Country Music
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
8correct to beat the crowd
178 free Country Music trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
100 free country music trivia questions with answers. From the hills of Appalachia to the stages of Nashville, country music has told the stories of America for over a century. From Johnny Cash to Zach Bryan, how well do you know the genre?
30 of 178 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Cowboy Copas, Hawkshaw Hawkins and a female star died together in March 1963 in what kind of accident?
A plane crash
Patsy Cline, Cowboy Copas and Hawkshaw Hawkins died in a plane crash near Camden, Tennessee, on March 5, 1963, flying home to Nashville from a Kansas City benefit show.
Q 02Which Dolly Parton country No. 1 of 1974 names the creature she adopted as her personal symbol?
Love Is Like a Butterfly
Love Is Like a Butterfly topped the country chart in 1974; two years later Parton made it the theme of her TV variety show, and the butterfly has stayed her emblem, worked into her logos, ever since.
Q 03Which Garth Brooks hit has a boot-wearing narrator crash his ex's black-tie affair?
Friends in Low Places
Friends in Low Places grew from a joke: co-writer Earl Bud Lee, caught without money at a Nashville restaurant, said he had friends in low places because he knew the cook; Brooks first sang it as a demo.
Q 04Which horizontal slide instrument, its strings bent by knee levers, gives country its weeping sound?
Pedal steel guitar
Pedal steel guitar took over country after Bud Isaacs used a pedal to bend notes inside a chord on Webb Pierce's 1954 hit 'Slowly', a sound that sent other steel players hurrying to add pedals.
Q 05Which band backed the singer of 'Act Naturally' on his 1960s Bakersfield number ones?
The Buckaroos
The Buckaroos, led by guitarist Don Rich, backed Buck Owens on a run of 1960s No. 1s that began with 'Act Naturally' in 1963; two years later the Beatles covered it with Ringo Starr singing.
Q 06Which radio announcer, billed as the 'Solemn Old Judge', founded the Grand Ole Opry in 1925?
George D. Hay
George D. Hay launched it as the WSM Barn Dance; in 1927, coming on air after an hour of grand opera, he told listeners they would now hear the 'Grand Ole Opry', and the name stuck.
Q 07The singer of 'Your Cheatin' Heart' was found dead at 29 in the back seat of which make of car?
Cadillac
Cadillac was the car carrying Hank Williams to a New Year's Day show in Canton, Ohio; his hired driver, a college student, realised he was dead when they stopped in Oak Hill, West Virginia.
Q 08The first CMA Awards, in October 1967, were held at which venue?
Municipal Auditorium
The first CMA Awards were presented at Nashville's Municipal Auditorium on October 20, 1967; the ceremony moved to the Ryman Auditorium the following year.
Q 09Country-pop star Shania Twain was born and raised in which country?
Canada
Canada is where Shania Twain, born Eilleen Edwards in Windsor, Ontario, grew up in Timmins; when her mother and stepfather died in a car crash, she went home to raise her younger siblings.
Q 10Which country star won CMA Entertainer of the Year in 1991, 1992, 1997 and 1998?
Garth Brooks
Garth Brooks has won CMA Entertainer of the Year seven times; in 2020 he asked not to be considered again, saying it was time for somebody else to hold the award.
Q 11Which TV singing contest did a future country superstar from Checotah, Oklahoma, win in 2005?
American Idol
American Idol's fourth season was won by Carrie Underwood, who grew up on her parents' farm and had interrupted a journalism degree to audition; she went back and finished it a year later.
Q 12Which country subgenre were Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson figureheads of in the 1970s?
Outlaw country
Outlaw country is the 1970s movement chronicled in Michael Streissguth's 2013 book 'Outlaw: Waylon, Willie, Kris, and the Renegades of Nashville'; its artists insisted on choosing their own producers and bands.
Q 13Which 2008 Taylor Swift album, home to 'Love Story', won her the Album of the Year Grammy?
Fearless
Q 21Which dance craze swept country bars after the 1992 hit 'Achy Breaky Heart'?
Line dancing
Line dancing went mainstream on the song's video and its own 'Achy Breaky' dance, yet the tune had gone nowhere a year earlier, when the Marcy Brothers released it as 'Don't Tell My Heart'.
Q 22Which George Jones recording has been named in several surveys as the greatest country song of all time?
He Stopped Loving Her Today
'He Stopped Loving Her Today', written by Bobby Braddock and Curly Putman, topped the country chart in 1980 and revived George Jones' career; polls have repeatedly named it the greatest country song ever.
