Answer song

An answer song (or answer record) is, as the name suggests, a song (usually a recorded track) made in answer to a previous song, normally by another artist. The concept became widespread in blues and R&B recorded music in the 1930s through 1950s. Answer songs were also extremely popular in country music in the 1950s and 1960s, most often as female responses to an original hit by a male artist. Today, this practice is most common in hip hop music, especially as the continuation of a feud between performers. Sometimes an answer record imitated the original very closely and occasionally a hit song would be followed up by the same artist.

Selected works

• Woody Guthrie's famous "This Land Is Your Land" was written as an answer to Irving Berlin's "God Bless America".
• "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels" was Kitty Wells's response to Hank Thompson's "The Wild Side of Life."

See also

• Roxanne Wars