Music trivia questions and answers for your next quiz night

A good music round mixes gimmes with head scratchers, so everyone gets a few right and nobody runs away with it. The questions below start gentle and climb, then branch into a few themed rounds you can drop in to change the pace. Pull a handful from each and read them out between songs, and adjust the tiers to match how much your crowd actually knows.

Easy round

• Which band recorded "Bohemian Rhapsody"? Queen
• Who is widely known as the King of Pop? Michael Jackson
• Which Swedish group won Eurovision with "Waterloo"? ABBA
• Bob Marley is most associated with which genre? Reggae
• Which four piece from Liverpool is the best selling band in history? The Beatles
• Who sang "Rolling in the Deep"? Adele
• Which instrument is Elton John famous for playing? Piano
• "Blank Space" and "Shake It Off" are by which artist? Taylor Swift

Once everyone's off the mark, turn the difficulty up a notch.

Medium round

• Which band released "Smells Like Teen Spirit"? Nirvana
• Who is the lead singer of U2? Bono
• "Purple Rain" is most associated with which artist? Prince
• Which rapper released "The Marshall Mathers LP"? Eminem
• Which artist recorded the album "Thriller"? Michael Jackson
• Who performs "Shape of You"? Ed Sheeran
• Which band from Manchester released "Wonderwall"? Oasis
• Beyoncé first rose to fame in which group? Destiny's Child

Now for the questions that sort the music buffs from the rest.

Hard round

• "Like a Rolling Stone" is by which artist? Bob Dylan
• Which band's "Good Times" was later sampled all over hip hop? Chic
• Who was the lead singer of Joy Division? Ian Curtis
• Which producer makes music under the name Aphex Twin? Richard D. James
• Fela Kuti is a pioneer of which genre? Afrobeat
• Which Brazilian movement did Caetano Veloso help lead? Tropicalia
• Which German band shaped electronic music with the album "Autobahn"? Kraftwerk
• Who composed the score for "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly"? Ennio Morricone

If the hard round bruised some egos, these next rounds give everyone a way back in.

One-hit wonders: name the artist

Read out the song, and teams name the act behind it:

• "Take On Me" (a-ha)
• "Tainted Love", the 1981 synth-pop version (Soft Cell)
• "Somebody That I Used to Know" (Gotye)
• "Macarena" (Los del Río)
• "Mambo No. 5" (Lou Bega)

Which came first?

Read both, and teams pick the one released first. This is the round that plays like the timeline game itself:

• "Thriller" or "Purple Rain"? Thriller (1982, before 1984)
• The Beatles' first album or the Rolling Stones' first? The Beatles (1963, before 1964)
• "Stairway to Heaven" or "Bohemian Rhapsody"? Stairway to Heaven (1971, before 1975)
• "Billie Jean" or "Sweet Child o' Mine"? Billie Jean (1983, before 1987)
• The first iPhone or the launch of Spotify? The iPhone (2007, before 2008)

Name the decade

Read the artist, and teams guess the decade of their peak. A forgiving format for mixed groups:

• The Supremes (1960s)
• Led Zeppelin (1970s)
• Madonna's rise (1980s)
• Spice Girls (1990s)
• Amy Winehouse (2000s)
• Billie Eilish (2010s onward)

Add a listening round with no prep

Written questions test what people know, but the loudest part of any music night is a listening round, where a song plays and the room races to name it. That's the one bit that takes real work to prepare by hand. Tunigma runs it for you: it plays songs from one phone and challenges players to guess the track and the year it came out, and you can set the decades, genres, and countries to match your crowd. It's free to download, so you can pair these written rounds with a live audio round and have a full night ready.