Getting your questions ready
Getting your questions ready
Beat the crowd
10 questions No timer
This 2010s music trivia quiz has 60 free questions with answers and covers the decade that moved from downloads to streaming, from Adele's 21 and Katy Perry's Teenage Dream at the start to Old Town Road, Bad Guy and Blinding Lights at the end. In between are Gangnam Style breaking YouTube, Get Lucky and Uptown Funk reviving disco and funk, Despacito going global, Lemonade dropping without warning, Kendrick Lamar winning a Pulitzer and Bob Dylan winning a Nobel. The easy questions ask which film Happy and Let It Go came from, who featured on Despacito and which K-pop group first topped the Billboard 200. The medium ones cover Grammy winners, chart runs and who sang on which hit. The hard ones want the sample under Hotline Bling, the Incubus guitarist on Wake Me Up, the technology behind the Tupac hologram and the album cover painted by George Condo. Every answer has been checked against a reference encyclopaedia, and each question shows its explanation and citation once you have answered.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01On 21 December 2012, which song's video became the first on YouTube to reach one billion views?
Gangnam Style
Psy's horse-dance hit had only been out since July of that year; the counter briefly 'broke' when it later passed 2.1 billion.
Q 02In 2019, 'Old Town Road' set a record with how many consecutive weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100?
19
Billboard had earlier removed the song from its Hot Country chart for not embracing 'enough elements of today's country music', which only fuelled the Billy Ray Cyrus remix.
Q 03'Despacito' was the first mostly Spanish-language Hot 100 number one since which 1996 hit?
Macarena
Its 16 weeks at number one tied the longest run in the chart's history at the time, and it topped the charts in 47 countries.
Q 04'Despacito' spent 16 weeks at #1 in 2017, tying which Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men ballad for the longest Hot 100 run?
One Sweet Day
The 1995 duet had held the record alone for 21 years; both were finally passed by 'Old Town Road' in 2019.
Q 05Gotye's guest vocalist on 'Somebody That I Used to Know' came from which country?
New Zealand
Kimbra's verse was the reply half of the break-up duet; the song sold 11.8 million copies that year and sat at number one in the US for eight weeks.
Q 06Pharrell Williams's 'Happy' was written for the soundtrack of which animated film?
Despicable Me 2
Its promotion included 24hoursofhappy.com, billed as the world's first 24-hour music video, and it lost the Oscar to 'Let It Go'.
Q 07Daft Punk's 'Get Lucky' featured Pharrell Williams and which veteran Chic guitarist?
Nile Rodgers
The single led Random Access Memories, Daft Punk's fourth and final studio album, and won Record of the Year at the 2014 Grammys.
Q 08With 'Royals' in 2013, Lorde became the youngest woman to top the Hot 100 since which 1980s teen star?
Tiffany
Lorde was 16 years and 11 months old; the song went on to win Song of the Year at the Grammys.
Q 09In 2015 a jury found Robin Thicke's 'Blurred Lines' infringed which Marvin Gaye song?
Got to Give It Up
Thicke and Pharrell Williams, but not T.I., were held liable; the $7.4 million award was later cut to $5.3 million and Gaye was added as a songwriter.
Q 10Which producer was credited on 'Uptown Funk', the 2015 hit featuring Bruno Mars?
Mark Ronson
It was the lead single from his album Uptown Special and won Record of the Year at the 2016 Grammys.
Q 11Which 17-year-old ended the record run of 'Old Town Road' at number one in 2019 with 'Bad Guy'?
Billie Eilish
She was the first artist born in the 2000s to top the Hot 100; the song, written with her brother and producer Finneas, took Record and Song of the Year at the 2020 Grammys.
Q 12Which 2017 album became the first work outside classical and jazz to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music?
Damn. by Kendrick Lamar
The Pulitzer board called it 'a virtuosic song collection unified by its vernacular authenticity'; it was Lamar's fourth studio album.
Q 13Who sang 'Let It Go' in Frozen (2013) and performed it at the Oscars, where it won Best Song?
