VH1's Greatest Songs of the 1980s Quiz

Answer: Who Made Who

"Who Made Who" is the soundtrack to the Stephen King movie "Maximum Overdrive". The album features three new songs: "Who Made Who" and two instrumentals, "D.T." and "Chase the Ace". The song placed Number One on VH1's greatest AC/DC songs of all time. AC/DC re-released the song internationally as a single in 1986 in support of the "Who Made Who" album.

There are two main videos for "You Shook Me All Night Long", one made in 1980, the other in 1986.

Answer: Run-DMC

Run-DMC were recording their 1986 album "Raising Hell" with producer Rick Rubin (who also produced The Beastie Boys' album "License to Ill" that same year) when Rubin introduced them to the Aerosmith album "Toys in the Attic". Although Run and DMC did not want to do the cover, it was Jam Master Jay who suggested covering the track. Rubin, who was also working with Aerosmith on an upcoming studio album in 1987 (though ultimately the sessions with Rubin never got beyond some rough studio jams), contacted Aerosmith, and Aeromsith's Steven Tyler and Joe Perry guested on the Run-DMC recording.

The song revitalized Aerosmith's career, as they had largely been out of the lime light the last several years battling addictions and their 1985 album "Done With Mirrors" sold poorly. The track also helped break Run-DMC into the mainstream.

The song is also credited for breaking rap into the mainstream, and was ranked Number Four on "VH1's 100 Greatest Songs of Hip Hop". Both groups won "Soul Train Music Award for Best Rap - Single" for 1987.

Rolling Stone ranked the original recording as Number 336 on their 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. They ranked the Run-DMC higher, at 287.

Answer: False

Billy Strienberg and Tom Kelly wrote "Like a Virgin". In an LA Times interview, Steinberg revealed that when he wrote "Like a Virgin", it was actually not written for a female singer in mind, let alone Madonna. According to that interview:

"I wasn't just trying to get that racy word virgin in a lyric. I was saying ... that I may not really be a virgin -- I've been battered romantically and emotionally like many people -- but I'm starting a new relationship and it just feels so good, it's healing all the wounds and making me feel like I've never done this before, because it's so much deeper and more profound than anything I've ever felt."

Tom Kelly recorded the demo and played the recording for Michael Ostin, who was in Warner Brother's A&R department. He passed the song on to Madonna. In that same LA Times article, Ostin said ""When I played it for Madonna she went crazy, and knew instantly it was a song for her and that she could make a great record out of it."

In a 2009 Rolling Stone interview with Austin Scaggs, Madonna recalls her initial impressions of the demo tracks, where she discussed "Like a Virgin" and "Material Girl".

"I liked them both because they were ironic and provocative at the same time but also unlike me. I am not a materialistic person, and I certainly wasn't a virgin, and, by the way, how can you be like a virgin? I liked the play on words, I thought they were clever. They're so geeky, they're cool. I never realised they would become my signature songs, especially the second one [Material Girl]."

In 1984, Madonna and Nile Rodgers, her producer, went to record the song. Initially Rodgers was against the idea of Madonna recording the track as he did not think it had a strong enough hook. Although she stated she liked the song in 2009, according to Craig Rosen's 1996 book ("The Billboard Book of Number One Albums"), she was not much on the song and was having second thoughts after hearing the demo. She said "It's weird because I couldn't get it out of my head after I played it, even though I didn't really like it. It sounded really bubble-gummy to me, but it grew on me. I really started to like it, [...] But, my first reaction to it was, 'This is really queer.'"

Rodgers told Madonna "I handed my apology to Madonna and said, 'you know... if it's so catchy that it stayed in my head for four days, it must be something. So let's do it.'" Because neither one of them could get the song out of their heads, Rodgers and Madonna recorded the track.

