DO you know which legendary group was turned down by Decca Records on January 1, 1962, or which group announced they were splitting up on February 22, 2021?
Or which singer released their phenomenally successful album on March 3, 2017?
Don’t Stop The Music: A Year Of Pop History One Day At A Time by Justin Lewis is a meticulously researched book on music trivia, broken down into months of the year.
Here, in an exclusive extract, we have created a quiz from the book so music buffs can see how good their knowledge really is.
JANUARY
1. Jan 1, 1962: _________ record five songs as an audition for Decca Records but will be turned down by the label in favour of the Dagenham group Brian Poole And The Tremeloes.
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2. Jan 12, 2004: Toxic by Britney Spears. Co-written by Cathy Dennis and reportedly turned down by ___________, the song contains samples from Tere Mere Beech Mein from the soundtrack to the 1981 Hindi film, Ek Duuje Ke Liye.
FEBRUARY
3. Feb 21, 1995: Blur wins four awards at the Brits: Best British Group, Best British Album (for Parklife), Best British Single (for Parklife) and ______________ (for, erm, Parklife).
4. Feb 27, 2006: The title of Hips Don’t Lie by Shakira came into being when the ________ singer instructed her band in the studio to watch the movement of her hips to see if a song was working.
MARCH
5. Mar 1, 1984: Prince records When Doves Cry in Hollywood without his group The Revolution. It is the final track to be recorded for the ______________ album.
6. Mar 3, 2017: ÷(Divide) by ______________ sells 672,000 copies in its first week, and sees nine of its tracks placed in the UK top 10 singles chart.
APRIL
7. Apr 30, 1993: At 12.15pm the UK’s first national commercial pop radio station, _____________ 1215, goes on air on medium wave. The first song played is a specially recorded cover of Born To Be Wild by INXS.
8. Apr 8, 2022: Two very different but much discussed records this year — the debut album from Isle of Wight duo Wet Leg and As It Was by ___________ — both will win Grammy and Brit Awards in February 2023.
MAY
9. May 22, 1970: Spending seven weeks at #1, Mungo ________ In The Summertime will become the UK’s biggest-selling single of the year, and one of the biggest-selling singles worldwide, with sales estimated at over 30 million copies.
10. May 27, 2022: On the same day that ABBA’s Voyage shows open in London — with its four members represented in hologramatic form — Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill begins an unexpected comeback when it is used prominently in the fourth season of the Netflix drama____________.
JUNE
11. Jun 2, 1987: Whitney Houston returns to the UK #1 spot with _________________.
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12. Jun 27, 2010: California Gurls by Katy Perry (featuring rapper Snoop Dogg) becomes UK #1. Inspired by the release of Jay-Z and Alicia Keys’ Empire State Of Mind the year before, the single’s spelling of “Gurls” is a reference to September Gurls by Big Star, whose lead singer _______________ has died months earlier.
JULY
13. Jul 1, 1956: Elvis Presley appears on Steve Allen’s NBCTV variety show, and finds himself singing Hound Dog to a _____________.
14. Jul 15, 2010: Exactly ___ years after Robbie Williams’ abrupt departure from Take That, it is announced that he has rejoined the reformed quartet for one album and one album only, the already recorded Progress.
AUGUST
15. Aug 1, 1971: George Harrison and Ravi Shankar stage two concerts for Bangladesh at ___________________ in New York — one at 2.30pm and the other at 8pm. Both Harrison and Shankar perform, as do Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Badfinger, Ali Akbar Khan, Billy Preston, Leon Russell and Ringo Starr. Around $250,000 is raised.
16. Aug 28, 2009: The day before the fifteenth anniversary of Definitely Maybe’s release, Oasis split up when Noel Gallagher walked out of the band. He forms High Flying Birds, while younger brother Liam founded the group __________.
SEPTEMBER
17. Sep 4, ____: The X Factor premieres on ITV, with a judging panel comprising series creator Simon Cowell, Sharon Osbourne and Louis Walsh.
18. Sep 16, 1977: On the same day that La Divina Maria Callas dies in Paris, 29-year-old Marc Bolan is killed in a _________ in Barnes, south-west London. Bolan had recently finished recording a comeback series for ITV, called Marc.
OCTOBER
19. Oct 3, 1992: On Saturday Night Live, Sinéad O’Connor, while performing an acapella version of War by Bob Marley, tears up a picture of ____________ and says, “Fight the real enemy!” as a protest about apathy and abuse cover-ups in the Catholic church.
20. Oct 12, 2018: South London rapper Dave scores the first rap UK #1 by a homegrown artist in three years with Funky Friday, a duet with North London’s ________. Released on Dave’s own label, its word-of-mouth success is closely linked to social media.
NOVEMBER
21. Nov 10, 2014: Uptown Funk sung by Bruno Mars and produced by___________. Perhaps in a streaming era, it might be more appropriate to talk about clicks rather than sales — by late 2022, its video will have been viewed nearly 5billion times. A flurry of lawsuits on the subject of musical similarity will ensue. The composers of The Gap Band’s Oops Upside Your Head, for one, are now officially recognised on the record as co-writers.
22. Nov 13, 2006: After a sold-out come back tour, Gary, Howard, Jason and Mark release Take That’s first new material in over a decade. ___________will hit UK #1 and win the Best British Single award at the Brits.
DECEMBER
23. Dec 3, 1976: Ahead of a photo shoot for Pink Floyd’s forthcoming album, Animals, a 40-foot-long inflatable___, which has been moored to the chimneys of Battersea Power Station, breaks away and becomes a hazard for nearby aircraft. (It lands in Kent, alarming some cattle, and the image for the final Animals sleeve has to be faked.)
24. Dec 12, 1986: The Smiths play their final full set as a live band at an Artists Against Apartheid show at London’s Brixton Academy. They end with a performance of their very first single, 1983’s _________.
- This is an edited extract by Natasha Harding from Don’t Stop the Music: A Year Of Pop History, One Day At A Time by Justin Lewis (Elliott & Thompson) Out now, £16.99.
