November 2019 Assignment

Write a response or reply or continuation of a popular song.

An “answer song” doesn’t work as well if the listener doesn’t know the original. But when it works it’s a tribute to the original song.

The “reply song” is hardly a new idea.

Everybody knows “Space Oddity,” the 1969 David Bowie classic about an accident in space. In 1983 Peter Schilling replied with “Major Tom (Coming Home)” providing a new adventure for Bowie’s original character.

“I Wonder Why Bill Bailey Don’t Come Home” by William Jerome, performed Arthur Collins in 1902 as an answer to “(Won’t You Come Home) Bill Bailey,” a No. 1 hit for Collins earlier the same year.

“I’ve Got The Yes! We Have no Banana Blues” by Lew Brown, Robert King and James F. Hanley was released in 1923 by Billy Jones in response to “Yes We Have no Bananas”  by Frank Silver and Irving Cohn, which was released by Billy Jones the same year. “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels”  by J. D. “Jay” Miller and originally sung in 1952 by Kitty Wells, was a response to “The Wild Side of Life” made famous that same year by Hank Thompson.

“That’s My Life (My Love and My Home),” written and performed in 1965 by Freddie Lennon, John Lennon‘s father, was a response to his son’s song with The Beatles “In My Life” released in the same year.

“Back in the U.S.S.R.” by Paul McCartney (credited to Lennon/McCartney) was the The Beatles 1968 response to “Back in the USA” by Chuck Berry (1959) and  “California Girls” by Brian Wilson and Mike Love of The Beach Boys (1965).
“Boys, Boys, Boys” (2008) by Lady Gaga was a response to “Girls, Girls, Girls” (1987) by Nikki Sixx, Mick Mars, and Tommy Lee of Mötley Crüe.