Idina Menzel
Q 21In 1998, which female rapper became the first to top the Hot 100 with a solo song, 19 years before Cardi B?
Lauryn Hill
Hill's 'Doo Wop (That Thing)' had done it 19 years earlier; 'Bodak Yellow' held the top spot for three weeks.
Q 22Which Ed Sheeran single became the first song to reach two billion streams on Spotify, in 2018?
Shape of You
Released as a double lead single from ÷ in January 2017, it topped the Hot 100 for 12 non-consecutive weeks and passed three billion streams in December 2021.
Q 23Adele's 'Hello' (2015) was the first track to do what in a single week in the United States?
Sell over a million digital copies
The song was written by the husband-and-wife team Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez; Demi Lovato sang the pop version over the end credits.
Q 14Which country is 'Call Me Maybe' singer Carly Rae Jepsen from?
Canada
Bieber called it 'possibly the catchiest song I've ever heard', and Jepsen was signed to his manager's Schoolboy Records.
Q 15Whose 1994 hit was the first independently released Hot 100 No.1, before Macklemore's 'Thrift Shop'?
Lisa Loeb
Loeb's 'Stay (I Missed You)' from the Reality Bites soundtrack made her the first artist to reach number one without a record deal.
Q 16Which Imagine Dragons song set a record by spending 87 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100?
Radioactive
It also holds the record for the slowest climb into the top five; the record for total weeks stood for more than seven years.
Q 17Which soul singer provided the uncredited vocals on Avicii's 2013 hit 'Wake Me Up'?
Aloe Blacc
Mike Einziger of Incubus co-wrote the song and played the acoustic guitar that upset EDM purists when it debuted at Ultra Music Festival.
Q 18One Direction were formed in 2010 on which television show?
The X Factor
They finished third behind Matt Cardle and Rebecca Ferguson; Zayn Malik left in March 2015 and the band went on hiatus in January 2016.
Q 19'See You Again' by Wiz Khalifa and Charlie Puth was a Paul Walker tribute for which 2015 film?
Furious 7
Its video briefly became the most-viewed on YouTube in July 2017, before 'Despacito' overtook it a few weeks later.
Q 20'This Is America', the first rap song to win Record and Song of the Year, was released under which stage name?
Childish Gambino
Donald Glover dropped it on 6 May 2018 while hosting Saturday Night Live; the video's choreography and violence were dissected for weeks.
It led her album 25, whose first-week US sales set a record that still stands for the Nielsen era.
Q 24Which song from Adele's 21 won Record of the Year and Song of the Year at the 2012 Grammys?
Rolling in the Deep
Produced by Paul Epworth, it also took Best Short Form Music Video; the album remains the best-selling of the 21st century.
Q 25Taylor Swift's 2014 album 1989, marketed as her first 'official pop' record, is named after what?
Her birth year
She framed the title as a symbolic rebirth from country to pop; the album won Album of the Year at the 2016 Grammys.
Q 26Which album first sent five singles to Hot 100 number one, a feat Katy Perry's Teenage Dream matched?
Bad
Michael Jackson's 1987 record set the mark; Perry matched it with California Gurls, Teenage Dream, Firework, E.T. and Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.).
Q 27Lady Gaga performed the Oscar-winning 'Shallow' with which actor-director?
Bradley Cooper
It led the soundtrack of the 2018 remake of A Star Is Born, in which Cooper also made his directorial debut.
Q 28Fun.'s 'We Are Young', Grammy Song of the Year for 2012, featured which guest singer?
Janelle Monáe
A Glee cover produced a 1,650% jump in sales, and a Chevrolet Super Bowl commercial in February 2012 sent it to number one.
Q 29Beyoncé's Lemonade was surprise-released in April 2016 exclusively on which streaming service?
Tidal
Her sixth studio album arrived with an hour-long HBO film and stayed off rival services for three years, until April 2019.
Q 30Which songwriter won the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature for 'new poetic expressions' in the American song tradition?
Bob Dylan
He skipped the December ceremony, citing prior commitments, and delivered his Nobel lecture months later.