Garth Brooks Trivia
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57 free Garth Brooks trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
Which event did he throw at Oklahoma State, what was his day job when two songwriters handed him his signature song, and how many times did he get a hit in spring training with the Mets? This Garth Brooks trivia quiz has 57 free questions with answers that run from Tulsa and Yukon, Oklahoma through the 1989 debut, No Fences and Ropin' the Wind, the banned Thunder Rolls video, Garthstock in Central Park, the Chris Gaines detour, the 2000 retirement, the Wynn residency, the Croke Park fiasco, the comeback tours and the recent inauguration and state-funeral performances. The early questions are the ones any country radio listener will know. Later ones get into songwriters and co-writers, chart firsts, cover versions, the G-Men studio band, the GhostTunes experiment, the baseball detours and the RIAA record books. It works for a road trip, a honky-tonk trivia night or a country music round in a pub quiz. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on Brooks, his albums and singles, the Central Park concert and Trisha Yearwood, and each question links to the page and sentence that supports it.
30 of 57 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Garth Brooks was born in which city in Oklahoma?
Tulsa
Tulsa is where he was born on 7 February 1962 as Troyal Garth Brooks, the youngest of six children; Garth is his middle name, and Troyal was his father's name.
Q 02Garth Brooks's mother, Colleen Carroll, recorded in the 1950s for which label, which signed her son in 1988?
Capitol
Capitol recorded Colleen Carroll in the 1950s and signed her son in 1988, after an executive who had recently turned him down heard him play Nashville's Bluebird Cafe.
Q 03Garth Brooks grew up in which small Oklahoma town, where his family held talent nights at home?
Yukon
Yukon, a small town just west of Oklahoma City, is where the Brooks family settled; at their talent nights every child had to take part by singing or doing a skit.
Q 04In which track-and-field event did Garth Brooks compete on his college scholarship?
Javelin
Javelin was his event on a college track scholarship; sport rather than singing was his main focus growing up, and he has said his childhood dream was to be a professional athlete.
Q 05Which university did Garth Brooks attend, later returning to finish an MBA in 2011?
Oklahoma State
Oklahoma State gave Brooks an advertising degree and, in May 2011, an MBA he had earned in his spare time; he crossed the stage in cap and gown with the other graduates.
Q 06During college, Garth Brooks worked nights at a Stillwater bar in which job?
Bouncer
Bouncer was his night job at a Stillwater bar; he also sang in the town's clubs, and his band Santa Fe later followed him to Nashville before splitting up.
Q 07Whose 1981 debut single 'Unwound' convinced Garth Brooks to play country music?
George Strait
George Strait's 'Unwound' came on the radio while Brooks was home after his freshman year of college; he said he knew from that point that he wanted to be George Strait.
Q 08After moving to Nashville in 1987, Garth Brooks paid the bills by managing a store that sold what?
Cowboy boots
Cowboy boots paid his bills while he sang demos for other songwriters; his first try at Nashville, in 1985, had ended with him heading home to Oklahoma within a day.
Q 09What was Garth Brooks's debut single?
Much Too Young (To Feel This Damn Old)
'Much Too Young (To Feel This Damn Old)', written with his friend Randy Taylor about a road-weary rodeo cowboy, never topped the chart but opened the door for everything that followed.
Q 10Which song gave Garth Brooks his first number one on the country chart?
If Tomorrow Never Comes
'If Tomorrow Never Comes' reached number one in December 1989; Brooks said he ran the idea past what seemed like a thousand writers before Kent Blazy had the first verse down within 15 seconds.
Q 11Which Irish singer topped the UK chart in 2002 with a cover of Garth Brooks's first country number one?
Ronan Keating
Ronan Keating, the former Boyzone singer, took the ballad to number one in the UK in May 2002; Brooks's own biggest British single had stalled at number 13.
Q 12Which song does Garth Brooks call his favorite of everything he has recorded?
The Dance
'The Dance' closed his debut album and spent three weeks at number one in 1990; Brooks said in 1994 that he would go to his grave with it, and in 2015 he was still naming it his favorite.
Q 13Which champion bull rider appears in the video for the ballad that closes Garth Brooks's debut album?
Lane Frost
Q 21A lyric about being free to love anyone helped 'We Shall Be Free' win Garth Brooks an award from which group?
GLAAD
GLAAD gave Brooks a 1993 Media Award for the song, written after he watched the Los Angeles riots; many country stations refused to play it, and it became his first single to miss the top ten.
Q 22Garth Brooks walked out before the 1993 Super Bowl anthem until NBC agreed to do what?
