Disco
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6correct to beat the crowd
50 free Disco trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Disco ruled the charts for only a few years, yet it changed how records were made, how nightclubs were run and how people dressed for a night out. It grew out of underground New York parties, took over pop radio in the late 1970s, and went out with a bang when a ballpark promotion turned into a riot. This quiz covers the whole story: the chart-toppers and the artists behind them, Saturday Night Fever and the films that followed it, Studio 54 and the scandal that closed it, the DJs and producers who invented the sound, and the novelty records that proved anyone could go disco. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you pick up the stories as you play. It is pitched for anyone who has ever hit the dance floor at a wedding: plenty of easy openers, a run of tougher questions for people who lived through the era, and a few deep cuts for record collectors.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The beat of which Saturday Night Fever hit is used to teach the right rhythm for CPR chest compressions?
Stayin' Alive
Stayin' Alive runs at about 103 beats per minute, inside the 100 to 120 chest compressions a minute that rescuers are trained to give.
Q 02Which band wrote the disco smash 'Le Freak' after being turned away from Studio 54 on New Year's Eve?
Chic
Chic's Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards had been invited by Grace Jones, who forgot to tell the door staff. Their revenge song topped the Hot 100 three separate times.
Q 03Which Village People hit got its famous arm-waving dance from an American Bandstand audience rather than the group?
Y.M.C.A.
Y.M.C.A. had the group simply clapping overhead until the studio crowd turned the move into letters, and host Dick Clark urged singer Victor Willis to keep it.
Q 04Which baseball team had to forfeit a game after its Disco Demolition Night promotion ended in a riot on the field?
Chicago White Sox
Chicago White Sox fans stormed the field after DJ Steve Dahl blew up a crate of disco records between games, and the wrecked turf handed the second game to Detroit.
Q 05Which singer's 'I Will Survive' was released as a B-side until club DJs flipped the record over?
Gloria Gaynor
Gloria Gaynor's anthem went on to win the Grammy for Best Disco Recording in 1980, the only year that award was ever handed out.
Q 06Which celebrity was famously photographed on a white horse inside Studio 54 at her birthday party in 1977?
Bianca Jagger
Bianca Jagger's widely circulated picture made the nightclub, then open for less than a week, famous almost overnight.
Q 07Which future pop superstar worked as a backup singer and dancer for disco artist Patrick Hernandez in 1979?
Madonna
Madonna won the job at an audition and toured Tunisia and Europe with his troupe, four years before her own debut album made her famous.
Q 08Which blockbuster film's theme became a number-one disco single for producer Meco in 1977?
Star Wars
Star Wars got the disco treatment after Meco saw the film on its opening day, and his medley with the Cantina Band tune topped the Hot 100 for two weeks.
Q 09Which single by Memphis radio DJ Rick Dees reached number one on the Hot 100 in 1976?
Disco Duck
Disco Duck topped the chart, yet his own station barred him from playing it and then fired him for merely mentioning the song on air.
Q 10What did writer Nik Cohn later admit about the magazine article that inspired Saturday Night Fever?
It was fabricated
It was fabricated: new to America and baffled by the disco scene, Cohn modelled his Brooklyn hero on a mod he had known back in England.
Q 11Which trio of brothers wrote and sang most of the hits on the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack?
Bee Gees
The Bee Gees were only brought in once filming was over, yet their three new singles from the album all went to number one in the US.
Q 12Which Boston-born singer topped the US charts in 1979 with both 'Hot Stuff' and 'Bad Girls'?
Donna Summer
Donna Summer launched her career not in America but in Munich, after joining the German cast of the musical Hair in 1968.
Q 13Which actor earned an Oscar nomination for playing Brooklyn dancer Tony Manero in Saturday Night Fever?
John Travolta
John Travolta was best known for the TV sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter when the role made him the fourth-youngest Best Actor nominee up to that time.
Q 21Which disco comedy, set over one evening in a Los Angeles club, won an Oscar for the song 'Last Dance'?
Thank God It's Friday
Thank God It's Friday unfolds at a fictional club called The Zoo, and critic Leonard Maltin's film guide still rated the Oscar winner a 'BOMB'.
