130 Fun Facts About 2010s Pop Culture

Which music video became the first on YouTube to reach one billion views, in December 2012?

"Gangnam Style" later passed 2,147,483,647 views, the most a 32-bit counter can hold, so YouTube upgraded its view counter to 64 bits.

The Ice Bucket Challenge that flooded social media in summer 2014 raised money to fight which disease?

ALS research in the US gained $115 million in about two months, money that helped fund the 2016 discovery of NEK1, a gene linked to the disease.

The Harlem Shake videos of February 2013 were all set to a track by which producer?

Baauer's track debuted at number one in the very week Billboard began counting US YouTube views in the Hot 100, so thousands of meme uploads counted as plays.

What were the real colours of "the dress" that split the internet in February 2015?

Black and blue was the real one, and no white and gold version was on sale, so its maker, Roman Originals, produced a single white and gold dress and auctioned it for Comic Relief.

Nintendo's market value doubled over Pokémon Go in July 2016, but which company actually developed it?

Niantic built it on the map of its earlier game Ingress, and Nintendo's shares fell 18 percent in a day once it reminded investors that it didn't make the game.

Which toy craze took over school playgrounds in 2017?

Fidget spinners were sold as aids to focus and calm, yet some schools banned them for disrupting lessons.

Frozen (2013) was the top-grossing animated film until which fully computer-generated 2019 remake out-earned it?

The Lion King took about $1.65 billion, but Disney billed it as live action, so Frozen II was later reported as the highest-grossing animated film instead.

Avengers: Endgame became the highest-grossing film of all time in July 2019 by overtaking which movie?

Avatar took the crown back in 2021 thanks to a re-release in China.

Who was chosen as king in the Game of Thrones finale?

Bran Stark was elected by a council of lords and ladies, capping a final season so divisive that more than a million fans signed a petition asking HBO to remake it.

Which photo-sharing app did Mark Zuckerberg's company buy for roughly $1 billion in April 2012?

Instagram had only 13 employees at the time, a price of about $77 million a head, yet it went on to pass a billion monthly users by June 2018.

Vine, the six-second looping video app, was shut down in January 2017 by which parent company?

Twitter bought Vine in October 2012, months before the app had even launched, then closed it four years after its debut, leaving only a camera tool.

Which word did Oxford Dictionaries name its Word of the Year for 2013?

Selfie was traced to a 2002 Australian online forum, where a man posted a photo of his injured face after tripping on some steps and apologised for the focus.

Prince William and Catherine Middleton married on 29 April 2011 at which London venue?

Westminster Abbey was only the first act: William later drove his bride out of Buckingham Palace in his father's Aston Martin, dressed up newlywed-style by friends.

Which musical won 11 Tony Awards from a record 16 nominations?

Hamilton's 16 nominations came in only 13 categories because its castmates competed against one another, and one of them, Leslie Odom Jr., won Best Actor in a Musical.

E. L. James's Fifty Shades of Grey began life as fan fiction of which book series?

Twilight's Edward and Bella were the original leads of her story, Master of the Universe, posted online as "Snowqueens Icedragon" before she renamed them Christian and Ana.

Which film was mistakenly announced as Best Picture at the 2017 Oscars?

La La Land's producers were already giving their speeches when one of them, Jordan Horowitz, announced that Moonlight had won; the presenters had been handed the wrong envelope.

Which actor held the phone for the star-packed group photo Ellen DeGeneres tweeted from the 2014 Oscars?

Bradley Cooper took the shot because the host couldn't fit everyone in; she captioned it "If only Bradley's arm was longer", and it beat Barack Obama's retweet record.

"Left Shark" became a meme after dancing out of sync behind which singer at the 2015 Super Bowl halftime show?

Katy Perry's lawyers later tried to register Left Shark as a trademark, but a US trademark examiner rejected the design.

Which mobile game did Vietnamese developer Dong Nguyen pull from app stores in February 2014?

Flappy Bird was reportedly earning $50,000 a day from ads when Dong Nguyen removed it, saying he felt guilty that the game had become so addictive.

