1980s One-Hit Wonders Trivia
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68 free 1980s One-Hit Wonders trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
This 1980s one-hit wonders trivia quiz covers the decade when MTV could turn an unknown band into a chart-topper overnight and then forget them just as fast. It runs from Lipps Inc. and Gary Numan in 1980, through Dexys Midnight Runners, Soft Cell, Nena, Falco and Men Without Hats, to Martika, Young MC and Bobby McFerrin at the end of the decade. Most questions ask you to match the hit to the act, but many dig into the stories behind the records: the German number one about balloons drifting over the Berlin Wall, the Chicago house record that changed the UK chart rules, the a cappella song that knocked Guns N' Roses off number one, and the school choir that beat John Lennon to a Christmas number one. Both the American and British definitions of a one-hit wonder are used, so a few acts here had other hits at home. If you want the broader picture, BrainPickle's one-hit wonders quiz covers every decade; this one stays in the eighties. Every answer is checked against the Wikipedia article for the song, and each question carries a citation. No lyrics are quoted, so it is safe to use as a pub quiz round.
30 of 68 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which group recorded 'Come On Eileen', Britain's best-selling single of 1982?
Dexys Midnight Runners
Dexys Midnight Runners had switched to fiddles and a Celtic folk sound after topping the UK chart in 1980 with the soul single 'Geno'.
Q 02Soft Cell's 1981 smash 'Tainted Love' covered a 1964 recording by which soul singer, later Marc Bolan's partner?
Gloria Jones
Gloria Jones's version flopped as a 1965 B-side but became a Northern soul favourite in Britain, which is how Soft Cell came to hear it.
Q 03Soft Cell's 12-inch version of their 1981 hit segues halfway through into a cover of which Supremes song?
Where Did Our Love Go
Where Did Our Love Go was a song the Supremes were unhappy to be given, yet in 1964 it became their first No. 1 in the US.
Q 04Balloons released at whose 1982 West Berlin concert inspired '99 Luftballons'?
The Rolling Stones
The Rolling Stones released the balloons at that concert; guitarist Carlo Karges imagined them drifting over the Berlin Wall and being mistaken on radar for an attack.
Q 05Which is the only German-language song ever to reach number one on the Billboard Hot 100?
Rock Me Amadeus
Rock Me Amadeus grew from Falco's idea, inspired by the film Amadeus, that if Mozart were alive today he would be a pop star.
Q 06Which British band took an English cover of Falco's 'Der Kommissar' into the US top five?
After the Fire
After the Fire's English version missed the UK top 40 but reached No. 5 in the US, becoming the British band's only American hit.
Q 07The Vapors' managers were Bruce Foxton, bassist of which band, and John Weller, father of its frontman?
The Jam
The Jam's Bruce Foxton spotted The Vapors at a pub gig in Surrey, and 'Turning Japanese' became a bigger US hit than anything The Jam released.
Q 08Which 1980s hit's video shows its singer in her own high-school cheerleader uniform?
Mickey
Mickey: Basil wore her real Las Vegas High cheer sweater, and she had turned Racey's 1979 song 'Kitty', about a girl, into a song about a boy.
Q 09Ivan Doroschuk wrote 'The Safety Dance' after being thrown out of a club for doing what?
Pogo dancing
Pogo dancing: fans have often read the song as a plea for safe sex or a nuclear-war metaphor, but Doroschuk says it's really a protest for freedom of expression.
Q 10Who wrote 'Puttin' On the Ritz', a 1983 synth-pop hit for Taco, back in the 1920s?
Irving Berlin
Irving Berlin's original lyrics followed well-dressed strollers on Lenox Avenue; he rewrote them in 1946 for Fred Astaire in Blue Skies, moving the scene to Park Avenue.
Q 11Which British TV scientist shouts 'Science!' on Thomas Dolby's 'She Blinded Me with Science'?
Magnus Pyke
Magnus Pyke shouts the lines on a song Dolby wrote to fit a video he had already storyboarded, set in a home for deranged scientists.
Q 12Tommy Tutone's 1982 hit '867-5309' started a nationwide fad for doing what?
Prank-calling it and asking for Jenny
Prank-calling it and asking for Jenny: co-writer Alex Call says there was no Jenny and he made the number up, though bandmates told bathroom-wall stories.
Q 13Matthew Wilder's 1983 hit 'Break My Stride' was later interpolated in which 1997 Puff Daddy single?