Q 22Which partner dance, first seen in Bronx clubs around 1973, shares its name with Van McCoy's chart-topping instrumental?
The Hustle
The Hustle gave Van McCoy a Grammy for best pop instrumental, and the faster, flashier style danced in the clubs became known as the Latin Hustle.
Q 23Which record format, pioneered by disco remixer Tom Moulton, became the standard for club DJs' extended mixes?
12-inch single
Q 14Which singer teamed up with producer Quincy Jones for the 1979 disco-era album Off the Wall?
Michael Jackson
Michael Jackson met Jones while filming The Wiz, and their album made him the first solo artist with four top-ten hits from a single record.
Q 15Which 1976 single became Swedish group ABBA's only number one on the US Hot 100?
Dancing Queen
Dancing Queen had its first live performance at a televised pre-wedding gala for Sweden's King Carl XVI Gustaf and his bride, Silvia.
Q 16Walter Murphy's 1976 disco chart-topper was a dance-floor rework of a symphony by which composer?
Beethoven
Beethoven's Fifth Symphony became 'A Fifth of Beethoven', a title that puns on a liquor-bottle size, and the track later joined the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack.
Q 17Which animated TV series features Disco Stu, a character who never moved on from the 1970s?
The Simpsons
The Simpsons introduced him through a rhinestone jacket: Homer had meant to spell a longer word on it but ran out of room for the final letter.
Q 18Which dance-floor fixture, a symbol of the disco era, was already common in nightclubs in the 1920s?
Mirror ball
Mirror ball records go back as far as 1897, and the device was first patented under the far grander name of 'myriad reflector'.
Q 19Which roller-disco musical starring Olivia Newton-John flopped and helped inspire the Golden Raspberry Awards?
Xanadu
Xanadu shared a 99-cent double bill with Can't Stop the Music that sent one disappointed viewer home planning the Razzies, though its soundtrack still went double platinum.
Q 20Which figure from Russian history is the subject of a 1978 dance hit by the group Boney M.?
Rasputin
Rasputin, the mystic at the last tsar's court, gave the group a number one in Germany and Austria and a number two in Britain.
The 12-inch single is said to have been discovered by accident, and Moulton is also credited with inventing the breakdown section of a dance track.
Q 24Which producer co-wrote the 1977 hit 'I Feel Love' in Munich, building it on a borrowed Moog synthesizer?
Giorgio Moroder
Giorgio Moroder had to record the Moog in bursts of 20 or 30 seconds, because the borrowed machine kept drifting out of tune.
Q 25Which crime sent Studio 54 founders Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager to prison and shut their club in 1980?
Tax evasion
Tax evasion on a grand scale: a federal grand jury charged that the pair had skimmed $2.5 million, as much as 60 percent of the club's receipts.
Q 26Which TV network used the Manhattan theater that became Studio 54 as a broadcast studio until 1975?
CBS
CBS leased the building, opened in 1927 for opera, as a radio soundstage in 1942 and later turned it into a television studio it called Studio 52.
Q 27Which New York new wave band was accused of selling out when 'Heart of Glass' went disco and hit number one?
Blondie
Blondie nicknamed an early, slower version 'The Disco Song', and its first draft was inspired by the Hues Corporation hit 'Rock the Boat'.
Q 28Which hard rock band surprised its fans in 1979 with the disco-flavored single 'I Was Made for Lovin' You'?
Kiss
Kiss singer Paul Stanley has said he co-wrote it on purpose, to prove how easy it was to turn out a hit disco song.
Q 29Which Rolling Stones single from the album Some Girls gave the rock veterans a disco-tinged US number one?
Miss You
Miss You also came out in an extended 'Special Disco Version', the band's first dance remix, and drummer Charlie Watts credited their nights out in discos.
Q 30Which band teamed up with vocal trio the Emotions for the 1979 dance-floor hit 'Boogie Wonderland'?
Earth, Wind & Fire
Earth, Wind & Fire got the song from writer Allee Willis, who wrote the words after seeing the bleak crime drama Looking for Mr. Goodbar.