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60 free Hard Music trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
51 free Hard Music trivia questions with answers. This is the music quiz for people who find most music trivia too easy. There are no questions here about who sang 'Thriller'. Instead you get the second video MTV ever aired, the album that was the most returned record in RCA history, the country whose anthem has no words, and the soul singer who recorded 'Tainted Love' seventeen years before Soft Cell. The 60 questions range across rock, pop, country, soul, jazz and classical, and lean hard: a handful of warm-ups sit around the middle of the difficulty scale, and the rest are built to separate real record collectors from casual listeners. Expect first-evers, original versions, pseudonyms and studio stories rather than chart positions you can guess. Every answer was checked against a primary or encyclopaedic source before it went in, and each question shows its citation, so when an obscure fact surprises you, you can go and read where it came from.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Recording of Queen's 'Bohemian Rhapsody' began in August 1975 at which studio near Monmouth, Wales?
Rockfield Studios
The band rehearsed for three weeks at a Herefordshire farmhouse first, then used four more London studios for overdubs, some sections carrying 180 of them.
Q 02Everyone knows the first video MTV aired in 1981. Which artist's clip was played second?
Pat Benatar
Her cover of the Young Rascals' 'You Better Run' followed the Buggles on launch day, making her the first woman ever seen on the channel.
Q 03Which country's anthem, the 'Marcha Real', is one of only three with no official lyrics?
Spain
The other two wordless anthems belong to Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo. Several sets of Spanish lyrics have been proposed and all quietly abandoned.
Q 04What was the first George Harrison composition to appear on a Beatles album?
Don't Bother Me
It sits on 1963's With the Beatles, years before 'Something' and 'Here Comes the Sun' made his songwriting famous.
Q 05Which 1975 double album of pure guitar feedback became the most returned record in RCA's history?
Metal Machine Music
Lou Reed's follow-up to a hit live album has no songs at all, just layered distortion running over an hour, and it still sold 100,000 copies before people sent it back.
Q 06Which Billy Joel album is generally cited as the first ever released commercially on compact disc?
52nd Street
It reached Japanese shops on 1 October 1982 as one of 50 CDs launched that day, but carried the first catalogue number in the sequence.
Q 07Which 1985 album was the first to sell a million copies on CD?
Brothers in Arms
Dire Straits' fifth album was recorded digitally and became the format's showcase; it was also the first album whose CD sales beat its LP sales.
Q 08The band behind 'Born to Be Wild' took its name from a 1927 novel by which author?
Hermann Hesse
The group had been a Canadian outfit called the Sparrows until producer Gabriel Mekler suggested renaming them Steppenwolf in 1967.
Q 09Dolly Parton wrote 'I Will Always Love You' as a farewell to which longtime duet partner and mentor?
Porter Wagoner
Elvis wanted to record it too, but his manager demanded half the publishing and Parton refused, a decision she says later bought her Graceland.
Q 10In Haydn's 'Farewell' Symphony, what do the musicians do one by one during the final movement?
Snuff out their candles and leave
It was Haydn's hint to his patron Prince Esterházy that the orchestra wanted to go home to their families; only two muted violins are left at the end.
Q 11Which composer's TV soundtrack won the very first Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 1959?
Henry Mancini
The Music from Peter Gunn beat Frank Sinatra to the first-ever prize; its title theme later became a staple for surf bands and the Blues Brothers.
Q 12Which act scored the first US number-one single to feature rap vocals, in 1981?
Blondie
'Rapture' name-checks Fab 5 Freddy and Grandmaster Flash, and its video is one of the first times a hip-hop scene appeared on mainstream TV.
Q 13Before joining Nirvana in 1990, Dave Grohl drummed for which Washington, D.C. punk band?
Scream
He joined at 17, replacing Kent Stax, and only auditioned for Nirvana after the band broke up mid-tour.
Q 21Bob Dylan won an Academy Award for Best Original Song for 'Things Have Changed', written for which film?
Wonder Boys
He accepted the 2001 Oscar by satellite from Australia, mid-tour, and has kept the statuette on his amplifier at concerts.
Q 22Who was the first woman inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?
Aretha Franklin
She was inducted in 1987, only the Hall's second year, and Keith Richards gave the induction speech.
Q 23Which Bryan Adams ballad spent a record sixteen consecutive weeks at UK number one in 1991?
(Everything I Do) I Do It for You
Q 14Which country won the first Eurovision Song Contest in 1956, held in its own city of Lugano?
Switzerland
Lys Assia's 'Refrain' took the prize; the host nation was also one of only seven countries competing.
Q 15On 'Good Vibrations', inventor Paul Tanner played the eerie sliding tone on which instrument?
Electro-Theremin
It looks like a box with a slide, not a true theremin, and keeping its volume steady took 26 takes before Brian Wilson had a usable mono mix.
Q 16Country star Harold Lloyd Jenkins picked his famous stage name from what?
Two towns on a map
He became Conway Twitty by combining Conway, Arkansas with Twitty, Texas, and went on to score dozens of country number ones.
Q 17Who produced Captain Beefheart's famously chaotic 1969 double album 'Trout Mask Replica'?
Frank Zappa
The Magic Band rehearsed for eight months in a rented house before cutting most of it in a single session at a Glendale studio.
Q 18Frank Sinatra's 'My Way' is an English adaptation of a 1967 hit by which French singer?
Claude François
Paul Anka heard 'Comme d'habitude' on holiday in France, bought the rights, and rewrote the words for Sinatra in a single night.
Q 19The Verve's 'Bitter Sweet Symphony' was built on an orchestral recording of a song by which band?
The Rolling Stones
The Andrew Oldham Orchestra's version of 'The Last Time' cost Richard Ashcroft his royalties for 22 years, until Jagger and Richards handed them back in 2019.
Q 20Willie Nelson's battered Martin guitar 'Trigger' is named after whose horse?
Roy Rogers
The nylon-string N-20 has a hole worn clean through its top and has been on every Nelson record since 1969.
It was written for Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and stayed on top from July to late October, a run no single has matched since.
Q 24Which composer wrote the 1987 opera 'Nixon in China', with a libretto by Alice Goodman?
John Adams
It premiered at Houston Grand Opera in a Peter Sellars production and turned a 1972 diplomatic trip into three acts of minimalist music.
Q 25Which 1991 shoegaze album by My Bloody Valentine was rumoured to have nearly bankrupted Creation Records?
Loveless
Estimates of the cost ranged up to £250,000 and Kevin Shields disputed them all; Creation dropped the band anyway soon after release.
Q 26Which Italian song, known in English as "Volare", won the first Grammys for Record and Song of the Year?
Nel blu, dipinto di blu
Domenico Modugno's recording remains the only foreign-language song ever to win Record of the Year.
Q 27Long before Soft Cell's synth-pop hit, 'Tainted Love' was first recorded in 1964 by which soul singer?
Gloria Jones
Her version was a B-side that flopped, then became a Northern Soul floor-filler in Britain; Jones later became Marc Bolan's partner.
Q 28Joan Jett's 'I Love Rock 'n' Roll' was originally recorded in 1975 by which British glam band?
The Arrows
Jett saw the Arrows perform it on their own UK TV show while touring with the Runaways and cut her version six years later.
Q 29The Bangles' hit 'Manic Monday' was written by which star under the pseudonym 'Christopher'?
Prince
It reached number two in the US in 1986, held off the top spot by his own single 'Kiss'.
Q 30Which Elton John record was the first album ever to debut at number one on the Billboard 200, in 1975?
Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy
His autobiographical concept album pulled off the feat first; his next release, Rock of the Westies, did it again months later.