Prince Trivia
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7correct to beat the crowd
This Prince trivia quiz has 99 free questions with answers and covers the whole run of Prince Rogers Nelson, from the Minneapolis kid who wrote 'Funk Machine' at seven and played 27 instruments on his debut, to the man who turned the Super Bowl into a purple monsoon. Expect questions on the big records (1999, Purple Rain, Sign o' the Times, Diamonds and Pearls), the songs he gave away ('Manic Monday', 'Nothing Compares 2 U'), the Revolution, the Time, the New Power Generation, and the film that made him a movie star. Then the stranger corners: the missing bass line, the album Warner made him trim from three LPs to two, the Camille voice, the name change and the word on his face, the internet-only album, 21 nights at the O2, the newspaper giveaway, Paisley Park and his death in 2016. Easy questions suit anyone who knows the hits; the hard ones ask which pseudonym he used and whose car he fell asleep in. Every answer has been checked against an encyclopaedic source and each question shows its citation once you have answered.
30 of 99 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which city was Prince born and raised?
Minneapolis
He was born at Mount Sinai Hospital in June 1958 and pioneered what became known as the Minneapolis sound.
Q 02Prince was named after what?
His father's stage name
His father's stage name was Prince Rogers, under which John Nelson led a jazz trio. 'I named my son Prince because I wanted him to do everything I wanted to do,' he once said.
Q 03What was the title of the first song Prince wrote, on his father's piano at age seven?
Funk Machine
Funk Machine was his first tune, picked out at the age of seven. When his parents separated three years later he kept at the piano, he said, 'to fill the void'.
Q 04Prince's first record deal, signed as a teenager in 1977, was unusual for granting him what?
Creative control
Creative control came written into the three-album deal, a rare concession to an unknown teenager. He could ask for it because his demo tape had drawn interest from several labels at once.
Q 05What was unusual about Prince's debut album credits?
He played every instrument
He played every instrument on For You, and the sleeve said so: 'Produced, arranged, composed and performed by Prince'. He spent nearly all of his three-album advance making it, and it peaked at No. 163 in the US.
Q 06In 1981 a hostile crowd pelted a little-known Prince when he opened for which band?
The Rolling Stones
The Rolling Stones' stadium crowd booed and threw things at the opener in a trench coat and bikini briefs until he left the stage. He wanted to skip the second date and had to be talked into playing it.
Q 07Under the alias Jamie Starr, Prince wrote and produced for which band fronted by Morris Day?
The Time
The Time were assembled by Prince from a local funk group, with his childhood friend Morris Day up front. The line-up included Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, who went on to become star producers themselves.
Q 08Which Prince video became one of the first by a Black artist to win heavy rotation on MTV?
Little Red Corvette
Little Red Corvette went into heavy rotation in 1983, when MTV's playlist was almost entirely white rock acts. It also became Prince's first Top Ten single in the US.
Q 09Prince got the idea for his 1983 car-themed hit after dozing off in whose car?
Lisa Coleman's
Lisa Coleman's pink Mercury, long misreported as an Edsel, is where the idea came to him mid-nap. Her camp says Prince had helped her buy it at auction, and that he put a few of the dents in it himself.
Q 10Drummer Bobby Z. says Prince wrote '1999' overnight after the band watched what on tour?
A TV documentary about Nostradamus
A TV documentary about Nostradamus, found on a hotel's free HBO, left the whole band rattled about the world ending in 1999. While they were still comparing notes the next day, Prince had already written the song.
Q 11Which singer turned Prince's 1979 album track 'I Feel for You' into a hit in 1984?
Chaka Khan
Chaka Khan's version added a rap from Melle Mel and a harmonica part played by Stevie Wonder. It reached number three in the US and won Prince a Grammy as the songwriter.
Q 12Which single was number one the week in 1984 that Prince also had America's top film and album?
When Doves Cry
When Doves Cry had been number one for weeks when the film opened on top, knocking Ghostbusters off its perch, and the album got there days later. Ghostbusters took its crown back the very next weekend.
Q 13What is famously missing from the biggest hit single of the Purple Rain album?
A bass line
Q 21In 1987 Prince's label balked at a triple album, so he trimmed it into which double album?
Sign o' the Times
Sign o' the Times was pieced together from three shelved projects after executives balked at a three-disc set. The compromise now regularly tops critics' rankings of his albums.