Which company bought Minecraft developer Mojang for $2.5 billion in 2014?

Microsoft's deal began with a tweet: creator Markus "Notch" Persson asked if anyone wanted to buy his share of Mojang so he could move on with his life.

Tardar Sauce, an Arizona pet who died in 2019, was better known online by which name?

Grumpy Cat's scowl came from an underbite and feline dwarfism, and her owner's daughter named the kitten after tartar sauce, which her colouring recalled.

Kabosu, a pet photographed by her kindergarten-teacher owner in Japan, became the face of which meme?

Doge made a star of the rescue Shiba Inu, and in December 2013 her face was put on Dogecoin, a cryptocurrency launched as a joke.

The disastrous Fyre Festival of 2017 was supposed to take place on an island in which country?

The Bahamas' Great Exuma greeted guests promised luxury villas and gourmet meals with relief-style tents and cheese sandwiches.

Which hybrid pastry had New Yorkers lining up outside Dominique Ansel's SoHo bakery within days of its 2013 launch?

Cronut mania began within three days of launch, with queues down the block, and Ansel filed to trademark the name nine days after it went on sale.

The viral 2012 short film Kony 2012 was produced by which organisation?

Invisible Children set out to make Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony famous enough to be arrested by the end of 2012, and its film drew more than 20 million views in three days.

Sharknado, the 2013 made-for-TV movie that took over social media, aired on which channel?

Syfy drew just 1.4 million viewers for the premiere, but the online frenzy earned the film midnight cinema screenings and five sequels.

Serial, the 2014 podcast that turned true crime into a mainstream obsession, was hosted by whom?

Sarah Koenig's series raised doubts about Adnan Syed's conviction for the murder of Hae Min Lee, and in 2022 he was released from prison.

Which emoji did Oxford Dictionaries choose as its Word of the Year for 2015?

Face with Tears of Joy made up 20 percent of all emoji used in the UK in 2015, up from 4 percent a year earlier, which is why Oxford picked it.

The 2018 audio clip that divided the internet had listeners hearing either "Laurel" or which other name?

Yanny was what nearly half of one online poll heard in an opera singer's recording of "laurel" for Vocabulary.com, because some ears favour the clip's higher frequencies.

Which rapper's 2019 hit spent a then-record 19 weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100?

Lil Nas X saw Billboard pull "Old Town Road" from its country chart for not fitting the genre, then released a remix with country star Billy Ray Cyrus that stayed on top into August.

The version of "Baby Shark" that took over the world was released by which South Korean company?

Pinkfong's video became YouTube's most-viewed ever in November 2020, a year after baseball's Washington Nationals adopted the song as their anthem on a World Series run.

Marie Kondo's KonMari method, a 2010s phenomenon, tells you to keep only the things that do what?

Spark joy is the only test, and whatever fails it isn't simply binned: Kondo has you thank each item for its service before letting it go.

Which singer's 2011 album spent 24 weeks at number one on the US Billboard 200?

Adele named 21 after her age when she made it, and its 24 weeks on top were the longest run for any album in more than 25 years.

Lady Gaga's infamous dress at the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards was made from what?

Raw beef doesn't keep, so taxidermists preserved the dress as a kind of jerky before the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame put it on display in 2011.

Gotye's 2011 mega-hit "Somebody That I Used to Know" featured guest vocals from which New Zealand singer?

A higher-profile singer pulled out at the last minute, and Kimbra got the part as a replacement.

Which 2011 viral hit was a $4,000 package that a 13-year-old's mother bought from the label ARK Music Factory?

"Friday" was one of two ready-made songs ARK offered, and Rebecca Black picked it because the other was about adult love, which she said she hadn't experienced yet.

Carly Rae Jepsen, whose "Call Me Maybe" was the earworm of 2012, comes from which country?

Canada knew her first: she finished third on Canadian Idol in 2007, five years before a fellow pop star's endorsement helped send "Call Me Maybe" around the world.

Kim Kardashian's 2014 "Break the Internet" cover appeared on which magazine?

