Sep.22

electoral-vote.com

Dem 51

   

GOP 49

My Gift Is My Song: All Apologies

Last week's commonality was, as it turns out, harder to discern than we thought. Sorry about that! As we figure this thing out, and assuming we keep it going, we'll adopt the habit of doing what we did to address the situation: giving an additional hint or two in the intro to the Saturday Q&A.

In any event, here are the songs from last week along with—importantly in this case—the people who wrote them:

• "Lawyers, Guns and Money," by Warren Zevon
• "Sweet Southern Love," by Phil Everly
• "Breakfast Feud," by Benny Goodman
• "No Means Yes," by Herbie Hancock
• "From the Teacher to the Preacher?," by Gene Chandler
• "Soul Bossa Nova," by Quincy Jones
• "I Might Need Security," by Chance the Rapper
• "Along Comes A Woman," by Peter Cetera and Mark Goldenberg

All of these songwriters were... born in Chicago. In most cases, the artists also performed the songs, so "the performers were born in Chicago" was also an acceptable answer. That said, the Chandler song was a duet, and the other person (Barbara Acklin) was not born in Chicago. Similarly, the Cetera and Goldenberg song was performed by their band Chicago, and not all members were born in the city. So, while "the performers were born in Chicago" is acceptable, we took special care to make sure that all songs were unambiguously written by Chicago-born musicians, so there was an answer that was indisputably correct. That's right, Phil Everly was born in Chicago. Who knew? And in case you are wondering, Don Everly was born in Brownie, KY. Apparently the brothers did not understand how American politics works, however, because the blue-state-born Phil was a staunch Republican, while the red-state-born Don was a proud liberal.

Here are the first 10 readers to get it right this week:

1. J.L. in Hampton, VA
2. J.B. in Waukee, IA
3. J.N. in Zionsville, IN
4. J.C. in Oxford, England, UK
5. D.F. in Vancouver, BC, Canada
6. A.J. in Baltimore, MD
7. M.J.S. in Cheshire, CT
8. M.B. in Albany, NY
9. W.B. in Salamanca, Spain
10. E.M. in Milwaukee, WI

We gave a couple of clues last week. One was that there were two readers in the top 10 who probably had an advantage; the list included L.A.J. in Bourbonnais, IL and B.P. in Arlington Heights, IL. The two Illinoisans were the two we were referring to. We also wrote that one of the songs on the list was a dead giveaway; obviously it was the one by the band Chicago.

We'd say this week's theme has a difficulty of about 7. That said, we are going to give you a very big hint right now: Either the first song today qualifies for the theme, or the second one does, but they don't both qualify. It depends on, well, how you define things. None of the other songs, beyond those two, is subject to this particular, unusual ambiguity. And with that said, tally ho! Submit your guesses here. (Z)