Listen to the Birds Sing Trivia Quiz

Answer: Eels

'I Like Birds' is a song from Eels' third album, 'Daisies of the Galaxy', released in 2000. The album also featured the single 'Mr E's Beautiful Blues' and a song called 'It's a Monster Trucker', which had to be re-recorded for the US edition of the album as the original title, which I am not going to mention here, was far too rude. When Eels play 'I Like Birds' live, it is not unusual for the song to be speeded up and transposed up a key.

(As an aside, this song always reminds me of being in the Sixth Form common room at school in the early noughties, as it was on constant rotation on the stereo there.)

Answer: The Beautiful South

'Blackbird on the Wire' is a single from the Beautiful South's fifth album 'Blue Is the Colour', from the period when Jacqui Abbott was the band's female vocalist (following the departure of Brianna Corrigan in 1992). It was released in 1997, but was overshadowed by the previous singles 'Rotterdam' and 'Don't Marry Her' (which had to be given a clean edit for the radio, with 'have' replacing a swear word in the chorus). Unlike the aforementioned two songs, 'Blackbird on the Wire' was sung solely by Paul Heaton, and bears more than a few similarities to the work of his previous band, the Housemartins.

Answer: Dolly Parton

'Little Sparrow' is the title track from Dolly Parton's thirty-eighth album, released in 2001. 'Shine', the fourth single released off the album, received a Grammy Award for Best Female Vocal Performance. 'Little Sparrow' was dedicated to Parton's late father Lee and featured Irish folk singer Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh on a cover of the hymn 'In the Sweet By-and-By'. Like its predecessor, 'The Grass is Blue', the album was influenced by bluegrass; bluegrass singer Alison Krauss is one of the harmony vocalists on it. Two of the songs, 'My Blue Tears' and 'Down from Dover', had also featured on previous albums by Parton ('Coat of Many Colours' and 'The Fairest of Them All' respectively).

Answer: ABBA

'Eagle' was the third single from ABBA's fifth album 'ABBA: The Album', released in 1978 as a double A-side with 'Thank You for the Music'. It also features on the compilation 'More ABBA Gold', which features some of ABBA's B-sides and rarer tracks. Songwriters Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson were fans of the Eagles at the time and the song is thought to have been inspired by them, as well as Richard Bach's 'Jonathan Livingston Seagull'; it is also one of ABBA's longest singles, albeit pared down for commercial radio. Lasse Hallström, who would later go on to direct films such as 'Chocolat' and 'What's Eating Gilbert Grape?', directed the video.

'Thank You for the Music' was later released as a single in its own right in the UK and other countries where 'Eagle' had not been released. Along with 'I Wonder (Departure)' and 'I'm a Marionette', it was one of three ABBA songs originally written for a musical called 'The Girl with the Golden Hair'.

Answer: Tori Amos

'Black-Dove (January)', not to be confused with the 'Pretty Good Year' B-side 'Black Swan', is a track from Tori Amos' 1998 fourth album, 'From the Choirgirl Hotel'. In an interview with a German newspaper, Amos said that the song had been inspired by nightmares in which she saw a transparent black dove made of ice.

She told her band to imagine a scene from the film 'Fargo' when recording the song, where a car is slowly coming towards the camera. The line 'I had to get to Texas' is inspired by the film 'Thelma & Louise'; Louise refuses to travel through Texas on the way to Mexico and Thelma suspects it was because she was raped there, and has bad memories of it.

Answer: Tom Lehrer

'It's not against any religion/To want to dispose of a pigeon' sang pianist and satirist Tom Lehrer on one of his signature songs. 'Poisoning Pigeons in the Park' originally appeared on 'An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer', recorded at the Sanders Theatre, Harvard, in 1959. It tells the story of a young couple who celebrate spring by killing pigeons, and the odd squirrel. The line 'When they see us coming, the birdies all try and hide/But they still go for peanuts when coated with cyanide' refers to an actual tactic used to kill pigeons in the 1950s by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service.

