Guess the Music Icon
Fifteen of the most photographed faces in popular music, all of them face down under foil.
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Fifteen of the most photographed faces in popular music, all of them face down under foil.
Jazz, soul, rock, country, reggae and the blues, spread across roughly fifty years. Everyone here was photographed constantly while they were working, which is exactly why the pictures are usable: publicity stills handed out to newspapers in the United States before 1978 were almost never marked with a copyright notice, and most of them passed into the public domain as a result.
Two of the portraits came from the Dutch national archive, which released its photograph collection for anyone to use. That is why John Lennon is leaving an airport rather than posing in a studio.
Among the names you will meet here: Elvis Presley, Aretha Franklin, David Bowie, Bob Marley and Louis Armstrong.
Musicians are the one group here who built their faces on purpose. The hair, the glasses, the sunglasses and the jaw were all part of the act, which cuts both ways: a single uncovered inch of the right thing gives the answer away instantly, and everything else gives you nothing at all.
The cruel pairing in this category is Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder. Both are photographed in dark glasses, both at a keyboard, and at a low reveal one is a very convincing version of the other.
Go for the top of the head before anything else. Hair does more identifying work here than in any other category on the site, and a single swipe across the hairline separates most of these fifteen from each other long before a face has appeared.
Your score is 100 minus the percentage of the card you scratched. A wrong name scores nothing at all, however little you used. The full rules, the badge bands and an explanation of why the picture stays blurry are on the main page.