Q 22Prince's shelved Camille project featured what vocal gimmick?
A sped-up, female-sounding voice
A sped-up, female-sounding voice came, his engineer Susan Rogers says, from slowing the tape while he sang and playing it back at full speed. The album was meant to come out without Prince's name anywhere on it.
Q 23Which 1988 album did Prince release after abruptly withdrawing the Black Album, which he had decided was evil?
A bass line was recorded and then pulled at the last minute, though he hated to see it go. His engineer remembers him grinning as he took it out, sure that nobody else would dare.
Q 14Purple Rain knocked which Springsteen album off the number one spot?
Born in the U.S.A.
Born in the U.S.A., a month into its reign on the US chart in August 1984, then waited 24 straight weeks for Purple Rain to budge before taking the top spot back in January 1985.
Q 15In the film Purple Rain, Prince's character is known only as what?
The Kid
The Kid is the only name he gets: a gifted frontman whose home life is falling apart. Prince brought him back in 1990 for a sequel, Graffiti Bridge, which he wrote and directed himself, and it flopped.
Q 16Which Purple Rain track prompted Tipper Gore to found the Parents Music Resource Center?
Darling Nikki
Darling Nikki reportedly reached Tipper Gore through her 11-year-old daughter, whom she found listening to it. Her campaign led to the warning stickers the record industry adopted for explicit albums.
Q 17Which Duran Duran single kept Prince's 'Raspberry Beret' at number two in 1985?
A View to a Kill
A View to a Kill held it off that July. Prince had released Around the World in a Day with no single at all, and Raspberry Beret only followed weeks later.
Q 18Writing under the name 'Christopher', Prince gave which hit song to the Bangles?
Manic Monday
Manic Monday climbed to number two in April 1986, and the record that kept it off the top was Prince's own Kiss. He borrowed the pen name from Christopher Tracy, his character in Under the Cherry Moon.
Q 19'Kiss' began as a rough acoustic demo Prince handed to which funk band before taking it back?
Mazarati
Mazarati and producer David Z turned Prince's bare acoustic sketch into a sparse groove in a single day. He heard it the next morning, told them it was too good for them and took the song back.
Q 20Which Prince album, home of the hit 'Kiss', was the soundtrack to his 1986 film Under the Cherry Moon?
Parade
Parade far outlasted the film, Prince's first as a director, which stalled at the box office even as the album's lead single went to number one.
Lovesexy
Lovesexy put Prince nude on its cover, and on CD he insisted its nine songs play as one unbroken track. The Black Album became one of the most bootlegged records ever before its official release in 1994.
Q 24Which director's 1989 film came with a Prince soundtrack that produced the number-one single 'Batdance'?
Tim Burton
Tim Burton's Batman sent Prince's soundtrack album to number one in the US. In the Batdance video he appears split down the middle, half caped hero and half Joker.
Q 25Which 1991 single, recorded with the New Power Generation, became Prince's fifth and last US number one?
Cream
Cream was written, Prince later joked, while he stood looking at himself in a mirror. Its guitar lick is a loving nod to the T. Rex hit Get It On.
Q 26In 1993 Prince changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol during a dispute with which company?
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. had signed him to a $100 million deal only a year earlier. He argued that the label controlled the name Prince along with his music, so he took a new one: a glyph merging the male and female signs.
Q 27What did Prince write on his face during public appearances in the mid-1990s?
Slave
Slave stayed on his cheek through a public war with his label over who owned his recordings. 'If you don't own your masters, your master owns you,' he told Rolling Stone in 1996.
Q 28Which triple album did Prince release in 1996 to celebrate his escape from his record contract?
Emancipation
Emancipation came out on his own NPG label through a new distributor, EMI, which found itself handed three full discs at once. He was still billed as a symbol, and kept that name until 2000.
Q 29Which singer took Prince's little-known song 'Nothing Compares 2 U' to number one around the world in 1990?
Sinéad O'Connor
Sinéad O'Connor's version eclipsed the 1985 original by the Family, a Prince side project, which had barely made a ripple. The tears in her video, she said, were for her late mother.
Q 30Prince's 2004 solo on 'While My Guitar Gently Weeps' came at which hall of fame's induction ceremony?
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees that night included both Prince and the late George Harrison. Prince joined Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne and Harrison's son Dhani for the tribute and closed it with an extended solo.