Paper hired Jean-Paul Goude, who had her recreate his own 1976 photograph "Carolina Beaumont", also known as the "Champagne Incident".

Beyoncé's surprise self-titled visual album dropped in December 2013 exclusively through which retailer?

iTunes sold 828,773 copies in three days, its fastest-selling album to that point, and Target then declined to stock the CD at all.

Miley Cyrus's much-discussed twerking performance at the 2013 MTV VMAs was a duet with which singer?

Robin Thicke sang "Blurred Lines" as Cyrus danced against him with a foam finger, and Steve Chmelar, who built the original giant No. 1 hand in 1971, complained that she had degraded an honourable sporting icon.

In October 2012 Disney paid $4.05 billion for which company, and with it the rights to Star Wars?

Lucasfilm's founder and owner was paid in cash and Disney stock, and said he would put most of the $4 billion into funding education.

Which Netflix drama released its whole first season at once in February 2013?

House of Cards went to Netflix after the service outbid cable networks by ordering 26 episodes, two full seasons, without a pilot, in a deal reported at about $100 million.

Stranger Things, which debuted on Netflix in July 2016, is set in which fictional town?

Hawkins, Indiana replaced the first setting: the show was sold to Netflix as Montauk, set on Long Island, and moved to middle America for practical reasons.

Which network aired Breaking Bad's finale in September 2013?

AMC took the show after Showtime, TNT and HBO had all passed on it, and the finale drew 10.3 million viewers, the series' biggest audience.

Which American network carried Downton Abbey, an ITV drama from 2010, to a huge US audience?

PBS showed it under its Masterpiece banner, where host Laura Linney introduced each episode and explained matters such as "the entail" for American viewers.

Which sitcom ended in 2019 after 12 seasons?

The Big Bang Theory ended because Jim Parsons, its Sheldon, decided to leave after the 12th season, and its makers chose to stop instead of carrying on without him.

The 2017 remix of "Despacito" that sent the song to number one in the US featured which singer?

Justin Bieber heard the song in a nightclub in Colombia, saw how the crowd reacted to it and asked to record a remix.

Fortnite Battle Royale, the free hit that took over 2017 and 2018, was made by which studio?

Epic Games built the mode in just two months and first meant it to be part of the paid Fortnite, not a free release of its own.

Which 2012 puzzle game made its maker King worth $5.9 billion to Activision Blizzard?

Candy Crush Saga's maker had floated on the stock market in 2014 at $22.50 a share, yet Activision Blizzard bought it less than two years later for $18 a share.

In August 2018 TikTok absorbed which lip-sync video app, merging their accounts into one?

Musical.ly grew out of a failed education app; its Shanghai founders switched to lip-sync videos and sold to ByteDance in 2017 for a reported sum of up to $1 billion.

Which app launched on iOS in July 2011 under the name Picaboo?

Snapchat took its new name two months later; by then one of its three Stanford founders, Reggie Brown, had been pushed out, and he later settled his lawsuit for $157.5 million.

Which ride-hailing company dropped "Cab" from its name in 2010 after a cease-and-desist order from San Francisco regulators?

Uber began as UberCab, a black-car service, and its founders say the idea was born when they couldn't find a taxi on a snowy night in Paris in 2008.

What was the name of the Minnesota home and recording studio where Prince died in April 2016?

Paisley Park opened to the public as a museum that October, something his sister said he had always wanted; Prince died there of an accidental fentanyl overdose.

David Bowie's final album, released two days before his death in January 2016, was called what?

Blackstar was recorded in secret in New York while Bowie was being treated for cancer, and his producer Tony Visconti called it a parting gift to his fans.

The Mannequin Challenge videos of November 2016 were usually set to "Black Beatles" by which duo?

Rae Sremmurd rode the craze to their first US number one, ending a 12-week run by "Closer", and Paul McCartney, an actual Beatle, posted his own frozen video set to the song.

"Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae)", the dance craze of 2015, was the debut single of which 17-year-old rapper?

Silentó thought up the song at his Atlanta high school and posted it online in January 2015; within weeks Capitol came calling, and it climbed to number three in the US.

