Getting your questions ready
Getting your questions ready
Beat the crowd
10 questions No timer
60 free Queen Band trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Queen band trivia quiz runs from a Truro fundraiser in 1970 to the Platinum Jubilee stage outside Buckingham Palace. It covers the four members before Queen (a dental student, a physics student who built his own guitar, an electronics whiz from Leicester and an art-college kid from Zanzibar), the albums from Queen II to Made in Heaven, and the moments everyone remembers: Kenny Everett playing Bohemian Rhapsody fourteen times in a weekend, Live Aid, the Wayne's World headbang, and the 2018 biopic that won Rami Malek an Oscar. Roughly a third of the questions are warm-ups any casual fan will get, a third need a bit of album knowledge, and the rest reward people who know why the early sleeves said No Synthesisers or which member fronted a side band called the Cross. Expect Brian May's asteroid, the Queen crest's zodiac signs and the record that Greatest Hits still holds in the UK. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia and band records before publishing, and each question carries the sentence that establishes it. If you think one is wrong, use the report button and we will look again.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Before Queen, May and Taylor played together in which band?
Smile
Smile's singer Tim Staffell quit in 1970; his art-college friend Freddie Bulsara took over the microphone and suggested a new name.
Q 02Which member came up with the name "Queen"?
Freddie Mercury
The others were unsure, but he told them, "it's wonderful, dear, people will love it".
Q 03Mercury was born on which island?
Zanzibar
He was born Farrokh Bulsara in Stone Town in 1946; his family fled to England after the 1964 revolution.
Q 04Which member was recruited last, joining in February 1971?
John Deacon
The bassist's quiet manner and electronics skills suited the band; the classic line-up played its first show that July.
Q 05Which member went to London in 1967 to study dentistry before switching to biology?
Roger Taylor
The drummer answered a college notice-board ad seeking a "Mitch Mitchell/Ginger Baker type" and got the job in Smile.
Q 06Which member earned a PhD in astrophysics from Imperial College London in 2007?
Brian May
The thesis on zodiacal dust was started in 1971 and abandoned when the band took off; asteroid 52665 was later named after him.
Q 07What is the name of the guitar Brian May built with his father in 1963?
Red Special
It was purposely designed to feed back, and he plays it with a sixpence coin instead of a plectrum.
Q 08Which song gave Queen their first UK hit single, reaching number 10 in 1974?
Seven Seas of Rhye
It was the only single from Queen II, the album whose Mick Rock cover photo later inspired the Bohemian Rhapsody video.
Q 09"Killer Queen", the band's first US hit, was written about what kind of person?
A high-class prostitute
It reached number 12 on the Billboard Hot 100 and combined camp, vaudeville and music hall with May's guitar.
Q 10A Night at the Opera and A Day at the Races both take their names from films by which comedy act?
The Marx Brothers
Groucho Marx invited the band to his Los Angeles home in 1977, where they thanked him and sang "'39" a cappella.
Q 11How many weeks did "Bohemian Rhapsody" spend at number one in the UK on its original release?
Nine
It later returned to number one for five more weeks after Mercury's death, and remains the UK's best-selling non-charity single.
Q 12Which Capital Radio DJ played "Bohemian Rhapsody" fourteen times in one weekend?
Kenny Everett
He had been given the copy on the condition he would not play it; the station's switchboard was swamped with callers.
Q 13Roughly how long did it take to shoot the "Bohemian Rhapsody" music video at Elstree Studios?
Three hours
The video cost about £3,500, five times a normal promo budget, and was made partly so the band could skip Top of the Pops.
Q 21Queen recorded the soundtrack for which 1980 science-fiction film?
Flash Gordon
Six years later they also wrote much of the music for Highlander, including "Princes of the Universe" and "Who Wants to Live Forever".
Q 22"Under Pressure", Queen's 1981 UK number one, was a collaboration with which artist?
David Bowie
The collaboration was unplanned: he simply dropped by the studio while the band were recording, and the two singers cut their vocals separately.
Q 23Queen's 1981 Greatest Hits holds what distinction in the UK?
The only album to sell over seven million copies there
Q 14Which 1992 film gave "Bohemian Rhapsody" a second life in the US with a car headbanging scene?
Wayne's World
The re-release reached number two on the Billboard Hot 100; the band reportedly loved it while Mike Myers feared he had "whizzed on a Picasso".
Q 15Which two 1977 anthems appeared on the album News of the World?
We Will Rock You and We Are the Champions
Both were built for live sing-alongs and have become fixtures at sporting events; the ballad reached number four in the US.
Q 16"Bicycle Race" and "Fat Bottomed Girls" were released as a double-sided single from which 1978 album?
Jazz
The same album holds "Don't Stop Me Now"; reviews have warmed considerably since its lukewarm reception in 1978.
Q 17Which song was Queen's first US number one, topping the Billboard Hot 100 for four weeks?
Crazy Little Thing Called Love
Mercury wrote the Elvis-style rockabilly number on guitar and played rhythm guitar on stage for it, his first time doing so in concert.
Q 18Which pop star suggested backstage that "Another One Bites the Dust" be released as a single?
Michael Jackson
The Deacon-written track spent three weeks at number one in the US in October 1980 and became the band's best-selling single.
Q 19Which member wrote "Another One Bites the Dust" and "You're My Best Friend"?
John Deacon
The bassist also wrote "I Want to Break Free" and built the homemade Deacy Amp May used for his guitar orchestras.
Q 20The Game (1980) was the first Queen album to use what instrument, despite earlier sleeve notes?
A synthesiser
Producer Roy Thomas Baker later said the "No Synthesisers!" note was only meant to clarify that the layered solos were guitars.
The Telegraph estimated that roughly one in three British families owns a copy, and it has passed 1,000 weeks on the UK chart.
Q 24Which 1982 funk-and-disco album, recorded mostly in Munich, split the band and confused fans?
Hot Space
Q magazine later listed it among the top fifteen albums where great rock acts lost the plot; it still reached number 4 in the UK.
Q 25The cross-dressing video for "I Want to Break Free" spoofed which British soap opera?
Coronation Street
MTV banned it in the US, which hurt The Works there; the idea came from Roger Taylor via a suggestion from his girlfriend.
Q 26Queen's 1984 concerts at Sun City drew outrage because the venue was in which country?
South Africa
The band were fined by the Musicians' Union and put on a UN blacklist; Taylor called the decision "kind of a mistake" in 2021.
Q 27Queen's celebrated Live Aid set was played at which venue on 13 July 1985?
Wembley Stadium
An estimated 400 million watched on TV; a 2005 industry poll ranked it the greatest rock performance of all time.
Q 28Mercury's sustained "Aaaaaay-o" during the Live Aid a cappella section became known by what nickname?
The Note Heard Round the World
Roger Taylor called the Live Aid reaction a "shot in the arm" that revived the band's record sales.
Q 29The 1986 album A Kind of Magic reworked songs written for which fantasy film?
Highlander
Director Russell Mulcahy said he thought of only one band for the film's "strong, anthemic songs".
Q 30Where did Mercury give his final concert with Queen, on 9 August 1986?
Knebworth Park
The show sold out within two hours after the band could not book Wembley for a third night; more than 120,000 fans came.