Can't Nobody Hold Me Down
Q 21'In a Big Country' (1983), famous for guitars that sound like bagpipes, was by a band from which country?
Scotland
Scotland's Big Country broke through in America on heavy MTV airplay, and this became their only US Top 40 hit.
Q 22The Dream Academy's 1985 hit 'Life in a Northern Town' was co-produced by which Pink Floyd member?
David Gilmour
David Gilmour produced it with Nick Laird-Clowes, who said the song was about the collapse of Britain's shipyards and the unemployment left behind.
Q 23Peter Schilling's 1983 hit 'Major Tom (Coming Home)' continues the story from which David Bowie song?
Space Oddity
Space Oddity's astronaut returns in Schilling's song, which follows Major Tom as he cuts off radio contact and drifts back out into space.
Can't Nobody Hold Me Down raps over a chorus Wilder wrote about Clive Davis, who dropped him from Arista after calling the song 'not a hit'.
Q 14Rockwell's 1984 hit 'Somebody's Watching Me' has uncredited chorus vocals by which superstar?
Michael Jackson
Michael Jackson's chorus won over Rockwell's father, Motown boss Berry Gordy, who had been lukewarm about his son's music until he heard this track.
Q 15Timbuk 3's 'The Future's So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades' was written as an ironic song about whom?
A young nuclear scientist
A young nuclear scientist with a rich future is the song's subject, yet the grim joke went unnoticed as high schools adopted it as a graduation theme.
Q 16'Voices Carry', the 1985 hit by 'Til Tuesday, was written and sung by which future solo artist?
Aimee Mann
Aimee Mann says she didn't write it as a feminist anthem; that idea arrived with the video, where a controlling boyfriend belittles her singing.
Q 17Martika's 1989 US number one 'Toy Soldiers' was written about a friend struggling with what?
Cocaine addiction
Cocaine addiction: Martika wrote it about a friend hooked on the drug, and Eminem later sampled its chorus for his own 'Like Toy Soldiers'.
Q 18In 1988, Bobby McFerrin's 'Don't Worry, Be Happy' became the first US number one of what kind?
A cappella
A cappella: McFerrin made every sound with his own voice and body, and he objected when the 1988 Bush presidential campaign used the song.
Q 19Eddy Grant's 'Electric Avenue' is named after a street in which London district, hit by 1981 riots?
Brixton
Brixton: Grant, horrified by the unemployment, racism and poverty behind the riots there, gave the song a serious message about race and equality.
Q 20In Musical Youth's 1982 hit 'Pass the Dutchie', a 'dutchie' is Jamaican patois for what?
A Dutch oven cooking pot
A Dutch oven cooking pot: 'dutchie' replaced 'kouchie', cannabis slang in the original reggae song, so the young band's version would be radio-friendly.
Q 24The Weather Girls' 'It's Raining Men' was first written for which disco star, who rejected it as blasphemous?
Donna Summer
Donna Summer turned down Paul Jabara and Paul Shaffer's song, and Diana Ross and Barbra Streisand passed too before the Weather Girls recorded it.
Q 25Eddie Murphy's 1985 hit 'Party All the Time' was written and produced by which funk star?
Rick James
Rick James recorded it with Murphy in Buffalo, where a snowstorm turned a short planned visit into two weeks snowed in.
Q 26Which Red Hot Chili Peppers member played on Young MC's Grammy-winning 1989 hit 'Bust a Move'?
Flea
Flea played bass and appeared in the video, and Young MC had already written the lyrics for Tone Lōc's 'Wild Thing' before scoring this hit himself.
Q 27Lipps Inc.'s 1980 hit "Funkytown" was written by members dreaming of leaving which city for New York?
Minneapolis
Minneapolis was the city Steven Greenberg longed to leave, and six years later Pseudo Echo's rock cover made 'Funkytown' a hit all over again.
Q 28'Cars' (1979) was a hit for which singer, previously the frontman of Tubeway Army?
Gary Numan
Gary Numan wrote it after men menaced him in London traffic and he escaped by driving up onto the pavement.
Q 29Mark Mothersbaugh said Devo's 'Whip It' was a pep talk for which 1980 presidential candidate?
Jimmy Carter
Jimmy Carter was the president Mothersbaugh had in mind, while Jerry Casale modelled the lyrics on the can-do parodies in Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow.
Q 30'Too Shy', a 1983 UK number one, was by which band fronted by Limahl?
Kajagoogoo
Kajagoogoo and Limahl split after their first album, and he carried on as a solo act.