Which 2010 film was the first animated feature to gross $1 billion worldwide?

Toy Story 3 was nearly made without Pixar: Disney set up a studio called Circle 7 to produce its own version, then shut it down in 2006 after agreeing to buy Pixar.

Who played Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games (2012)?

Jennifer Lawrence took three days to say yes, daunted by the film's size, until her mother called her a hypocrite for nearly refusing a movie she loved because it was big.

What name did Prince William and Catherine give their first child, the royal baby born in July 2013?

George was announced the traditional way: a bulletin was carried from St Mary's Hospital to Buckingham Palace and set on an easel, though the name itself came two days later.

Which 2018 film became the first superhero movie nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars?

Black Panther's nomination came months after the Academy announced a separate Oscar for popular films, an idea it shelved within a month.

Which Taylor Swift album, released in October 2014, did she announce as her first official pop record?

1989 is named for the year Swift was born, and a week after its release she pulled her whole catalogue from Spotify, where it stayed missing until June 2017.

Which brand pulled a Kendall Jenner commercial within a day in 2017 after a backlash over its protest imagery?

Pepsi admitted it had "missed the mark" and apologised to Jenner too, after Bernice King posted a photo of her father facing police with the line "If only Daddy would have known about the power of #Pepsi".

Which Ed Sheeran song became the first to reach two billion Spotify streams, in December 2018?

It finished the 2010s as Spotify's most-streamed song of the decade.

Who sang "Let It Go" as Elsa in Frozen?

Idina Menzel's anthem rewrote the film: Elsa had been planned as the villain until the directors heard "Let It Go" and reworked her into a misunderstood heroine.

The 2016 "Damn Daniel" meme kept pointing out Daniel's white shoes from which brand?

Vans gave Daniel a lifetime supply of shoes when the boys went on Ellen, and the pair then handed out Vans to young patients at a California children's hospital.

Which pose-and-post photo fad of 2011 inspired spin-offs such as owling and Batmanning?

Planking, then called the lying down game, got seven staff at an English hospital suspended in 2009 after they played it on a night shift and posted the photos on Facebook.

Which gadget did "Explorer" testers pay $1,500 to try in 2013?

Google Glass left the consumer market in January 2015, but Google kept selling it to businesses and relaunched it in 2017 as a tool for factory workers.

Which 2015 hit spent 14 consecutive weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100?

"Uptown Funk" picked up extra songwriters along the way: the writers of the Gap Band's 1979 hit "Oops Upside Your Head" were added to its credits in 2015 over the two songs' likeness.

The Fyre Festival was dreamed up by Billy McFarland and Ja Rule mainly to promote what?

A music booking app called Fyre was the real product, meant to let users hire stars for private events; the festival built to promote it ended with McFarland jailed for six years for fraud.

The first Harlem Shake video came from which YouTube comedian, who later found fame as the singer Joji?

Filthy Frank and friends danced in costumes, one of them his character Pink Guy, and within days thousands of copycat videos were being uploaded to YouTube.

Which K-pop group became the first to top the US Billboard 200 album chart, in 2018?

BTS reached number one with the Korean-language Love Yourself: Tear, and South Korea's president, Moon Jae-in, publicly congratulated the seven members and their fans.

Which 2017 meme was built on Spanish photographer Antonio Guillem's stock photo?

Distracted Boyfriend's photographer said he hadn't even known what a meme was until the models in the picture spotted the jokes on social media and told him.

"Salt Bae", whose meat-seasoning flourish went viral in January 2017, is a chef from which country?

Turkey's Nusret Gökçe already ran a steakhouse chain; fame took him further, to a FIFA inquiry in 2022 for walking onto the pitch and handling the trophy after the World Cup final.

Candace Payne's record-breaking Facebook Live clip of 2016 showed her laughing helplessly in a mask of which Star Wars character?

Chewbacca's growling mask came from Kohl's, and as the clip headed past 100 million views the retailer surprised Payne with $2,500 in gift cards and more masks for her family.

Ylvis, the comedy duo behind 2013's "The Fox (What Does the Fox Say?)", come from which country?

