Music From Beyond The Grave Trivia Quiz

Answer: Prince

No one is quite sure why "Welcome 2 America" was not released after its recording, some say the times, and Prince, had moved on.

Prince was a prodigious recording artist, as 39 albums proved. "Welcome 2 America" came out in July 2021, an instalment perhaps from what was believed to be a huge catalogue of unreleased material. Previously, two other posthumous LPs had been released, including "Originals", a compilation of demos he had written for other artists.

Answer: Jeff Buckley

Jeff Buckley started working on the double album in 1996 and it was not completed by the time he died in May 1997. Eventually it reached number seven on the UK album charts, and number 64 on the Billboard 200.

Buckley is thought to have written hundreds of songs, and the potential was there for other recordings. He toured widely and became noted for songs such as "Last Goodbye," "Lilac Wine,"and his cover of "Hallelujah" by Leonard Cohen.

Answer: The Notorious BIG

Initially the album was to be called "Life After Death... Till Death Do Us Part". He recorded his parts while seated due to a leg injury sustained in a car crash in Brooklyn, New York. Big had already planned ahead to make his next album, which was to be entitled "Born Again".

On March 9, 1997, Big was in a car in Los Angeles with fellow musician Sean "P. Diddy" Combs. Reports later suggested that Big was the victim of a hitman who had been hired to kill Combs. The hit was allegedly revenge for the killing of Tupac Shakur (aka 2Pac) who was shot four times in Las Vegas in September 1996 and died six days later.

Answer: Nirvana

Nirvana had become known for their hard playing grunge music, which was to be softened by the acoustic set for MTV in 1993. In 2017, "Rolling Stone" named the Nirvana gig as the best of 15 unplugged concerts in the MTV series.

Frontman, Kurt Cobain, had insisted the set be dressed like a funeral and there was a dark edge to the performance. Cobain died by suicide on April 5, 1994. The album rose to the top of the charts in Canada, Australia, the UK, New Zealand, and the USA.

The wrong answers were bands that carried on after the death or departure of a member.

Answer: Juice Wrld

The death of Jarad Anthony Higgins at the age of 21 was said to be drugs-related. Higgins hailed from Chicago, Illinois, and started his public career posting songs to an social media site. The song "Lucid Dreams" from his first EP in 2017 became a huge hit.

But within two years he had died. The "New York Tomes" regarded him as a performer whose star was on the rise, supplying "sharp, catchy songs, which were often freestyled in only a few takes, combined the melodic hip-hop instincts of Lil Yachty, Post Malone and XXXTentacion with the heavy-hearted angst and nasal hooks of emo and pop-punk bands like Fall Out Boy and Panic! at the Disco."

Answer: Viola Beach

In February 2016, the four members of the band and their manager died when the car they were in plunged off a bridge. Singles by the band began club the charts and in August of 2016 the self-titled debut album reached the top of the UK albums charts.

The band had been together for just three years. As Barry Nicolson noted for "NME", "...this band were barely even getting started. 'Viola Beach' is not the debut album they would have made, but it's the only legacy they'll leave; you're glad that it exists but, at the same time, you wish it didn't have to."

The wrong answers were bands that carried on after the death of a member.

Answer: Johnny Cash

Johnny Cash was suffering from a range of medical conditions when he went into the studios. He was also mourning the death of his wife, June Carter Cash, a few months before. Still, he completed "American V: A Hundred Highways", which was to be his first number one album in almost 40 years.

It was probably the recording that kept Cash going after the death of his wife in May 2003. She had insisted he keep on working and he went back into the studio. He also performed a limited number of events at the Carter Family Fold on the July 5, 2003. He died on September 12 of that year.

Writing for "BBC Music", Chris Long said: "'American V' would have been a fitting end to Cash's career even if he hadn't died three years ago. It is an album of weary hope and of gentle regret, mixing jet-black humour about his waning health and coming death with beautifully tender moments of love and loss."

Answer: Joey Ramone

Joey Ramone (born Jeffrey Ross Hyman) was the lead singer and co-founder of The Ramones in 1974. They went on to release 14 studio albums to modest success.

In 1995. Joey was diagnosed with lymphoma, an illness that was not revealed until six years later. He died on April 15, 2001 at the age of 49. At his death, the surviving members said they would never perform together again. The album was released in February 2002.

Answer: Leonard Cohen

"Thanks for the Dance" was made up of songs that Cohen had partially recorded during the sessions for "You Want It Darker", the last album of his lifetime. His son Adam completed the recordings. Adam had also written or cowritten seven of the nine tracks. It topped the Canadian charts and was a number seven in the UK.

Giving the album a five-star review, Dave Simpson wrote in the "Guardian" it was a "beautiful posthumous collection". He added: "...the sparse, sublime instrumentation never takes the focus away from Cohen's inimitable voice, which is lush, deadpan, warm and poetic, with a hint of frailty adding to the sense of a final statement."

Cohen died in 2016 at the the of 82.

Answer: Harry Chapin

Chapin started to think of a new musical treatment in 1978, knowing that it would be 1981 before he would start to put those thoughts into words and music. He was still working on them when he died in a road crash in July 1981.

At the time of his death, Chapin had 17 or 18 songs that were beginning to take shape in the studio. In 1988, a new album containing 11 of the most advanced was released.