I’m loving this rock lyrics quiz at The Morning News (hat tip to Pop Candy), in which each question takes all the words from a well-known song and rearranges them in alphabetical order. Some are easy to guess — besides "Bohemian Rhapsody" by Queen (pictured, frontman Freddie Mercury), not too many songs use the word "bismillah" — and some are tricky (it helps to pick out words that rhyme or words from the title), but all achieve a wonderful new kind of free-verse poetry; it seems the best lyrics still manage to tell the same story even when the words are shuffled. It’s also fun to see the economy and verbosity of certain lyricists; there’s a James Brown song here that uses just 32 unique words and a Ray Davies tune with just 31, while a certain Bob Dylan epic clocks in at 179 words, with a Bruce Springsteen anthem right behind it at 178.
I scored 47 out of 50. How’d you do?
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I did ok. About 35-40 correct. Interesting song choices though: I realized that out of 50 songs, the only women represented were Patsy, Aretha, Michelle and Cass from the Mamas and the Papas, and Kate and Cindy from the B-52s.
Off point, but I loved seeing Freddy Mercury in the picture. He is irreplacable. No one has come close.
I suck. I got four right. :-i
that was harder then I thought it would be. i sing along to every song i hear, including all of the ones on that quiz, but it was so much harder to piece them together in that form. kinda cool
36 out of 40. I feel pretty good about that.
I sucked… I got 17 right. It is way harder to recognise songs in that form. Really cool idea for a quiz though.
48-50- missed the Bowie and the B52’s =)
Tough quiz. I got about 40 of ‘em. Some incredibly easy, but others real tough.
Kinda like at Trivia Night.
Got 40 right – that made my head spin!
Ugh, 21 out of 50??? That’s all I could do? I am shamed.
I got 43 out of 50…I was happy about that except I missed some obvious ones…That was a true brain-teaser…
37 out of 50. Not too bad.
I found that the more lyrics there were, the more likely I’d figure out the song. But with the shorter ones such as RESPECT – the r, e, etc on its own, how dense am I – couldn’t work out what it was supposed to be!
Just goes to show what happens if you put songs in a new, different(but fun)format. Great idea for trivia nights.
43. A pretty cool idea. I did better when I was able to look at the block of lyrics as a whole rather than trying to read each word. It was kind of like those old 3-D image puzzles — the important words sometimes just popped out.
Ugh, I stink. 21/50. I have a bone to pick. With #9, I always thought no one really knew the words to that song.
36. That was fun!
I got 14 right until I got bored and quit. It’s surprising how many songs have the word “about” in them.
34 out of 50. I rushed through some of them because I’m at work, and might have gotten a few of them otherwise. Very challenging.
39 of 50…this was tuff. embarrassed to say how long on took on the quiz….Especially frustrated when I checked the answers to a few I didn’t figure out only to realize I’ve got them in my own music collection (U2 & Bob Marley)
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