Streinberg had this to say regarding the recording of "Like a Virgin":

"When Madonna recorded it, even as our demo faded out, on the fade you could hear Tom saying, "When your heart beats, and you hold me, and you love me..." That was the last thing you heard as our demo faded. Madonna must have listened to it very, very carefully because her record ends with the exact same little ad-libs that our demo did. That rarely happens that someone studies your demo so carefully that they use all that stuff. We were sort of flattered how carefully she followed our demo on that. [Source: The Billboard Book of Number 1 Hits 2003]

It was the perfect union, I knew it from the first day in the studio. The thing between us, man, it was passionate, it was creative. [...] Madonna was sometimes temperamental during the recording, everyone told me she was a terrible ogre, but I thought she was great." [Source: Clerk, Carol (2002), Madonnastyle]

"Like a Virgin" became Madonna's first of twelve number one hits where it stayed Number One for six weeks straight. The song would later become widely acknowledged as one of Madonna' definitive recordings. She performed the song live at the 1984 "MTV Music Awards", standing on top of a giant wedding cake and dressed in a wedding gown. The performance was very risque and has become an iconic MTV performance.

The track also became highly controversial, as many social groups attacked the song for its sexual lyrics.

Answer: Sweet Child o' Mine

Guns N Roses released the single "Sweet Child o' Mine" on August 18, 1988, and went to Number One on the Billboard Top 100. Although famous for its guitar riff, Slash, the riff's creator, initially played the riff as a joke.

In a 1988 interview with "Hit Parader Magazine" bassist Duff McKagan said "The thing about 'Sweet Child o Mine,' it was written in five minutes. It was one of those songs, only three chords. You know that guitar lick Slash does at the beginning? It was kinda like a joke because we thought, 'What is this song? It's gonna be nothing, it'll be filler on the record.' And except that vocal-wise, it's very sweet and sincere, Slash was just messing around when he first wrote that lick."

The song initially had an extra verse that was cut by the band's producer due to length issues. Radio stations also played an truncated version of the song, removing much of Slash's guitar solo, shortening the song from nearly six minutes to just over four minutes. Axel Rose hated the edit, revealing his feelings in a 1989 "Rolling Stone" interview.

""Well, your vocals aren't cut." "My favorite part of the song is Slash's slow solo; it's the heaviest part for me. There's no reason for it to be missing except to create more space for commercials, so the radio-station owners can get more advertising dollars. When you get the chopped version of 'Paradise City' or half of 'Sweet Child' and 'Patience' cut, you're getting screwed."

The song would later on be highly acclaimed by the music press, placing at 196 on the Rolling Stones Top 500 and Number Seven on VH1's best songs of the 1980s.

Answer: "Physical" by Olivia Newton-John

"I Can't Go for That (No Can Do)" is from the 1981 album "Private Eyes". The single "Private Eyes" went to Number One before "Physical" replaced the song. In a form of poetic justice, Hall and Oats' next single, "I Can't Go for That (No Can Do)", knocked off "Physical" from the Number One spot for the week of January 30, 1982, where it held onto that position for one week.

The track also topped the U.S. R&B chat as well.

According to BMI, this song is one of fourteen Hall and Oats songs that have been played over one million times on the radio.

Answer: Dancing in the Dark

"Born in the U.S.A." spawned seven top ten singles on the Billboard Top 100 chart, a record only matched by Michael Jackson with "Thriller" and his sister Janet with "Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation 1814". However, none of them went to Number One, and Springsteen's highest charting position in his career is Number Two, with "Dancing in the Dark". Both Duran Duran's "The Reflex" and Prince's "When Doves Cry" held the Number One position during the chart life-cycle of "Dancing in the Dark".

Prince wrote "When Doves Cry" after the director asked him to compose a song which covered the theme of one segment of the film (which featured problems with parents and a love affair). Prince composed "When Doves Cry" and a second song.

All other tracks from "Purple Rain" were complete when Prince wrote "When Doves Cry". The song is notable for not having a bass line, though during the video the Revolution's bassist makes an appearance. Prince also added bass during live performances of the song. Prince played all the instrumentation himself on the recording, and is the only song on "Purple Rain" credited to Prince as a solo artist; the rest are credited to "Prince and the Revolution".

