Songs Of The Century: Part One, 20 - 11 Quiz

Answer: Phoenix

Unfortunately, my BMI source does not tell me how many airplays the song got, however "Billboard" magazine tells us that the Glen Campbell version, probably the best known, reached number two in the Hot 100 and won two Grammys in 1967. The first recording had been by Johnny Rivers in 1965.

The source for this quiz is BMI, a performing rights organisation. It represents more than 250,000 songwriters, composers, and publishers worldwide and monitors some 450,000 hours of radio airplay and more than six million hours of television programming each year. It is one of the main collectors of licence fees from commercial users and pays royalties to performers and writers. [Website information.]

Answer: Bridge Over Troubled Water

Paul Simon started to write the song on guitar and later added the piano part. Art Garfunkel's is the only voice you hear on the original recording. Initially it had only two verses, but Garfunkel and producer Roy Halee convinced Simon to write a third in the studio.

The song won S&G five Grammys in 1971. It was later to win Aretha Franklin a Grammy for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance.

Answer: False

S&G put an acoustic version of the song on their first album, "Wednesday Morning, 3 AM". To use a musical term, the album bombed.

They thought their career was all over and split, but unknown to them producer Tom Wilson added an electric overdubbing. It reached the top of the Hot 100 on New Year's Day in 1966, and promptly saved their careers as a duo.

Answer: George Harrison

Frank Sinatra is said to have called it "The greatest love song ever written" and often sang it in concert.

The song was written while the Fab Four were recording "The White Album", but was not used on that disc. It was on the next, "Abbey Road". It was the only Harrison song that the Beatles put out as an A side (well, double A with "Come Together").

Answer: Doctor Zhivago

Former Mississippi riverboat pilot John Hartford wrote the song in about 15 minutes after watching the 1965 movie "Doctor Zhivago".

It was most famously covered by Glen Campbell and won performance Grammys for him and for Hartford, among the total of four.

Answer: Every Breath You Take

The song was written by Sting, lead singer of the British band The Police. That quote was made by...Sting. Interviewed by "New Musical Express" in 1983, Sting added: "On one level, it's a nice long song with the classic relative minor chords, and underneath there's this distasteful character talking about watching every move."

The single was a number one in the USA and in the UK in 1983.

The British satirical show "Spitting Image" later made a parody, changing the first verse to:
"Every bomb you make,
And every job you take,
Every heart you break,
Every Irish wake,
I'll be watching you..."

Each line was accompanied by the puppet face of a well known world or political leader. You can search "Spitting Image - Every Bomb You Drop" on the internet for a video - and learn the identity of the singer who was doing the watching.

Answer: Percy Sledge

Numerous artists have covered the song, but the Percy Sledge version remains definitive, maybe because he says he sang it for a girlfriend who had left him after a three-year relationship.

Calvin Lewis and Andrew J. Wright are credited as the songwriters, although Sledge claimed to have written the lyrics and given the song rights to them. It was to be Sledge's first Billboard number one, hitting the top spot in May 1966.

If you ever listen to the original Sledge version recorded at Muscle Shoals studios in Alabama and think "What the?...those horns are out of tune!", well, they are, and were. Writing in "The Muscle Shoals Story", author David Hood said that a studio executive noticed the discrepancy and ordered the horns should be re-recorded. They were, and the matter was fixed. However, as Hood said "...then the tapes got mixed up and Atlantic put out their original version".

Answer: Porter Wagoner

Dolly Parton and Porter Wagoner were a singing duo in concerts and on television for several years. There were some, though, who believed that Wagoner was holding her back and she eventually made the jump to go solo.

Wagoner felt that she was making a mistake but in 1974, their seven-year partnership ended. Parton later said: "I wrote that song to say, 'Here's how I feel. I will always love you, but I have to go.'"

Elvis Presley wanted to cover the song, but Parton refused permission as his management wanted a share of the rights for him. It was, of course, to be a huge hit for Whitney Houston. In 1992, on the back of the movie "The Bodyguard", Houston took it to number one on the pop charts. Parton's own version had been a country number one some 20 years earlier.

Answer: Italy

"Mondo Cane" was a movie of travelogues made in 1962. Each segment was accompanied by music.

"More" was originally an instrumental track called "Ti Guardeṛ Nel Cuore" written by Riz Ortolani and Nino Oliviero, lyrics were added by Marcello Ciorciolini and adapted into English by Norman Newell.

The new song was picked up by a host of singers. Among them were Frank Sinatra, Roy Orbison, Andy Williams, Bobby Darin, and Nat 'King' Cole.

Answer: Roberta Flack

Okay, let's address that rumour at the very start that the song was about Don McLean. It was written by Charles Fox and Norman Gimbel, and first recorded by Lori Lieberman in 1972.
In 2010, Fox told "Songfacts" it was an urban legend. The song title came from a list of ideas that Gimbel kept in a notebook. One of these was a title 'Killing Me Softly With His Blues', which they adapted and wrote.

Some time later Roberta Flack heard Lori Liberman's version but worked on it herself, changing the chord structure. This version won two Grammys in 1974 and was a Hot 100 number one the previous year. In 1996, a cover by the British band The Fugees also topped the Billboard Hot 100.