The Bottom 40: America's Worst Number Ones? Part 3 Multiple Choice Quiz | Music

Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts

1. Which band, noted for not singing the hits they were supposed to have sung, gets a place on our list of "The 40 Worst Number One Singles Of All Time" with the Hot 100 number one "Blame It On The Rain"?

Answer: Milli Vanilli

"Blame It On The Rain" topped the Hot 100 for two weeks in 1989.

I have made up the three wrong answers here. I hope.

Milli Vanilli was the duo Fabrice Moran and Rob Pilatus and were active from 1988 to 1991.

In 1989 they had a massive European hit with "Girl You Know It's True", which was a cover of an earlier release by The Numarx. German producer Frank Farian made the cover, using singers John Davis and Brad Howell and rapper Charles Shaw.

However, Moran and Pilatus were publicly said to be the singers, until Shaw outed them after it had sold over seven million copies.

In 1989, "Blame It On The Rain" was the last of three US number ones for the duo.

They later admitted they had never sung on any of the Milli Vanilli recordings.

2. "Opposites Attract", or so they say, and enough people were attracted by a song of that name to take it to the top of the Billboard Hot 100. Who did Paula Abdul duet with to earn a place among "The 40 Worst Number One Singles Of All Time"?

Answer: A cartoon cat

MC Skat Cat was the other voice on the record. A follow-up record and TV series from the furry creature went down the mousehole

Fortunately for Abdul, her career had nine lives and that was only one of them gone.

"Opposites Attract" was number one for three weeks in 1990.

3. Do your ears perk up every time you hear a snatch of "Under Pressure" by Queen and David Bowie on the radio or the jukebox? Then do your shoulders slump when you realise it's just a sample in a song that earned a place on "The 40 Worst Number One Singles Of All Time"? Which Billboard chart topper is it?

Answer: Ice, Ice, Baby

Vanilla Ice took "Ice, Ice, Baby" to the top of the Hot 100 in 1990, but fortunately it melted away after one week.

Ice claims to have written the lyrics in 30 minutes and some people wondered how it took him that long. He was able to sample the 1980 collaboration "Under Pressure" by Queen and David Bowie with permission.

Initially released as the B side of a single, one radio station DJ preferred it to the A side and it went on to become the first single by a rapper to hit number one on the Hot 100.

4. What do we have here? A song that topped the charts in the USA twice, but one of those versions was included among "The 40 Worst Number One Singles Of All Time". What song did Michael Bolton and Percy Sledge have in common?

Answer: When A Man Loves A Woman

"When a man loves a woman
Can't keep his mind on nothin' else
He'd trade the world
For a good thing he's found..."

To be clear, it was Bolton's 1991 version that raised the hackles of our list compilers.

The Percy Sledge original was the first song recorded at the now-famed Muscle Shoals recording studios in Alabama to top the Hot 100.

Sledge claimed to have co-written the song with bandmates Calvin Lewis and Andrew Wright and gave them writing sole royalties. As a note, his account of involvement is debated.

The song became a staple of wedding bands down through the years. In their obituary of Sledge in 2015, the "LA Times" noted that couples embraced it "...even such rock stars as Steven Van Zandt, guitarist with Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band, who brought Sledge in to sing it at his 1982 wedding."

Even though it appears on our 'worst' list, Bolton's cover won a Grammy in 1991.

5. Pretty annoyingly, even though your song tops the charts in 28 counties, it is held off the top by a monster in your own. Even worse, who found their hit "I'm Too Sexy" placed among "The 40 Worst Number One Singles Of All Time"?

Answer: Right Said Fred

"I'm Too Sexy" topped the charts in 28 countries, including the Billboard Hot 100, but was kept off the top sport in the UK by "(Everything I Do) I Do It For You" by Bryan Adams.

It topped the Hot 100 for three weeks in 1992 and was to be the band's sole US hit.

6. For 14 weeks in 1996, one song occupied the top spot on the Billboard Hot 100. Which song that got people everywhere, even politicians, dancing, thoroughly deserves inclusion on the list of "The 40 Worst Number One Singles Of All Time"?

Answer: Macarena

Los del Rio sang this in Spanish. Even Al Gore danced to this song.

Moving swiftly on so I can get this nonsense out of my head....

7. Could you "Believe" that such a well-known singer would need to be auto-tuned? Who was it sold more than 11m copies of a Billboard topper, and earned a place on our list of "The 40 Worst Number One Singles Of All Time"?

Answer: Cher

In 1999, "Believe" was number one on the Billboard Hot 100 for four weeks.

That warbling effect on the vocals is all down to auto-tune. The effect was fairly new at the time and the record producer, Mark Taylor, turned it up to 'max'.

As songfcts.com noted, it took six writers and three producers six years to come up with this song.

The song went number one with a bullet in the UK in October 1999 and became the biggest hit by a solo female artist. In the USA it entered the Hot 100 at 99 on December 19th, 1998 and reached number one March 13th, 1999.

Ever since, distorted Auto-Tuned vocals have been known as the "Cher effect", although, to be fair, she was not the first to have it used on a recording.

8. It's not unusual for songs from the movies to be released as singles, and many have topped the charts. Who, though, should probably have left "Wild Wild West" way out there long before it appeared on our list of "The 40 Worst Number One Singles Of All Time"?

Answer: Will Smith

"Wild Wild West" topped the Billboard Hot 100 for one week in 1999.

The movie "Wild Wild West" was released in 2000. To misquote a line from a Harry Chapin song"
"The critics were concise...
But no one could accuse them of being over kind."

In "Empire" magazine Andrew Collins wrote "Reading anything into Wild Wild West is a bit like seeking the truth in a plate of alphabet spaghetti." "It was never going to be anything other than an expensive piece of gadget-driven hokum," he added.

Apart from that, I think he liked it.

The song was based on a 1987 number by Kool Moe Dee that sampled a Stevie Wonder song. The pop video ran to seven minutes and featured stars from the movie along with Stevie Wonder.

9. "With Arms Wide Open" won a Grammy; topped the Billboard Hot 100; and earned a place on our list of "The 40 Worst Number One Singles Of All Time". Who sang it?

Answer: Creed

"With Arms Wide Open" topped the charts for one week in 2000.

It was written by the Creed lead singer Scott Stapp after he found out he was going to be a father for the first time.

In 2013 he told songfacts.com: "It continues to have relevant meaning in my life because as I sing it now, I think of my daughter who's now on this planet and alive. And then I think of my newest son, my three-year-old, Daniel. And then I think back to the spirit and the somewhat naivet�, just that brutal honesty that that song expressed as me being a young man and approaching fatherhood for the first time."

It was to be Creed's only number one on the pop charts.

10. It's a rare thing for a song to return to the top of the charts after it has been knocked off, but that is what happened to "Butterfly". It topped the Billboard Hot 100 for two non-consecutive weeks. It also gets a place on our list of The 40 Worst Number One Singles Of All Time". Who sang it?

Answer: Crazy Town

The song was written by Crazy Town lead singer Shifty Shellshock about a girl he was seeing at the time. It samples "Pretty Little Ditty" by The Red Hot Chili Peppers.

It got to the top for the first time on March 24, 2001.

In the USA, VH1 had it at number 34 on a list of "Most Awesomely Bad Songs Ever".

Source: Author darksplash

This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor agony before going online.
Any errors found in FunTrivia content are routinely corrected through our feedback system.

The Bottom 40: America's Worst Number Ones? Part 3 Quiz

In the third part of our odyssey through "The 40 Worst Number One Singles Of All Time" we reach the last decade of the 20th Century. Let's see if you can spot them.

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