Billboard Magazine said that 'When Doves Cry" was the best selling single of 1984.

Answer: Quincy Jones

Michael Jackson released "Thriller" in 1982. Like The Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper", so much has been written about Michael Jackson's "Thriller" that's not really much left to say. The album is the most successful in history, selling over one million albums a week during its peak commercial period in 1982 and 1983. In 2009, "Thriller" was the fourteenth best selling album of the year. The album features contributions from Eddie Van Halen (guitar solo on "Beat It"), a duet with Paul McCartney on "This Girl is Mine", and a memorable spoken word contribution by Vincent Price on the title cut.

One of the most famous songs from "Thriller" is "Billy Jean". "Billy Jean" has long been one of the staple songs from the early 1980s. However, though massively popular, Quincy Jones, Jackson's producer, vehemently disliked "Billie Jean", and did not think it was strong enough to be on the album. Jackson insisted the track be on the album, and the rest is history. Jackson said: "A musician knows hit material. Everything has to feel in place. It fulfills you and it makes you feel good. That's how I felt about 'Billie Jean'. I knew it was going to be big when I was writing it."

"Billie Jean" became one of the biggest hits of 1983. Bruce Swedien mixed the song ninety one times before Jackson was satisfied.

Quincy Jones, Jackson's producer, approached Rod Temperton, who wrote the title cut "Off the Wall" for Jackson's 1979 album, asking him to come up with the title to the next project.

Temperton sad the following: "Originally, when I did my Thriller demo, I called it Starlight. Quincy said to me, 'You managed to come up with a title for the last album, see what you can do for this album.' I said, 'Oh great,' so I went back to the hotel, wrote two or three hundred titles, and came up with the title 'Midnight Man'. The next morning, I woke up, and I just said this word... Something in my head just said, this is the title. You could visualise it on the top of the Billboard charts. You could see the merchandising for this one word, how it jumped off the page as 'Thriller'."

In 1982, Jackson and Jones recorded the song "Thriller" over a period of eight weeks. Bruce Swedien, the person responsible for mixing "Thriller", commented on how instrumental Jones was to the whole recording process:

"When we started 'Thriller', the first day at Westlake, we were all there and Quincy [Jones, the producer] walked in followed by me and Michael and Rod Temperton and some of the other people. Quincy turned to us and he said, 'OK guys, we're here to save the recording industry.' Now that's a pretty big responsibility - but he meant it. And that's why those albums, and especially 'Thriller', sound so incredible. The basic thing is, everybody who was involved gave 150 per cent ... Quincy's like a director of a movie and I'm like a director of photography, and it's Quincy's job to cast [it]. Quincy can find the people and he gives us the inspiration to do what we do."

Michael Jackson and John Landis made the famous "Thriller" music video. Landis is famous for such films as "National Lampoon's Animal House", "The Blues Brothers", "An American Werewolf in London", "Trading Places", "Coming to America", and "The Stupids".

Conceived more as a short film than a music video, the video famously features Jackson and a large ensemble of zombies dancing on a choreographed dance routine and a script that resembles cheesy 1950s horror films. Jackson's co-star as the female lead was the "Playboy" centerfold Ola Ray. The video has been inducted into the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress in 2009, the only music video to ever be added to that famed registry.

Michael Jackson made the following statement regarding the video in 1999: "My idea was to make this short film with conversation ... in the beginning - I like having a beginning and a middle and an ending, which would follow a story. I'm very much involved in complete making and creating of the piece. It has to be, you know, my soul. Usually, you know, it's an interpretation of the music. [...] It was a delicate thing to work on because I remember my original approach was, 'How do you make zombies and monsters dance without it being comical?' So I said, 'We have to do just the right kind of movement so it doesn't become something that you laugh at.' But it just has to take it to another level. So I got in a room with [choreographer] Michael Peters, and he and I together kind of imagined how these zombies move by making faces in the mirror. I used to come to rehearsal sometimes with monster makeup on, and I loved doing that. So he and I collaborated and we both choreographed the piece and I thought it should start like that kind of thing and go into this jazzy kind of step, you know. Kind of gruesome things like that, not too much ballet or whatever."