Air his new music video first
Air his new music video first: NBC had refused the 'We Shall Be Free' clip, so Brooks left the stadium 45 minutes before kickoff, and producers had Jon Bon Jovi standing by before the network gave in.
Q 23In 1993 Garth Brooks pressed his label not to ship In Pieces to stores that did what?
Lane Frost, the 1987 world champion bull rider, died at Cheyenne Frontier Days in 1989 after completing his ride; the video sets him in a montage of people Brooks wanted to honour.
Q 14Whose opening act was Garth Brooks on his first major tour, in 1989?
Kenny Rogers
Kenny Rogers gave him the opening slot on the northeastern leg of his 1989 Christmas tour; Brooks, who had thought of Rogers as a pop act, said working with him turned Rogers into one of his heroes.
Q 15Which song from No Fences became Garth Brooks's signature blue-collar anthem?
Friends in Low Places
'Friends in Low Places' reached Brooks as the last demo he ever sang for hire, just before his own debut came out; a year later it spent four weeks at number one and won Single of the Year from both the CMA and the ACM.
Q 16Unable to pay a restaurant bill, a songwriter coined the title of Garth Brooks's signature drinking anthem by joking he knew whom?
The cook
The cook was who Earl Bud Lee said he knew when the bill came; he and Dewayne Blackwell sat on the quip for months, then began the song at a party for another writer's number one.
Q 17What did the video for 'The Thunder Rolls', banned by TNN in 1991, depict?
Domestic violence
The video showed a cheating husband beating his wife, who then shoots him; TNN and CMT pulled it over the domestic violence, with Brooks himself playing the husband.
Q 18Which singer, a country star since her teens, recorded 'The Thunder Rolls' before Garth Brooks did, only to shelve it?
Tanya Tucker
Tanya Tucker cut 'The Thunder Rolls' in the late 1980s, with an extra verse Brooks left off his own single, then dropped it from her album; it surfaced on her 1995 box set, after his version had gone to number one.
Q 19Which Garth Brooks album was the first country album to enter the Billboard 200 at number one?
Ropin' the Wind
Ropin' the Wind entered the Billboard 200 at number one in September 1991, the first country album to do so, and went on to spend 18 weeks on top of the pop chart.
Q 20Which Billy Joel song did Garth Brooks cover as a single from his third album?
Shameless
'Shameless' came from Billy Joel's 1989 album Storm Front, which reached Brooks through a mail-order CD club while he was out on the road; his cover went to number one in November 1991.
Sold used CDs
Sold used CDs, that is: Brooks said second-hand sales paid artists nothing, but with retailers filing antitrust suits the album was shipped to those stores after all.
Q 24Garth Brooks's 'Plus One' residency opened in 2023 at which Las Vegas resort?
Caesars Palace
Caesars Palace hosted Plus ONE in its Colosseum from May 2023, a 72-show run with no set list in which Brooks switched between solo acoustic songs and his full band.
Q 25On a 1994 tribute album, Garth Brooks teamed with which band to record 'Hard Luck Woman'?
Kiss
Brooks recorded 'Hard Luck Woman' with Kiss themselves as his backing band for the 1994 tribute album Kiss My Ass, and the pairing performed it on The Tonight Show.
Q 26In Garth Brooks's 'Standing Outside the Fire' video, a teenager with Down syndrome skips Special Olympics to enter what?
The track meet
The track meet is his school's regular one; when Brandon falls mid-race, the father who feared he would be embarrassed waves off the coach and urges him up to finish.
Q 27A 2022 college stadium crowd sang along to which Garth Brooks song hard enough to register on a campus seismograph?
Callin' Baton Rouge
'Callin' Baton Rouge', played before LSU home games, had Tiger Stadium jumping hard enough on 30 April 2022 to register on a campus seismograph, as the 1988 'Earthquake Game' touchdown once did.
Q 28Garth Brooks's 1995 single 'The Fever' reworked a song by which rock band?
Aerosmith
Aerosmith's Steven Tyler and Joe Perry wrote 'Fever' for 1993's Get a Grip; Brooks's version swapped its drug references for a bull rider hooked on rodeo and stalled at number 23.
Q 29Garth Brooks's free 1997 Central Park concert was broadcast live on which network?
HBO
HBO carried the 7 August 1997 show live and it became the channel's highest-rated original program of the year; Billy Joel and Don McLean walked on as surprise guests.
Q 30'To Make You Feel My Love', a country number one for Garth Brooks in 1998, was written by whom?
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan wrote it for 1997's Time Out of Mind, though Billy Joel's cover reached shops first; Brooks cut it for the Hope Floats soundtrack and took it to number one on the country chart.