Interestingly, Austrian satirist and musician Georg Kreisler also recorded a song called 'Geh'mer Tauben Vergiften im Park' ('Let's Go Poison Pigeons in the Park'), aka 'Frühlingslied' ('Spring Song') with uncanny similarities to Lehrer's song, both musically and lyrically. Both Kreisler and Lehrer denied copying each other and it is unknown which song was written first. Strange minds think alike, perhaps?

Answer: Joni Mitchell

'Song to a Seagull' is the title track of Joni Mitchell's debut album, released in 1968 and produced by David Crosby of Crosby, Stills and Nash fame. It appears on the second half of the album, entitled 'Out of the City and Down to the Seaside'. As well as a singer, writer and guitarist, Mitchell was also a talented artist and did the artwork for the album herself; the album's title is spelled out by a flock of seagulls (the second L is cut off slightly, so the album was originally released as 'Joni Mitchell'). The sound quality of the album was affected by the recording setup, as Crosby had placed a large number of microphones around Mitchell's piano and they ended up picking up a lot of background noise, which had to be edited out.

Cass 'Mama Cass' Elliot covered two of the songs, 'Sisotowbell Lane' ('Sisotowbell' stands for 'Somehow, In Spite Of Trouble, Ours Will Be Ever Lasting Love') and 'I Had a King'.

Answer: Jack Off Jill

One of the more obscure songs in this quiz, 'Chocolate Chicken' originally appeared on one of Jack Off Jill's demos, 'Cockroach Waltz', that was only released on cassette. It was released in 1996, and was the last of the four demos: the others, 'Children 5 and Up', 'Boy Grinder Sessions' and 'Cannibal Song Book', were respectively released in 1993, 1994 and 1995. 'Chocolate Chicken' got its first official release as one of the songs on the 2006 compilation 'Humid Teenage Mediocrity', which featured songs from the EPs, some of which would end up on Jack Off Jill's debut album, 'Sexless Demons and Scars'.

Three-quarters of the original line-up, singer Jessicka Addams, drummer Tenni Ah-Cha-Cha and guitarist Michelle Inhell, played a series of reunion gigs in 2015. Original bassist and co-founder Robin Moulder was replaced by Hellen Storer, formerly of Fluffy (who had played with the band shortly before they split the first time around). Sadly, Jack Off Jill had to split again after the reunion, as Jessicka was no longer able to play live due to health problems.

Answer: Lemon Jelly

'Nice Weather for Ducks' is a single from Lemon Jelly's second album 'Lost Horizons', released in 2003. It samples John Langstaff's 'All the Ducks'. Around the time of the album, Lemon Jelly played a charity gig aimed at children called 'Jelly Tots', on a Saturday morning rather than late at night, with balloons, bouncy castles and classic children's TV programmes being shown on a screen. Band members Nick Franglen and Fred Deakin played dressed up as Barney Rubble and Fred Flintstone.

At other gigs in 2003, fans could get in by wearing a special red or yellow t-shirt, which acted as a ticket, and the band had a giant game of Bingo instead of a support act. 'Jelly Helpers' handed out sweets to audience members.

Answer: Fleetwood Mac

Many people will be more familiar with the Fleetwood Mac of the 'Rumours' era, who had a multinational and mixed-sex line-up, but 'Albatross' stems from the days when the band were all male and all British, and played blues rock. Composed by Peter Green - who would later leave the band in 1970 after joining a German commune - and released in 1968, 'Albatross' is an instrumental, unlike the other songs listed here. Green recorded the song with the help of teenage guitarist Danny Kirwan, who would later be sacked in 1972 due to alcoholism and bad behaviour backstage. Guitarist Jeremy Spencer, who would later join the notorious Children of G-d cult, was not on the recording.

'Albatross' is said to have inspired the Beatles song 'Sun King'. It is one of the few songs recorded by the original Fleetwood Mac line-up to appear on compilation albums.