Throughout the years since its release, "Thriller" and The Eagles compilation album "Their Greatest Hits (1971-1975) have held the title as the top selling album in music history.

Answer: Hungry Like the Wolf

"Hungry Like a Wolf" was Duran Duran's fifth single in the United Kingdom, from their second album "Rio". The song did not do well in the US markets until MTV put the video in heavy rotation. Russell Mulcahy, the director the band hired, shot the video in Sri Lanka. The director also shot their "Planet Earth" video. The video was lush, and was heavily reminiscent of Spielberg's "Raiders of the Lost Ark".

The band recorded the track twice: once as a demo and once as the final master. The master recording uses the demo's original electronic backing track. Duran Duran was inspired by "Little Red Riding Hood" lyrically, as well as from the Gordon Lightfoot song "If You Could Read My Mind".

Answer: Pour Some Sugar on Me

In 1984, Def Leppard began preparing the followup to "Pyromania". They hired Mutt Lange and also Meat Loaf's famed collaborator Jim Steinman. Ultimately, they fired Steinman because he was not a perfectionist and thought every take the band recorded was great. Joe Elliot said later on ""Todd Rundgren produced (Meat Loaf's) Bat out of Hell. Jim Steinman WROTE it". They then produced some recordings with Lange's engineer Nigel Green without success, and ultimately the initial recording sessions were abandoned.

Mutt Lange and Def Leppard refocused, and set out the goal for the album. Lange's vision was to record a hard rock version of Michael Jackson's "Thriller", where every track was a potential hit single. The album took a very long time to record and produce.

"Pour Some Sugar on Me" was the written relatively late in the album sessions for "Hysteria". Producer Mutt Lange felt the album still lacked a song that would appeal beyond the band's hard rock fan base. Mutt Lange and the band wrote and recorded the song within a record-setting two weeks, compared to the rest of the songs on the album that took them a long time to craft. Indeed, "Animal" took them over three years to complete.

"Hysteria" had proven a massive hit in 1987 selling over three million copies; however the band was still in the red as the album's production cost were extraordinarily high. The band opted to release a promo-single of "Pour Some Sugar on Me". On strength of that single, the album went to Number One on the Top Pop Album Charts (later renamed the Billboard Top 200) nearly a year after its release. Due to the success of the promotional single, the band released the song as their fourth official single in the United States in 1988.

Answer: Bon Jovi

According to VH1, the best song of the 1980s is Bon Jovi's Number One hit "Livin' On a Prayer". Although the song is a definitive 1980s song, I don't know if I would say it is the best song of the decade.

Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora wrote the song with Desmond Child. "Livin' on a Prayer" became the band's first number one hit on the Hot Mainstream Rock Tracks, and second consecutive Number One Hit on the Billboard Hot 100. The track has recharted several times in the years following its release.

The initial recording of the song can be found on "100,000,000 Bon Jovi Fans Can't Be Wrong". Jon disliked the song, but Sambora convinced him to rework the track and release a new studio version on "Slippery When Wet". The song became a massive success, becoming Bon Jovi's signature song.

In their 1988 album "New Jersey", Jon Bon Jovi references the two main characters from "Living on a Prayer", Tommy and Gina, in this line from "99 in the Shade". "Somebody tells me even Tommy's comin' down tonight, if Gina says it's alright." He also references the two characters in "It's My Life" from crush with the line "this is for the ones who stood their ground, for Tommy and Gina, who never backed down".

The band followed up "Slippery When Wet" with the 1988 record "New Jersey". "New Jersey" holds the record for most top ten singles from a hard rock album. "I'll Be There For You" and "Bad Medicine" both went to Number One. The album's other three singles, "Living in Sin", "Born to Be My Baby", and "Lay Your Hands on Me" all broke the Top Ten. Bon Jovi were originally going to release a double album, but due to production costs the record company rejected the idea. A full album's worth of unreleased material was recorded during the "New Jersey" sessions.