More Songs About Home But No Food Pt 2 Quiz

Answer: Bob Dylan

Recorded in 1965 as part of Dylan's "Bringing It All Back Home" (appropriate for this quiz) album the song is seen as being drawn from a number of influences. Predominant amongst these are the streams of consciousness techniques employed by Beat poets Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, the Woody Guthrie song "Taking it Easy" (1942) and Chuck Berry's "Too Much Monkey Business" (1956). Dylan would confirm in an interview in 2004 that the Chuck Berry track was a major influence on the song.

Answer: Sam Cooke

Written by Sam Cooke, who'd initially offered the song to Dee Clark and, when Clark turned it down, placed it as the B-side to his 1962 single "Having a Party". However, it was the B-side that turned people's heads, became a pop standard and propelled the single to number thirteen on Billboard's Hot 100.

The lyrics deal with a man who's lost his girl, doesn't think much of it at first and when reality hits, starts to pine for her. It is sung with a "call and response" sequence, with the response being delivered by backing vocalist, the mighty Lou Rawls. Rawls would release his own version of the track in 1970.

Answer: Shawn Colvin

The cover of Shawn Colvin's 1997 album "A Few Small Repairs" is a painting by the singer's good friend Julie Speed. It is pertinent because it provided the inspiration for this single, about a woman who, seeking to escape her past, makes a "few small repairs" to her oven.

She then sets a match to all the escaping gases and destroys the house she's in. The single also represented a lyrical change for Colvin who'd previously written only in the first person and not about other characters. The song would earn her Grammys for "Record of the Year" and "Song of the Year" in 1998.

Answer: Bruce Springsteen

Springsteen takes a swipe at fat-cat bankers on this track, the third single from 2012's "Wrecking Ball" album. He deplores them as "robber barons" who have "struck at the heart of the American idea", without accountability. The single is a protest song disguised as an Irish jig complete with violins, tubas, tin whistles and euphoniums.

Its up-tempo melody has seen it become a staple of Springsteen's live shows.

Answer: Peter Allen

In 1980 Peter Allen was touring Australia with his "Up In One" show to rave reviews. At the end of each show he would walk up to the edge of the stage, throw his arms out wide and proclaim to the audience "No matter how far, or how wide I roam, I still call Australia home"! A record executive attending one of the showings was taken by the heartfelt nature of Allen's comment and suggested he put that sentiment into a song.

It would appear on his compilation album "The Best of Peter Allen", which was released later that year and became a big hit for the star.

Answer: Boston

This track appears on the Boston's self-titled debut album, released in 1976. It is the only track that appears on the album that was not written by Tom Scholz. Instead, it was written by the band's vocalist, Brad Delp and became the B-side to their second single "Long Time", released in 1977.

In an era that was dominated by disco, Boston's heavily guitar orientated rock sound was not expected to do well, however, the album took the charts across the globe by storm. It remained the best selling debut album for a band until Hootie and the Blowfish's "Cracked Rear View" appeared in 1995.

Answer: Jim Croce

Jim Croce's music career began in the early 1960s and after his first two albums were flops he was encouraged to move to New York City in a bid to move his career along. However, he and his wife Ingri, could not settle properly. When Ingrid announced that she was pregnant with their first child Jim realised it was make or break. By this time, they'd run out of money, so they sold all that they had (except for one guitar) and headed back home to Pennsylvania. Driving away they'd reached New Jersey, parked the car in a Howard Johnson's parking lot and slept there that night. Jim stared at the New York City skyline in the distance and got the idea for the song.

In a short space of time he'd also written "You Don't Mess Around With Jim" (1972), the title of his third album, and a song dedicated to his unborn child "Time in a Bottle", released in 1973.

Answer: Fine Young Cannibals

Roland Gift, the talented and soulful lead singer of the band, stated that the track started life as the tale of a black man alienated in a white man's world but, the deeper they got into it the more inclusive the song became and, in the end, was so much the better for it. The story it did transform into was that of a young runaway who suddenly finds out what life is really like on the streets. The track switches between the narrator's tale and the chorus, which is a plea from the parents to their son to come home. Almost a retelling of the story of the prodigal son told in reverse.

The track was the lead single from the band's self-titled debut (1985) and, whilst it did well for the band in their native United Kingdom it was, sadly, ignored in the States where it only reached 76 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Answer: Dido

When Dido starts singing...
"When I've been here for just one day
You'll already miss me when I go away"
don't be fooled into believing that you are listening to a love song. This is a song about drug dependency and it is being told from the perspective of the drug. In an interview with Canada.com Dido revealed the truth behind the lyrics and advised that she was "creeped out" when people described the track as a beautiful love song.

The track was released as a single in 2004 and appears on Dido's album "Life For Rent".

Answer: Paul Simon

When Paul Simon watched a 1970s BBC documentary called "Rhythm of Resistance: The Music of South Africa" he was bewitched by segments that focussed on Joseph Shabalala and his group Ladysmith Black Mambazo, so much so that when he went to South Africa in 1985 he sought out Joseph and asked to work with him.

The pair formed a bond and agreed to write a song together. Shabalala provided the melody for Simon who went home and recorded a demo, which was himself on piano singing the line "We are homeless, homeless, moonlight sleeping on the midnight lake". Shabalala would complete the process by adding to the lyrics in Zulu.

The song was recorded in London at Abbey Road and appeared on Simon's 1986 album "Graceland". It provided Ladysmith Black Mambazo, a group that had been around since the 1960s, valuable international recognition.