70s Music
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212 free 70s Music trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
90 free 70s Music trivia questions with answers. The 1970s began with the Beatles splitting and ended with the Walkman. In between came disco and Studio 54, punk and the Sex Pistols, Ziggy Stardust, Rumours, Dark Side of the Moon, Songs in the Key of Life, Hotel California and Saturday Night Fever. This quiz covers all of it, plus Kraftwerk, Bob Marley, the Ramones, Carole King, Elton John, Donna Summer, ABBA at Eurovision and the night Chicago blew up a crate of disco records. The early questions are for anyone who has heard 'Stayin' Alive'; the later ones ask how many weeks Dark Side of the Moon spent on the chart, who kept 'God Save the Queen' off number one and what Carole King's cat was called. It works for a themed party, a pub quiz round or a long car ride with someone who was there. Every answer has been checked against Wikipedia and shows its citation once you have answered.
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Q 01Whose late-1970s hit 'Stayin' Alive' became shorthand for the disco era?
Bee Gees
The Bee Gees lost their drummer mid-session, so the producers looped a snippet of drums from 'Night Fever' to build the track, and the loop sounded so good that it stayed.
Q 02What is Pink Floyd's influential 1973 album, with a prism refracting light on its cover, called?
The Dark Side of the Moon
The Dark Side of the Moon got its prism because keyboardist Richard Wright asked designer Storm Thorgerson to drop his usual photographs for something simple and graphic.
Q 03Which 1971 Led Zeppelin epic became US radio's most-requested song without ever being sold as a single there?
Stairway to Heaven
Stairway to Heaven reached American radio only on promotional discs, which became collectors' items; fans who wanted the song had to buy the whole album.
Q 04Which 1977 Bob Marley and the Wailers album was recorded in London after an assassination attempt in Jamaica?
Exodus
Exodus came out of Marley's exile after gunmen attacked his Kingston home; the sessions were so productive that the gentler songs were held back for his next album.
Q 05Which 1971 Marvin Gaye concept album addresses war, poverty and the environment?
What's Going On
What's Going On was produced by Gaye himself; he sang it as a returning Vietnam veteran, drawing on the war stories his brother Frankie brought home.
Q 06Which band's 1976 debut album, built largely in Tom Scholz's basement, opened with 'More Than a Feeling'?
Boston
Boston's debut was mostly taped by Scholz, a Polaroid engineer, in his own basement while the label was led to think the band was recording on the West Coast.
Q 07Which 1975 Led Zeppelin double album mixed new songs with leftovers from earlier sessions?
Physical Graffiti
Physical Graffiti doubled because eight new songs overran one LP, so outtakes filled the rest; within weeks all six Zeppelin albums were on the US chart at once.
Q 08What is Thin Lizzy's 1976 breakthrough album, featuring 'The Boys Are Back in Town', called?
Jailbreak
Jailbreak nearly missed its hit: the band left 'The Boys Are Back in Town' off its shortlist, and the song only took off when two Louisville DJs kept playing it until nearby stations followed.
Q 09What is Joni Mitchell's acclaimed 1971 album featuring 'A Case of You' and 'River' titled?
Blue
Blue includes 'River', whose piano part borrows from 'Jingle Bells', so a song about a break-up has become a Christmas standard.
Q 10Where did the 1979 Disco Demolition Night riot take place?
Comiskey Park
Comiskey Park, home of the Chicago White Sox, hosted the 12 July 1979 promotion; thousands stormed the field after a crate of disco records was blown up between games of a doubleheader.
Q 11In which English seaside town did ABBA win the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest?
Brighton
ABBA won at the Brighton Dome on 6 April 1974, Sweden's first Eurovision victory, even though the British jury gave their song no points at all.
Q 12Which ABBA single ended the nine-week run of 'Bohemian Rhapsody' at UK number one in January 1976?
Mamma Mia
Mamma Mia took over at the top on 31 January 1976, replacing a Queen song that had spent nine weeks pleading 'mamma mia, let me go'.
Q 13Fleetwood Mac's 1977 album Rumours was recorded amid the collapse of which two band members' marriage?
John and Christine McVie
Q 21Never Mind the Bollocks, released in October 1977, was the one and only full-length record by which band?
Sex Pistols
The Sex Pistols saw their only studio album banned by several big retailers, yet it entered the UK chart at number one; within three months the band had split.