Norway's Ylvis brothers meant it as a deliberately stupid song to promote their talk show, a joke about wasting star producers Stargate, yet it reached number six in the US.

In the 2011 Nyan Cat video, the flying cat's body is made of what?

A Pop-Tart and a cat were two separate requests from viewers of Chris Torres's charity drawing stream for the Red Cross, so he merged them into one character.

Roughly how many people actually showed up at Area 51's gates for the 2019 "Storm Area 51" event?

About 150 people reached the gates, the county sheriff said, and some 1,500 more stayed at festivals in nearby towns; over two million had signed up to the joke Facebook event.

Which craze of 2016, soon banned in many schools, took off after a teenager's stunt at his high-school talent show?

Bottle flipping spread from Mike Senatore's talent-show act in Charlotte to classrooms everywhere, where the endless thud of landing bottles wore out teachers' and parents' patience.

The Tide Pods at the centre of the dangerous 2018 "challenge" are made by which company?

Procter & Gamble enlisted NFL star Rob Gronkowski for a video telling people the pods were for washing, not eating, as the joke turned into a real dare.

The 2018 "Kiki challenge" was set to which Drake song?

"In My Feelings" took off after comedian Shiggy filmed himself dancing to it in the street; police warned copycats against leaping from moving cars, and Drake put Shiggy in the video.

Which kind of animal was Paul, who correctly picked all of Germany's results at the 2010 World Cup?

An octopus at a German aquarium, Paul made each pick by opening one of two food boxes marked with the teams' flags, and he also called the winner of the final.

Which 2010 thriller starring Leonardo DiCaprio ends on a spinning top that may or may not fall?

Inception cuts to its credits just as the top seems to wobble, leaving audiences to argue over whether the final scene is reality or one more dream.

On which TV talent show were the five members of One Direction put together as a group in 2010?

The X Factor first saw all five audition as solo candidates, and the band formed on the show was then propelled to global fame by its online fans.

Pharrell Williams's hit Happy was first released on the soundtrack of which 2013 animated film?

Despicable Me 2 gave Happy a quiet start in July 2013, but a 24-hour music video that November helped make it the best-selling song of 2014 in the US and UK.

Which Apple product, unveiled by Steve Jobs in January 2010, sold a million units in its first month?

The iPad reached a million sales in half the time the first iPhone had needed, and by the end of 2010 it made up 75% of all tablet PC sales.

Which actor won four Emmys as Walter White, the chemistry teacher turned drug lord of Breaking Bad?

Bryan Cranston was known only as the goofy dad from Malcolm in the Middle, so wary TV executives first approached John Cusack and Matthew Broderick.

Which TV drama, launched on Halloween 2010, follows deputy Rick Grimes after he wakes from a coma?

The Walking Dead is based on Robert Kirkman's comic book series, and its survivors call the zombies that have overrun the world walkers.

Which company's Echo speaker, announced in November 2014, introduced the voice assistant Alexa?

Amazon first planned to call the speaker the Flash and have it wake to the word Amazon, until its own engineers objected that the word was too common.

Which British host turned singing with pop stars in a moving car into the TV hit Carpool Karaoke?

James Corden took the idea from a 2011 Comic Relief sketch in which he sang in a car with George Michael, and Mariah Carey was the first star to say yes.

Which animal-shaped bracelets, a craze of 2010, were banned from many classrooms as a distraction?

Silly Bandz began when Ohio importer Robert Croak saw shaped rubber bands on a business trip, then made them bigger and thicker and sold them as a toy.

Which actor played a modern-day Sherlock Holmes in the BBC series Sherlock, first shown in July 2010?

Benedict Cumberbatch's Holmes swapped the pipe for nicotine patches, and Martin Freeman played his Doctor Watson across four three-part series.

Which French act had a worldwide 2013 hit with Get Lucky, featuring Pharrell Williams and Nile Rodgers?

Daft Punk, the duo who performed in robot helmets, scored their first US top-10 hit with the single and won the Grammy for Record of the Year.

