Alternative Rock
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50 free Alternative Rock trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Alternative rock started on the margins: bands on small labels, played on college radio and passed around on tapes. Then, in the early 1990s, it took over the charts, and the underground became the mainstream almost overnight. This quiz follows that story from the 1980s to the 2010s. It covers grunge and indie, the scenes on both sides of the Atlantic, how well-known bands got their names, and the odd facts behind songs and album covers you have heard and seen a thousand times. It is written for anyone who grew up with a stack of CDs or a favorite radio station, and for quiz hosts who need a ready-made music round. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you can play it straight through or print it for a quiz night.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which organization's name did a young Jack White mishear, giving The White Stripes the title of a stadium anthem?
The Salvation Army
The Salvation Army became 'Seven Nation Army' to a small boy in Detroit. Jack White kept the mishearing as a title, and sports crowds now chant the song's riff note for note.
Q 02Nirvana's breakthrough single 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' unknowingly took its title from a brand of which product?
Deodorant
Deodorant called Teen Spirit inspired a joke that a friend wrote on Kurt Cobain's wall. He read it as a revolutionary slogan and only learned it was a brand months after the single came out.
Q 03Which country legend's 2002 cover of Nine Inch Nails' 'Hurt' led Trent Reznor to say the song was no longer his?
Johnny Cash
Johnny Cash won over a wary Trent Reznor, who had feared the idea of the cover sounded gimmicky. Reznor later praised the recording for its sincerity and meaning.
Q 04Weezer's 'Buddy Holly' video, directed by Spike Jonze, drops the band into the diner from which classic sitcom?
Happy Days
Happy Days footage was spliced with the band playing at Arnold's Drive-In, and cast member Al Molinaro introduced them in character. Microsoft then shipped the video on the Windows 95 CD-ROM.
Q 05Which Glasgow band behind 'Take Me Out' picked its name after watching a racehorse win a big race in 2001?
Franz Ferdinand
Franz Ferdinand saw a horse called Archduke Ferdinand win the Northumberland Plate in 2001. Talk turned to the real archduke, whose assassination helped set off World War I, and the alliteration sealed it.
Q 06A 1988 Pixies song reached a new generation by playing over the final scene of which 1999 film?
Fight Club
Fight Club ends with 'Where Is My Mind?' playing over its last scene. Black Francis wrote the song at university after a small fish kept trailing him while he was scuba diving in the Caribbean.
Q 07The Verve gave up the royalties to 'Bitter Sweet Symphony' over an orchestral sample of a song by which band?
The Rolling Stones
The Rolling Stones song 'The Last Time', in an orchestral version, supplied the sample, and Mick Jagger and Keith Richards took the writing credits. They handed them back to Richard Ashcroft in 2019.
Q 08Which instrument was Peter Buck teaching himself when he stumbled on the riff for R.E.M.'s 'Losing My Religion'?
Mandolin
Mandolin practice tapes gave the band its biggest hit: Buck found the riff among recordings of himself learning the instrument. The title is a Southern expression for losing one's temper.
Q 09Which band did Blur's Damon Albarn form with comic artist Jamie Hewlett, who draws its four members?
Gorillaz
Gorillaz came out of an evening watching MTV, which the pair found empty of substance. Their answer was a virtual band of four fictional members, with Albarn supplying the voice of singer 2-D.
Q 10A 2009 Facebook campaign sent Rage Against the Machine to the UK Christmas number one to protest which TV talent show?
The X Factor
The X Factor winner had taken the Christmas top spot four years running when DJ Jon Morter and his wife Tracy began the campaign. 'Killing in the Name' won the race, and Simon Cowell called the stunt cynical.
Q 11The cover of Nirvana's album 'Nevermind' shows a swimming baby reaching for what object on a fishhook?
A dollar bill
A dollar bill hangs just out of the baby's reach. Within months the album had replaced Michael Jackson's 'Dangerous' at the top of the Billboard chart, in January 1992.
Q 12Which band began as a one-man project, with Dave Grohl playing nearly every instrument on its 1995 debut album?
Foo Fighters
Foo Fighters was a name Dave Grohl took from a UFO book so that nobody would guess the tape was his alone. World War II airmen had used the term for unidentified flying objects.
Q 13Which Manchester band, led by brothers Liam and Noel Gallagher, played to 125,000 fans a night at Knebworth in 1996?
Oasis
Q 21Which Radiohead album was first released in 2007 as a download that fans could pay any price for?
In Rainbows
In Rainbows was the first pay-what-you-want release by a major act, and it set off a debate about what recorded music is worth. Radiohead never used the system again.
Q 22Which singer fronted both Soundgarden and Audioslave and performed the theme song for the Bond film 'Casino Royale'?
