70 free 80s Country Music trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
The 1980s were the decade country music tried on rhinestones and then took them back off. It opened with Urban Cowboy, mechanical bulls and pop crossovers from Kenny Rogers, Dolly Parton and Eddie Rabbitt, and it closed with the neotraditional revival of George Strait, Randy Travis, Reba McEntire and the so-called Class of '89. In between came Alabama's run of 21 straight number ones, the Judds, the Highwaymen, Farm Aid, and the first country video ever aired on MTV. This quiz covers all of it: the hits, the songwriters behind them, the awards, the movies and the TV themes that put country in every living room. Questions range from easy chart facts to deep cuts about who wrote what and where a video was shot, so it works for a casual round with friends or a serious test for anyone who lived through the decade. Every answer has been checked against a primary reference and each question links to its source, so if a fact surprises you, you can read where it came from.
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Q 01Both the 1980 film 9 to 5 and Dolly Parton's title song took their name from what?
A working women's organization
9to5 was founded in 1973 to fight for fair pay and equal treatment for women in the workplace, and the film's premise grew from its members' stories. The song earned Parton an Oscar nomination and two Grammys.
Q 02Songwriter Dallas Frazier named "Elvira," the Oak Ridge Boys' huge 1981 hit, after what?
A street in East Nashville
Frazier wrote and recorded the song himself in 1965; it only became a smash 16 years later when the Oak Ridge Boys took it to the top five of the Hot 100.
Q 03Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton's 1983 duet "Islands in the Stream" was written by which group?
The Bee Gees
The Gibb brothers wrote it and it went to number one on both the country and pop charts. Its title comes from a 1970 Ernest Hemingway novel.
Q 04Which R&B star was 'Islands in the Stream' first written for, before the country duo took it?
Diana Ross
The R&B-styled song was reworked into a country-pop duet for Rogers's album Eyes That See in the Dark, which its songwriters also produced.
Q 05Kenny Rogers's 1980 chart-topper "Lady" was written and produced by which Motown star?
Lionel Richie
Richie had first pitched the song to his own band, the Commodores, who turned it down. Rogers later sang on "We Are the World," which Richie co-wrote.
Q 06Randy Travis's 1987 wedding-day standard "Forever and Ever, Amen" was written by which songwriting pair?
Paul Overstreet and Don Schlitz
Overstreet had already given Travis "On the Other Hand." The pair wrote "Forever and Ever, Amen" in a couple of hours, and it won the Grammy for Best Country Song in 1988.
Q 07Randy Travis's 1986 debut album Storms of Life eventually earned which RIAA certification?
Triple platinum (3 million)
Three million copies of a debut was unheard of for a hard-country record at the time, and Storms of Life is often credited with kicking off the neotraditional boom.
Q 08Which 1987 George Strait album was the first to debut at number one on the Top Country Albums chart?
Ocean Front Property
The title track's joke about selling ocean-front property in Arizona became a Strait signature. He would go on to have more number-one country albums than anyone.
Q 09The band Alabama was formed by three cousins in which Alabama town?
Fort Payne
The three cousins borrowed $4,000 from a local bank to press their own records to sell at shows before RCA signed them.
Q 10Which 1980 single, Alabama's first on RCA, began the band's streak of 21 consecutive country number ones?
Tennessee River
The streak ran through most of the decade and made Alabama Billboard's Country Artist of the 1980s.
Q 11In which years did Alabama become the first group to win CMA Entertainer of the Year three years running?
1982 to 1984
No group had ever won the CMA's top prize before Alabama, and they closed the decade being voted Artist of the Decade by the Academy of Country Music.
Q 12Which member of Alabama wrote the band's 1982 anthem "Mountain Music"?
Randy Owen
Owen, the band's lead singer, wrote it as the title track of the album that made Alabama arena headliners; it was the group's sixth number one.
Q 13Naomi Judd, one half of the Judds, was born in which Kentucky city?
Ashland
Naomi and daughter Wynonna went from an Ashland childhood to five Grammys for Best Country Performance by a Duo or Group and nine CMA awards.
Q 21George Jones's 1980 comeback "He Stopped Loving Her Today" was written by which duo?