Which action star voiced Groot, the tree creature of Guardians of the Galaxy who says only three words?

Vin Diesel also recorded the same short line in other languages, so his own voice is heard in several of the film's foreign-language releases.

Which 2010 film, written by Aaron Sorkin, cast Jesse Eisenberg as a young Mark Zuckerberg at Harvard?

The Social Network kept its star away from the man he was playing: Eisenberg planned to drive over and meet him, but the producers refused for legal reasons.

Which MTV reality show followed Snooki and seven housemates through a summer in Seaside Heights?

Jersey Shore later took its housemates far from home, spending its second season in South Beach, Florida, and its fourth in Florence, Italy.

Which little-known British actress was cast as Rey, the scavenger heroine of The Force Awakens?

Daisy Ridley had been pulling pints at two London pubs and playing small TV parts when she won the role, and Rolling Stone called her a total unknown.

Which creator of the Broadway show Hamilton got the idea from a biography he read on holiday in Mexico?

Lin-Manuel Miranda picked up Ron Chernow's life of Alexander Hamilton on a 2008 break from his show In the Heights, then wrote the music, lyrics and book himself.

Which American singer-songwriter was awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature for his song lyrics?

Bob Dylan had been put forward twenty years earlier by a Virginia Military Institute professor, starting a campaign for him that ran until the prize came.

Which fan noisemaker became the droning soundtrack of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa?

Vuvuzela noise drove TV viewers to distraction and brought calls for a ban, but FIFA president Sepp Blatter refused to Europeanise an African World Cup.

The Great British Bake Off, first shown on BBC Two in 2010, sets its bakers to work inside what?

A large tent, or marquee, is draped in bunting to recreate an English village fête; in the first series it moved from town to town each week.

Which ride-on gadgets, the craze of 2015, were investigated after their batteries caused dozens of fires?

Hoverboards took off after a string of celebrities were seen riding them, but US safety officials traced 60 fires in over 20 states to their lithium-ion batteries.

Which arm-swinging dance did 'Backpack Kid' Russell Horning perform on Saturday Night Live in May 2017?

The floss first went viral through an August 2016 video of Horning dancing at the age of 14, months before he was invited onto the show.

Which chain released a brightly coloured Unicorn drink that went viral in April 2017?

Starbucks made it with mango syrup and sour pink and blue powders, and fans described the result as colour-changing and flavour-shifting.

Which craft kit did a Nissan engineer invent after watching his daughters make rubber-band bracelets?

Rainbow Loom's inventor Cheong Choon Ng filmed how-to videos with his daughters and niece, and by September 2014 his company had sold over 8 million kits.

Which brunch order did developer Tim Gurner say in 2017 was keeping millennials from buying homes?

Avocado toast was already a meme: an Australian columnist had made the same complaint in late 2016, and Gurner added $4 lattes to the charge sheet.

Which four-letter motto of the early 2010s did Drake popularise with his 2011 single The Motto?

YOLO spread so far that Drake wanted royalties from the merchandise in 2012, then apologised for the craze on live television in 2014.

Which meat-free patty, launched in July 2016, contains heme, the molecule that makes blood red?

Impossible Burger makers produce their heme by fermenting genetically engineered yeast, in a process much like the one used to brew beer.

Which country's concept of hygge, or cosy contentment, inspired a wave of lifestyle books in 2016?

Denmark treats hygge as part of its cultural identity, and Collins shortlisted the word for its 2016 word of the year, which went to Brexit.

Which sportswear company launched its Yeezy shoes with Kanye West in 2015 after he left a rival brand?

Adidas signed West after he walked out on Nike in 2013, and the first shoe from the partnership, the Boost 750, arrived in February 2015.

Which Star Wars series, launched in November 2019, introduced the child fans nicknamed Baby Yoda?

The Mandalorian's own crew never used the nickname, and Disney's chief executive said he had his wrist slapped for typing it in emails.

Meghan Markle, who married Prince Harry in 2018, spent seven seasons as Rachel Zane in which legal drama?

Suits lost her when the engagement came: she announced that she would retire from acting and intended to become a British citizen.