Chris Cornell
Chris Cornell co-wrote 'You Know My Name' with the film's composer for the 2006 opening titles. Audioslave teamed him with three members of Rage Against the Machine.
Q 23Which Irish band's singer Dolores O'Riordan wrote the 1994 protest song 'Zombie' about two children killed by a bomb?
The Cranberries
Oasis drew 250,000 people across two August nights, then the largest outdoor concerts in UK history. The brothers' public feuds kept them in the tabloids for the rest of the decade.
Q 14Which California punk trio started a mud fight with the crowd at Woodstock '94 while touring the album 'Dookie'?
Green Day
Green Day's set ended in an infamous mud fight, and 'Dookie' went on to diamond sales in the US. In 2010 a later album, 'American Idiot', opened as a Broadway musical.
Q 15Which US city was home to the label Sub Pop and the bands Soundgarden, Mudhoney and Alice in Chains?
Seattle
Seattle became a brand in Sub Pop's hands: the label set out to market a 'Seattle sound', much as Motown had done for Detroit. Sales of Nirvana's 'Bleach' helped keep it going for years.
Q 16Which Canadian singer won the Album of the Year Grammy for 'Jagged Little Pill', her furious 1995 breakthrough?
Alanis Morissette
Alanis Morissette was the youngest artist to have won Album of the Year at the time. The record also took Best Rock Album, and its single 'You Oughta Know' won Best Rock Song.
Q 17Which band, formed by students at University College London, broke through in 2000 with the single 'Yellow'?
Coldplay
Coldplay first went by Big Fat Noises and then Starfish. The singer and guitarist had met in their first week at university in September 1996.
Q 18Which Las Vegas band behind 'Mr. Brightside' took its name from a fictional group in a New Order music video?
The Killers
The Killers appear as a made-up band in the video for New Order's 'Crystal', a song Brandon Flowers loved. He and guitarist Dave Keuning borrowed the name when they formed the group in 2001.
Q 19Which Los Angeles band, anchored by bassist Flea, reached number two in the US with the ballad 'Under the Bridge'?
Red Hot Chili Peppers
Red Hot Chili Peppers singer Anthony Kiedis wrote it as a private poem and thought it too emotional for the band. Producer Rick Rubin found it in his notebook and urged him to record it.
Q 20Which touring festival did Perry Farrell launch in 1991 as a farewell for his band Jane's Addiction?
Lollapalooza
Lollapalooza took its name from an old-fashioned word Farrell said he had heard in a Three Stooges short, though nobody has found the scene. The tour outlived the farewell and settled in Chicago in 2005.
The Cranberries recorded it after IRA bombs hidden in litter bins exploded in Warrington, England, in 1993. It later became a stadium anthem for teams from the band's hometown, Limerick.
Q 24Which California band, first called Xero and then Hybrid Theory, kept that second name as the title of its debut album?
Linkin Park
Linkin Park's debut went on to diamond sales in the US. Its earliest demos were made in Mike Shinoda's bedroom, when the band was still called Xero.
Q 25R.E.M. and the B-52's both came out of the music scene in which Georgia college town?
Athens
Athens gave R.E.M. its first stage in April 1980: a friend's birthday party in a church building where members of the band were living. Its bassist and drummer had played together since high school in Macon.
Q 26Which mid-1990s UK movement, led by Blur, Pulp and Suede, was seen as a reaction against American grunge?
Britpop
Britpop groups sang in regional accents about British places and everyday culture. That was a deliberate contrast with the darker American rock that had taken over the charts.
Q 27Which post-punk band regrouped as New Order after singer Ian Curtis died on the eve of a first American tour?
Joy Division
Joy Division had been together only four years when Curtis died at 23. The three survivors added keyboardist Gillian Gilbert and returned under the new name within months.
Q 28Nirvana's 'MTV Unplugged' set featured 'The Man Who Sold the World', a cover of a song by which artist?
David Bowie
David Bowie's song was one of several covers in a set built mainly on lesser-known material. Nirvana also played songs by Lead Belly, the Vaselines and their guests the Meat Puppets.
Q 29Which ska-punk band fronted by Gwen Stefani named the album 'Tragic Kingdom' after a teacher's nickname for Disneyland?
No Doubt
No Doubt grew up in Anaheim, California, the home of Disneyland, and the nickname came from guitarist Tom Dumont's seventh-grade teacher. The album went on to diamond sales.
Q 30Which Sheffield band's 2006 debut became the fastest-selling debut album in British chart history at the time?
Arctic Monkeys
Arctic Monkeys sold more than 360,000 copies in the first week, outselling the rest of the top 20 combined. The songs sketch teenage nights out in their home city, from bouncers to taxi queues.