Bobby Braddock and Curly Putman
Jones had gone six years without a number one and was in a personal tailspin; the song shot to number one in July 1980 and is routinely voted the greatest country song ever.
Q 22Loretta Lynn picked Sissy Spacek to play her in Coal Miner's Daughter (1980) based on what?
A photograph of the actress
Lynn had never seen a Spacek film. Spacek did all her own singing and won the Best Actress Oscar for the role.
Q 23In 1982, which bluegrass-rooted singer became the youngest Grand Ole Opry inductee up to that time?
Q 14The Judds' 1986 hit "Grandpa (Tell Me 'Bout the Good Old Days)" was written by whom?
Jamie O'Hara
O'Hara, later half of the O'Kanes, won a Grammy for the song, and the Judds won another for performing it — one of five they took home as a duo.
Q 15Gilley's Club, the honky-tonk setting of Urban Cowboy (1980), was in which Texas city?
Pasadena
The real Gilley's, part-owned by Mickey Gilley, was billed as the world's largest honky-tonk and its mechanical bull became a national craze after the film.
Q 16John Travolta played Bud in Urban Cowboy. Who played his wife, Sissy?
Debra Winger
The film's soundtrack spun off country hits including Johnny Lee's "Lookin' for Love" and helped fuel the early-80s pop-country boom.
Q 17Which Texas songwriter wrote "Pancho and Lefty", a 1983 number one for Nelson and Haggard?
Townes Van Zandt
Van Zandt first recorded it in 1972 to little notice. He never confirmed whether Pancho was meant to be Pancho Villa, but did not rule it out.
Q 18The supergroup the Highwaymen took their name from a 1985 hit written by which songwriter?
Jimmy Webb
Webb, of "Wichita Lineman" fame, first cut "Highwayman" on his 1977 album El Mirage; the Highwaymen's version won him a Grammy for Best Country Song.
Q 19In the Highwaymen's recording of "Highwayman," Johnny Cash sings the final verse as what?
A starship captain
The song follows one soul through four lives — highwayman, sailor, dam builder and finally a starship captain — with each Highwayman taking a verse.
Q 20"Always on My Mind" was a UK top-ten hit a decade before Willie Nelson's 1982 version for which singer?
Elvis Presley
Nelson's version won three Grammys and became the CMA Song of the Year two years running, in 1982 and 1983.
Ricky Skaggs
He had been turned away from an Opry audition as a boy for being too young. That same year he released Highways and Heartaches, his only platinum album.
Q 24Which New York mayor played a cabdriver in the 1985 video for "Country Boy"?
Ed Koch
Bill Monroe played Uncle Pen in the same clip. It was nominated for the CMA's first-ever Music Video of the Year award but lost to "All My Rowdy Friends Are Coming Over Tonight."
Q 25Dwight Yoakam's 1986 debut 'Honky Tonk Man' was a cover of a 1956 hit by whom?
Johnny Horton
Yoakam's version peaked at number three and opened Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc., Etc.; Horton is better remembered for "The Battle of New Orleans."
Q 26What was the title of Steve Earle's 1986 debut album?
Guitar Town
Recorded in Nashville, it included "Hillbilly Highway" and made Earle a rare artist with both country and college-rock audiences.
Q 27Which Nashville legend, best known for his work with Patsy Cline, produced k.d. lang's 1988 album Shadowland?
Owen Bradley
The album also paired lang with Kitty Wells, Loretta Lynn and Brenda Lee on the "Honky Tonk Angels' Medley."
Q 28Which 1981 single, written by Rosanne Cash herself, was the title track of her breakthrough album?
Seven Year Ache
It topped the country chart and crossed to the pop top 40, launching a decade in which Cash racked up eleven country number ones.
Q 29Who first won CMA Entertainer of the Year in back-to-back years, 1980 and 1981?
Barbara Mandrell
Mandrell, then starring in her own NBC variety show, remains one of only two women to win the award twice; Taylor Swift is the other.
Q 30In Ronnie Milsap's "Smoky Mountain Rain", the narrator has left Los Angeles for which Tennessee city?
Knoxville
He then hitches a ride with a trucker bound for Gatlinburg. In 2010 the Tennessee legislature made the song an official state song.