mix (originally Rhythmix). After Zayn Malik left the band in 2015, they took a hiatus in 2016 to pursue solo projects.

Originally, there were doubts as to whether One Direction would actually work as a concept. "What Makes You Beautiful" was essentially a more modern take on the sorts of songs that Backstreet Boys or N'Sync would have done at the tail end of the '90s. Co-writer Savan Kotecha told Billboard that he'd originally came up with the inspiration for the line when his wife exclaimed frustrations about being ugly that day, which drew him to the lines 'you don't know you're beautiful - that's what makes you beautiful'. Ultimately, the band's success in the US and UK identified that there was still a market for this sort of boyband.

Answer: Carly Rae Jepsen

Carly Rae Jepsen had already been in the music industry for a few years before landing her first UK (and anywhere else outside of Canada for that matter) number one. Her roots were in stage performances as a child, and she'd placed 3rd in 2007's edition of Canadian Idol. Her first album "Tug of War" released in 2008 was a somewhat more folk-inspired work; "Call Me Maybe" got her signed jointly to Schoolboy Records and Interscope Records where she continued in a more mainstream direction with her second album, "Kiss".

Regarding the song itself, Carly Rae Jepsen later admitted to Artist Direct that she wouldn't actually have the nerve to approach a guy in the way that she'd suggested in the lyrics, but that she'd like to have that confidence to act on her romantic feelings and live more in the moment. She also noted that it was a 'welcome surprise' for the song to have taken off as it did, and that she could never gauge which of her songs would be popular and which would just be her own little journal entry that she personally liked. Critics have praised the song's structure - it has broad appeal as a mostly gender-neutral song which quickly rustles past the verses before crescendoing into the chorus that everyone wants to hear, savouring the pauses between lines like "Hey I just met you, and this is crazy" and acknowledging the doubt even a confident person might have in making a blind proposition with the use of the word 'maybe'.

Answer: France

Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter met in Paris and formed Daft Punk in 1993. UK fans might also have come across songs such as "One More Time" (2000) and "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" (2001) which use robotic or heavily auto-tuned voices. Although singles like "Da Funk", "Around the World" and the aforementioned "One More Time" had charting success in France, UK and the US dance chart, it was "Get Lucky" that was really their first truly international hit, also echoed in the success of their accompanying album "Random Access Memories".

So, after twenty years in the biz, what was it that made "Get Lucky" stand out internationally? The featuring of funk artist Nile Rodgers of "Chic" fame might be a clue - they took more of a pop-oriented funk direction with this song than the house or electronic dance music they were traditionally known for, which was reflected on the "Random Access Memories" album as a whole. Rodgers himself said to The Guardian that he got the guys to strip back the original song, simplify it and add some riffs that 'hit him in his soul'. In a Rolling Stone interview with Pharrell Williams, the repetitive use of the hook 'up all night to get lucky' was intended to mirror the feeling one might get on a really good night out - they don't want it to end. And, ultimately, many people didn't want this retro-inspired dance song to end, either.

Answer: All About That Bass

Meghan Elizabeth Trainor, born in 1993 in Nantucket, Massachusetts, signed with Sony's Epic Records in 2014. Although "All About That Bass" was her debut single, she'd released her first album in 2009, though she eventually focused more on her songwriting career eschewing her original plan to study music at Berklee College after having doubts that she'd ever make it as an artist.

Originally, Meghan Trainor wrote the song with producer Kevin Kadish after bonding with their mutual love of '50s music. Kadish said in an interview with American Songwriter that the song's title was originally intended to be written for a male hip-hop artist, but changed it to a female perspective after Trainor improvised the line "I'm all about that bass" with Kadish adding a "no treble" after with Trainor remarking that no one else would hear the song, but at least they liked it. After having a lot of trouble finding an artist who was both suited and willing to perform the song, LA Reid signed Trainor to Epic Records saying that she was the artist for the job. It was the fourth selling single globally that year according to the IFPI Digital Music report with eleven million equivalent unit sales, and so then her career as an artist truly began.

Kevin Kadish also highlighted a wider industry flaw with streaming royalties that go to songwriters and publishers - in 2015 he'd only received $5,679 from 178 million Pandora streams of the song. In 2018, a ruling was made by the US Copyright Royalty Board that would increase the amount of money allocated to songwriters and publishers from 10.5% to 15.1% in 2022.

Answer: Michelle Pfeiffer

Mark Ronson is a 1975 London-born British musician perhaps best known for DJ-ing but who has also written, performed and produced music. He's collaborated with a wide variety and caliber of artists, including Amy Winehouse, Miley Cyrus, Ghostface Killah, Dua Lipa, Lily Allen and Kasabian. "Uptown Funk" was particularly notable in that it was his first UK number one of all time - even the delightful jazzy cover of "Valerie" he did with Amy Winehouse in 2007 had only reached number two.

It may have been just as well that this was his big personal chart success. In an interview with the Guardian, he stated that after 45 takes he was 'losing hair' and fainted after throwing up in a toilet. He'd had a notoriously hard time actually pinning Bruno Mars down to sing, with the song having been over six months in the making, and had to nail his guitar part before the end of the day where producer Jeff Bhasker would have to leave for another project. Apparently, by take 82, it was good.

