60 free Garth Brooks trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Aug 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 60 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 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which Oklahoma city was Garth Brooks born in 1962?
Tulsa
His mother, Colleen Carroll, had been a 1950s country singer on Capitol Records; his father was a draftsman for an oil company.
Q 02His mother, a 1950s country singer, appeared on which television show?
Ozark Jubilee
She recorded for Capitol, the same label her son later signed with.
Q 03The family hosted weekly talent nights at their home in which small Oklahoma town?
Yukon
Every child had to take part, singing or doing skits; Brooks learned guitar and banjo but was mostly focused on sports.
Q 04Brooks went to college on a track scholarship. In which event did he compete?
Javelin
He worked nights as a bouncer at a local bar and graduated in 1984 with a degree in advertising.
Q 05Which university did he attend, later returning to finish an MBA in 2011?
Oklahoma State
He walked in the commencement ceremony on May 6, 2011, decades after his advertising degree.
Q 06What was the name of the band Brooks formed in college, playing whatever the crowd wanted?
Santa Fe
His college roommate Ty England later played guitar in his road band until going solo in 1995.
Q 07Whose 1981 debut single 'Unwound' convinced Brooks to play country instead of rock?
George Strait
Before that he was more into 1970s singer-songwriters and rock than anything on country radio.
Q 08How long did Brooks's first trip to Nashville, in 1985, last before he went home to Oklahoma?
Less than 24 hours
Attorney Rod Phelps had lent him contacts and credit cards; Phelps kept nagging until Brooks and his wife moved there for good in 1987.
Q 09What was Brooks's debut single, released in March 1989?
Much Too Young (To Feel This Damn Old)
It's about a worn-out rodeo cowboy and name-checks the rider-singer who was Brooks's biggest stage influence; it peaked at number 8.
Q 10What was his first number-one on the Hot Country Songs chart?
If Tomorrow Never Comes
Co-writer Kent Blazy had the first verse down within 15 seconds of hearing the idea; Brooks calls it a father-to-daughter love song.
Q 11Which Irish singer topped the UK chart in 2002 with a cover of Brooks's first country number one?
Ronan Keating
His version was number one in four countries and top five in several more, giving the song a second life a decade on.
Q 12Which song does Brooks say is his favorite of everything he has recorded?
The Dance
He played it at NASCAR's 2001 awards as a tribute to Dale Earnhardt; the video was the ACM Video of the Year.
Q 13Which champion bull rider appears in the video for the ballad closing his debut album?
Lane Frost
He was killed by a bull in 1989 after a full eight-second ride; the montage also includes Keith Whitley, Martin Luther King Jr. and the Challenger crew.
Q 21Which Billy Joel song did Brooks cover as a single from his third album?
Shameless
Joel later joined him on stage at the free Central Park concert in 1997.
Q 22Written after the 1992 Los Angeles riots, "We Shall Be Free" won Brooks an award from which organization?
GLAAD
The song's line about being 'free to love anyone we choose' was read as support for same-sex relationships; it stalled at number 12, his first miss of the top 10 in three years.
Q 23Before singing the 1993 Super Bowl anthem, Brooks walked out until NBC agreed to do what?
Air his new music video first
Q 14Whose opening act was Brooks on his first major tour in 1989?
Kenny Rogers
By late 1990 he had been inducted into the Grand Ole Opry.
Q 15Which song from No Fences became his signature blue-collar anthem?
Friends in Low Places
It spent four weeks at number one and won both the ACM and CMA Single of the Year for 1990.
Q 16Which pair wrote his signature drinking anthem after a lunch at Nashville's Tavern on the Row?
Dewayne Blackwell and Earl Bud Lee
They first gave the song to Brooks only to sing the demo, before his own debut had come out.
Q 17When those two songwriters first met the struggling Brooks in Nashville, what was his day job?
Selling shoes
They gave him demo work; that famous song's demo was the last one he ever sang for hire.
Q 18TNN banned the video for 'The Thunder Rolls' a day after release. What did it depict?
Domestic violence
Brooks played the philandering husband himself so the character would be 'so despicable that the whole viewing audience wanted to shoot him'.
Q 19Which singer recorded "The Thunder Rolls" first, in 1988, only to shelve it?
Tanya Tucker
Her version finally surfaced on a 1995 box set; Brooks co-wrote the song with Pat Alger, who plays acoustic guitar on the hit.
Q 20Which 1991 album was the first by a country artist to enter the Billboard 200 at number one?
Ropin' the Wind
It had advance orders of 4 million and pushed his first two albums back up the chart, giving him three albums in the top 20 at once.
The network caved; the video, dedicated 'to the human spirit', had premiered on CMT that January.
Q 24In 1993 Brooks persuaded Capitol not to ship In Pieces to stores that did what?
Sold used CDs
He argued the practice cost songwriters royalties; antitrust lawsuits followed and the label backed down.
Q 25A top British DJ nicknamed Brooks what during his 1994 'invasion' of the UK charts?
Garth Vader
He sold out Wembley Arena and Birmingham's NEC, which no American country act had done, and started a London radio station, Country 1035.
Q 26On a 1994 tribute album, Brooks teamed with which band to record "Hard Luck Woman"?
Kiss
The unlikely pairing performed it on The Tonight Show, and the track still made the country chart.
Q 27The video for "Standing Outside the Fire" follows a student with Down syndrome who signs up for what?
The regular track meet instead of Special Olympics
Brooks doesn't appear until two minutes in; he says most letters he gets about the song come from Special Olympics families.
Q 28His 2022 performance of which song at LSU's Tiger Stadium registered on the university's seismograph?
Callin' Baton Rouge
It's LSU football's pre-game song; only quarterback Tommy Hodson had previously shaken the crowd hard enough to show up as an earthquake.
Q 29"The Fever", his first single ever to miss the country top 10, was a cover of which rock band?
Aerosmith
It stalled at number 23 in 1995, though Fresh Horses still produced two more number ones.
Q 30The free 1997 Central Park concert dubbed 'Garthstock' was broadcast live on which network?
HBO
The fire department put the crowd at over a million, beating Paul Simon's 1991 record of about 600,000 for the park.