Q 23Which 2005 album was Miranda Lambert's major-label debut?
Fearless won Album of the Year in 2010; after the rights to her early recordings were sold, it became the first album Swift re-recorded, released in 2021 as 'Fearless (Taylor's Version)'.
Q 14What is the name of the famous Nashville street known for its honky-tonk bars and live music?
Broadway
Broadway's best-known honky-tonk, Tootsie's Orchid Lounge, sits right behind the Opry's old home, so its stars drank there between shows and unknown songwriters such as Willie Nelson came to pitch them songs.
Q 15Which album carried its singer to Album of the Year, Male Vocalist and New Artist at the 2015 CMA Awards?
Traveller
Chris Stapleton's 'Traveller' won Album of the Year at the 2015 CMA Awards, where his duet with Justin Timberlake sent the album to No. 1 on the Billboard 200 the following week.
Q 16Which 1961 Patsy Cline hit was written by a young, little-known songwriter named Willie Nelson?
Crazy
Crazy defeated Patsy Cline at the first session: still hurting from a car crash, she couldn't reach the high notes, so the band recorded without her and she added her vocal weeks later.
Q 17Which duet won Johnny Cash and June Carter a Grammy in 1968, the year they married?
Jackson
Jackson took the Grammy for best country duet on February 29, 1968; the next day Cash and Carter married, a week after he had proposed to her in the middle of a concert in London, Ontario.
Q 18Which song was Luke Combs' debut single, a Country Airplay No. 1 in May 2017?
Hurricane
Hurricane was the only track Combs could afford to have mastered in 2015; released on his own, it sold well enough in a week to chart and pay for the rest of his EP, and Columbia Nashville reissued it.
Q 19The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum is located in which city?
Nashville, Tennessee
The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum stands in downtown Nashville, Tennessee; founded in 1961, it moved into its purpose-built downtown home in 2001.
Q 20Which country star sang 'Mama Tried', a lament drawn from his own years in San Quentin?
Merle Haggard
Merle Haggard wrote 'Mama Tried' about the grief he caused his mother, but unlike the song's narrator he was no lifer: he was paroled in 1960 and was soon playing bass in a Las Vegas band.
Kerosene
Kerosene's title track echoed Steve Earle's 'I Feel Alright' so closely that Lambert, who said she had copied it without meaning to, gave him a co-writing credit.
Q 24DeFord Bailey, the Grand Ole Opry's first Black star, was famed for imitating trains on which instrument?
Harmonica
Harmonica player DeFord Bailey was one of the Opry's best-loved early acts until WSM dropped him in 1941 in a music-licensing dispute; he made his living shining shoes and entered the Hall of Fame in 2005.
Q 25Which country star had a massive crossover hit with 'Old Town Road' alongside Lil Nas X in 2019?
Billy Ray Cyrus
Billy Ray Cyrus joined the remix in April 2019, four months after Lil Nas X had released the song himself over a beat he bought online for $30; it went on to spend a then-record 19 weeks at No. 1.
Q 26The 'Nashville Sound' of the 1950s and 1960s added what elements to country music to broaden its appeal?
String sections and smooth vocals
String sections and smooth vocals, backed by choruses, were Nashville's answer to rock and roll, which had gutted country record sales; the polished singles began crossing over to the pop charts.
Q 27Which record did Morgan Wallen's Dangerous break on its January 2021 release?
Most first-week streams for a country album
Morgan Wallen's 'Dangerous: The Double Album' set the record for the most first-week streams for a country album with over 240 million on-demand streams. It also spent 10 weeks at number one on the all-genre Billboard 200.
Q 28Johnny Cash's stark 2002 recording of 'Hurt' was a cover of a song by which rock band?
Nine Inch Nails
Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor thought the idea sounded gimmicky until he saw the video of the 71-year-old Cash in his shuttered museum; then, he said, the song wasn't his any more.
Q 29Which ABC variety series was taped at Nashville's Ryman from 1969 to 1971?
The Johnny Cash Show
The Johnny Cash Show produced a hit of its own: Cash's live performance of 'Sunday Morning Coming Down', sung with the word 'stoned' that ABC had asked him to drop, went to No. 1 on the country chart.
Q 30Zach Bryan served in which branch of the US military before his record deal?
Navy
Navy service ran in Zach Bryan's family; he uploaded his songs and released two albums while still on active duty, then left with an honourable discharge to make music full time.