Which modern object was accidentally left in shot during a 2019 Game of Thrones banquet scene?

A coffee cup from a local café was briefly visible in the original broadcast, and it was digitally erased from the episode two days later.

Which video game hero's first film trailer in 2019 drew such a backlash that Paramount redesigned him?

Sonic looked too much like a real hedgehog for fans, so Paramount delayed the film by three months to bring him closer to his video game look.

Which actor released the 2018 chart-topper This Is America under his rap name, Childish Gambino?

Donald Glover put out the song and its video on the night he hosted Saturday Night Live, and it entered the Billboard Hot 100 at number one.

Which 2018 Netflix thriller sparked a blindfold challenge that drew a safety plea from Netflix itself?

Bird Box sends Sandra Bullock's character down a river in a boat with two children, all three of them blindfolded.

Which actor wore prosthetic teeth to play Queen frontman Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody?

Rami Malek had to learn to talk through the false teeth and put in many intense sessions with a movement coach to capture the singer on stage.

The hit duet Shallow comes from which 2018 film, directed by Bradley Cooper and co-starring Lady Gaga?

A Star Is Born was Cooper's first film as a director, and he also plays Jackson Maine, the hard-drinking musician who discovers Gaga's singer Ally.

Which rapper's Damn won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Music, the first awarded outside classical and jazz?

Kendrick Lamar built the record to work backwards as well, and later reissued it as a collector's edition with the track order reversed.

Which singer made her 2019 debut album at 17 with her brother Finneas in his small bedroom studio?

Billie Eilish started work on it with Finneas O'Connell back in May 2016, and the pair re-recorded the first song they wrote for it two years later.

Which voice assistant made its debut as a built-in feature of the iPhone 4S in October 2011?

Siri had started out as a standalone app, which Apple bought and then pulled from its App Store once the assistant was built into the phone.

Which 2011 comedy, co-written by its star Kristen Wiig, follows a maid of honour's run of misfortunes?

Bridesmaids out-earned Knocked Up to become producer Judd Apatow's top-grossing film, and Wiig's co-writer Annie Mumolo appears as the nervous woman on the plane.

Which actor joined Two and a Half Men in 2011 as a billionaire after Charlie Sheen's firing?

Ashton Kutcher played Walden Schmidt, who buys the beach house after Sheen's character is killed off screen, and ratings rose in his first season.

Which uncle-and-nephew duo from Motown's founding family topped charts in 2011 with Party Rock Anthem?

LMFAO's Redfoo is the youngest son of Motown founder Berry Gordy, and his bandmate Sky Blu is Gordy's grandson.

Which singing contest, launched on NBC in April 2011, has coaches listen with their chairs turned away?

The Voice was adapted from a Dutch format and first announced as The Voice of America, a name dropped because a news broadcaster already used it.

Which actor played Ned Stark, whose execution shocked viewers of Game of Thrones in 2011?

Sean Bean's character returned in later seasons only in flashbacks, played as a child and as a young man by two other actors.

Which talk show host ended her daytime programme in May 2011 after 25 seasons and 4,561 episodes?

Oprah Winfrey began the national run in September 1986, after first hosting a half-hour morning talk show on a Chicago station.

Which company built Watson, the computer that beat two Jeopardy! champions to a $1 million prize in 2011?

IBM approached the quiz show's producers in 2008, asking to face Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, two of its most successful contestants.

Which actor played Lord Voldemort, finally defeated when the Harry Potter film series ended in July 2011?

Ralph Fiennes played the villain without coloured contact lenses, and his nephew Hero Fiennes Tiffin appeared as the character's childhood self.

Which Denver Broncos quarterback's habit of kneeling in prayer on the field became a 2011 photo craze?

Tim Tebow gave the pose its name, Tebowing, and a fan's website filled up with pictures of people copying it all over the world.

Which band's 2011 hit Moves like Jagger featured Christina Aguilera as its guest vocalist?

Maroon 5 handed Aguilera her fifth chart-topper with the song, her first since Lady Marmalade ten years before.