Q 22Which musician organised the Concert for Bangladesh with Ravi Shankar in August 1971?
George Harrison
George Harrison staged it after his friend Ravi Shankar asked for help; Bob Dylan and Eric Clapton played, and it became the model for later rock benefits such as Live Aid.
Q 23Peter Frampton's best-selling 1976 live album made him synonymous with which guitar effect?
Talk box
John and Christine McVie split during the sessions; Christine wrote 'You Make Loving Fun' about her new boyfriend, the band's lighting director, and reportedly told John it was about her dog.
Q 14Which rock and roll pioneer scored his only US number one in 1972 with the novelty song 'My Ding-a-Ling'?
Chuck Berry
Chuck Berry reached number one with a rude singalong taped live at an arts festival in Coventry, England, something none of his own rock and roll classics had managed.
Q 15'Rapper's Delight' (1979) borrowed its bassline from which Chic song?
Good Times
Sugarhill Gang's 'Rapper's Delight' replayed the bassline of Chic's 'Good Times' (1979); Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards threatened to sue and were given songwriting credits.
Q 16Which disco hit began as an angry chant after its writers were turned away from Studio 54 on New Year's Eve 1977?
Le Freak
Le Freak started as a curse aimed at the doorman who refused Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards, guests of Grace Jones; they softened it to 'Freak out!' and had a hit.
Q 17Which 1971 epic was the longest song to top the US Hot 100 until Taylor Swift beat it in 2021?
American Pie
American Pie ran so long that the single was split across both sides of the 45; it stayed the longest number one until Swift's ten-minute 'All Too Well'.
Q 18Which 1973 debut album was Virgin Records' first release and took off after use in The Exorcist?
Tubular Bells
Tubular Bells was close to a one-man band: Mike Oldfield, 19 when recording began, played almost every instrument himself, and its success launched Virgin Records.
Q 19Which disco-tinged 1978 single was the Rolling Stones' last US number one?
Miss You
Miss You was the Stones' eighth and final US chart-topper; their singer worked it up with keyboardist Billy Preston, whose demo bass part became the model for Bill Wyman's line.
Q 20Meat Loaf's Bat Out of Hell grew from a Jim Steinman musical that was a futuristic rock version of which story?
Peter Pan
Peter Pan, reworked as Steinman's musical Neverland, supplied the core songs; record labels then turned the album down for years, Clive Davis among them, before it sold in the tens of millions.
Frampton's talk box, a tube that feeds the guitar's sound into the player's mouth, was first shown to him by Nashville steel guitarist Pete Drake at a London session in 1970.
Q 24The word 'disco' is short for the French 'discothèque', which literally means what?
A record library
A record library is the literal sense: the word was coined on the pattern of the word for library, and it names a club where people dance to records.
Q 25Hip-hop is usually traced to a party DJ Kool Herc played for his sister in August 1973 in which New York borough?
The Bronx
The Bronx: at Cindy Campbell's party at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, Herc kept the dancers moving by stretching the drum breaks of funk records, the idea hip-hop grew from.
Q 26Donna Summer's 'I Feel Love' (1977) was built almost entirely on which instrument?
A Moog synthesizer
A Moog synthesizer supplied almost the whole track; on first hearing it, Brian Eno told David Bowie he had heard the sound of the future.
Q 27Before disco fame, Donna Summer moved to Munich in 1968 to perform in which musical?
Hair
Summer joined the Munich production of Hair in 1968 and stayed in Germany for years, where she met the producers behind her 1975 breakthrough 'Love to Love You Baby'.
Q 28Which crime sent Studio 54 owners Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager to prison in 1980?
Tax evasion
Tax evasion: tax agents raided the club in December 1978, and the pair later pleaded guilty after skimming about $2.5 million from its receipts.
Q 29In 1998, the former Studio 54 building at 254 West 54th Street reopened as what?
A Broadway theatre
A Broadway theatre again: built as the Gallo Opera House in 1927, the former club took in the Roundabout company's revival of Cabaret in 1998.
Q 30Which 'Baker Street' singer's album ended the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack's long run at US number one in July 1978?
Gerry Rafferty
Gerry Rafferty's City to City took over at the top; he had only just been freed to record again, after three years of legal wrangles over his old band Stealers Wheel.