In Vance Joy's "Riptide", he'd had a childhood admiration for Michelle Pfeiffer hence his mention of her there, but it's not clear as to why she was mentioned in "Uptown Funk". Mark Ronson said that these initial lyrics sparked the inspiration for the whole song and so her name may just have felt catchy. Another interpretation suggests that Bruno Mars may have been channeling a drug lord from "Scarface", where the 'white gold' refers to cocaine - the cleaner interpretation is that 'white gold' is just a pretty blonde woman, which could describe Pfeiffer.

Answer: Rockabye

Clean Bandit were an electronic music band formed in 2008 by Grace Chatto, Neil Amin-Smith, and Jack and Luke Patterson whilst studying at Cambridge University. Whilst Amin-Smith had left shortly before "Rockabye" was released, the band had to that point been best known for their 2013 release of "Rather Be" featuring Jess Glynne. Whilst these hits were dance songs played straight, many of their works feature classical composers, and like Mark Ronson they tend to bring in vocalists to collaborate and support. Sean Paul was a seasoned Jamaican rapper who'd also worked on two other big hits that year - a remix of Sia's "Cheap Thrills" and Little Mix's "Hair". Anne-Marie, in comparison, was a little fresher off the block with her "Alarm" single previously released that year securing her a number two position in the UK charts.

According to Grace Chatto of Clean Bandit, Jack Patterson and Norwegian singer Ina Wroldsen were the primary writers for this song, and Ina based a lot of the lyrics off of her own experiences with her son. Ina was set to lead the vocals, but was replaced with Anne-Marie as per their label's request, which Chatto said was 'painful' for her as she didn't want her business to hurt people.

Answer: Shape of You

Edward Christopher Sheeran was born in Halifax, West Yorkshire in 1991 and was a self-taught musician who typically preferred stripped back, acoustic music. Whilst he struck an unassuming figure in many respects, he'd dominated the singles charts in the 2010s - in March 2019 according to the Official Charts Company he had the fourth highest number of weeks on the top 75 singles chart of all time behind Rihanna, Cliff Richard and, to the surprise of none, Elvis Presley. The simply catchy "Shape of You" in particular had spent 14 non-consecutive weeks at number one on the UK singles chart in 2017 and was the second of four singles to be released in the UK from the ÷ ("Divide") album. Some criticised the song for its extremely basic lyrics, but Ed Sheeran's excuse of sorts was that he'd originally written the song for Rihanna instead.

"No Scrubs" was a 1999 release by girl group TLC and was one of their signature songs rejecting a variety of men they considered as 'scrubs' - guys without money, prospects or couth. According to songwriter Kandi Burruss, she told NPR that she and her friend were trash-talking the guys they had been dating at the time, and she freestyled thematic lyrics over the songs they were playing in the car radio. Tameka "Tiny" Cottle and Kevin Briggs liked the idea and made a demo for their group Xscape to perform, but they eventually sold the song onto the bigger TLC instead. Fans noted the similarities between "No Scrubs" and "Shape of You" and Sheeran eventually conceded the point and gave them writer credits. Although they had been awarded a Grammy in 2000 for the Best R&B song, it must have smacked a little to have seen yet another artist have so much commercial success with their material.

Answer: Ariana Grande

Ariana Grande-Butera was an American singer born in 1993 with Italian descent - half Sicilian and half Abruzzese. In 2017, a terrorist attack marred her 2017 Manchester Arena concert, which killed 22 people and was the deadliest UK attack since 2005. "Thank U, Next" was released in November of 2018 (with the similarly named album being released in February 2019) with little fanfare or announcement, Ariana having started recording this song just two months after her previous album, "Sweetener". However, that proved to be no obstacle as it became her first number one single on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, the most played song in a single day on Spotify and the most watched music video on YouTube within 24 hours.

The four names listed here refer to Ariana's ex-boyfriends: Big Sean, Ricky Alvarez, Pete Davison and Mac Miller respectively. She had originally planned on taking a break from music following Mac Miller's unfortunate death in September 2018, but instead took the option to find catharsis within music. According to colleague and songwriter Victoria Monét, they had recorded the entirety of the "Thank U, Next" album in two weeks.

Answer: Sweet But Psycho

Ava Max - or Amanda Ava Koci - was an American artist born to Albanian immigrants in 1994. Though the song was released on August 17th, 2018, her third single "Sweet but Psycho" first topped the UK number one singles chart in 2019 and reached the number one position in many other European countries. She heavily credited Canadian record producer Cirkut in the single's success, stating that he 'opened a lot of doors for her' and that he 'brought the single to life'.

In an interview with JAMS 96.3, Ava Max said that the song is about a girl who feels misunderstood in her relationship and who doubts herself. But, in reality she's just a strong and independent female and that by the end of the song the boyfriend loves all of her, even her 'psycho' side. She clarified in a further interview that 'psycho' really means 'confident and strong' and that people can make you feel as though you're being overly demanding, even when you're not.