Mitski
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50 free Mitski trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Mitski writes short songs that land hard. Two Slow Dancers, I Don't Smoke, Nobody and Your Best American Girl have each become shorthand for a particular kind of heartache, and each has a story behind it that most listeners never hear. This quiz covers the songs first: what Two Slow Dancers is about and where it sits on its album, where I Don't Smoke came from, and the odd origins of some of her most-played tracks. It also covers her studio albums from her college projects onward, the childhood spent moving from country to country, the videos, the tours and the year she almost walked away from music. It is written for fans who know the records well and for newer listeners who arrived through a single song and want the rest of the picture. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In Mitski's Two Slow Dancers, two old lovers reunite and reflect in which setting from their youth?
A school gymnasium
A school gymnasium is where the pair dance, trying to relive a moment they cannot get back. Mitski said they know they will have to go home and return to their own lives.
Q 02Mitski's I Don't Smoke comes from Bury Me at Makeout Creek, an album title quoting which animated series?
The Simpsons
The Simpsons supplied it: the title is a quote from the episode Faith Off, spoken after Milhouse is hit by a truck he took for a dog.
Q 03In My Love Mine All Mine, Mitski asks which heavenly body to keep her love after she dies?
The Moon
The Moon is asked to hold her love and shine it back down to Earth. The song became Mitski's first Billboard Hot 100 entry, peaking at number 26 in 2023.
Q 04Mitski's 2015 cover of Fireproof, her reply to indie-rock elitism about young girls' pop, is a song by which boy band?
One Direction
One Direction's fans were the point: Mitski said her cover answered people who dismiss music loved mostly by young girls.
Q 05Which former US president put Mitski's The Only Heartbreaker on his annual list of favorite songs for 2021?
Barack Obama
Barack Obama shares a list of favorite songs every year. The Only Heartbreaker also gave Mitski her first chart number one, on US adult alternative radio.
Q 06Mitski said the solfege syllables she sings in Washing Machine Heart began as a failed attempt to mention which food?
Miso soup
Miso soup was the goal: she tried to fit the notes mi and so into the song and failed. Her producer has said the track nearly missed the album altogether.
Q 07In February 2022 Mitski asked concert fans to stop doing what, saying it made her feel consumed as content?
Filming shows on phones
Filming shows on phones, she wrote, made her feel as though she and the crowd were not there together when she looked out and met a screen.
Q 08Which city did Mitski move to around 2019, partly to get away from costly, competitive New York and Los Angeles?
Nashville
Nashville became home after years of shuffling between sublets, hotels and Airbnbs, and she recorded her 2023 album at the city's Bomb Shelter studio.
Q 09Which Mitski song does Marceline the Vampire Queen sing in the Adventure Time episode The Music Hole?
Francis Forever
Francis Forever was voiced by Olivia Olson as Marceline. A storyboard artist suggested the song when the show's team had no songwriter on hand.
Q 10Mitski was announced in 2023 as songwriter for a Broadway musical of which novel, already a hit Netflix series?
The Queen's Gambit
The Queen's Gambit, Walter Tevis's 1983 novel about a chess prodigy, is the source. Mitski was attached to write both the lyrics and the music.
Q 11Two Slow Dancers holds which place in the running order of Mitski's 2018 album Be the Cowboy?
The closing track
The closing track of fourteen, it was also the third and final single released ahead of the album and, at almost four minutes, the longest song on it.
Q 12Which pop star took Mitski along as an opening act on the North American leg of a 2018 arena tour?
Lorde
Lorde named Mitski, Tove Styrke and Run the Jewels as support for her Melodrama World Tour, and Mitski played the North American dates in March and April 2018.
Q 13Which singer joins Mitski on This Is a Life, the Oscar-nominated song from Everything Everywhere All at Once?
David Byrne
Q 21Mitski performed Two Slow Dancers and Nobody on which late-night show in December 2018?
Jimmy Kimmel Live!
Jimmy Kimmel Live! booked her four months after Be the Cowboy came out, by which point several publications had named it their album of the year.
Q 22I Don't Smoke is among 21 songs on Mitski's 2025 live album The Land, recorded at the Fox Theatre in which city?
Atlanta
Atlanta hosted the three nights in September 2024 that became both the live album and a concert movie shown in 630 cinemas across 30 countries.
Q 23Mitski's I Don't Smoke first appeared in 2014 on which small label, founded by two friends from her college?
Double Double Whammy
David Byrne duets with her and shares the music credit with her and Ryan Lott of Son Lux. The song lost the 2023 Oscar to Naatu Naatu from RRR.
Q 14Mitski lived in 13 countries as a child because her father worked for which arm of the US government?
The State Department
The State Department kept the family moving, with a new school almost every year. Mitski has said it left her with a permanent sense of being a foreigner and an outsider.
Q 15Mitski's 'last show indefinitely', in September 2019, took place at SummerStage in which New York green space?
Central Park
Central Park hosted the show, with Lucy Dacus opening. Mitski later admitted she had planned to quit music afterwards and find another life.
Q 16Mitski, born Mitsuki Laycock, later adopted her mother's last name, which is what?
Miyawaki
Miyawaki is her mother's family name. She has said she regrets releasing music under her own name, because it stopped feeling as if it belonged to her.
Q 17After college, Mitski taught herself which instrument, which then drove her album Bury Me at Makeout Creek?
Guitar
Guitar replaced the piano and student players of her first two records. With no college ensemble to call on, she learned it herself and made a louder, rawer album.
Q 18Mitski self-released her first two albums as student projects while studying composition at which New York school?
Purchase College
Purchase College, part of the State University of New York, let her record in its conservatory studios. She had transferred there after a year at Hunter College in Manhattan.
Q 19In the 2021 TikTok trend set to Mitski's Nobody, users filmed themselves doing what as the song swelled?
Running away from the camera
Running away from the camera was the joke, usually under on-screen text naming an awkward situation the user wanted to escape. The trend arrived three years after the song's release.
Q 20Which comeback single did Mitski write in late 2019 while confronting her decision to quit music?
Working for the Knife
Working for the Knife uses its blade as a metaphor for the pressure to keep producing music. It came out in October 2021 as her first major release after the hiatus.
Double Double Whammy was started by Dave Benton and Mike Caridi to put out tapes by their own band and other local acts. Its 2014 albums by Mitski and Frankie Cosmos were both breakouts.
Q 24Mitski wrote Nobody on a toy piano from Toys R Us while spending Christmas time in which Asian city?
Kuala Lumpur
Kuala Lumpur was where she bought the toy and wrote the tune, composing the music first and sketching the opening words afterwards.
Q 25Which avant-garde dance form from post-war Japan inspired the choreography Mitski added to her concerts?
Butoh
Butoh entered her shows after she began working with the performance artist Monica Mirabile, who went on to choreograph her 2024 tour.
Q 26Which veteran alternative rock band took Mitski out as its supporting act on US tour dates in late 2017?
Pixies
Pixies announced the dates in February 2017. One reviewer had already compared the crashing loud passages of Your Best American Girl to the band's own sound.
Q 27Mitski sang lead in Voice Coils, a short-lived New York band that played which unlikely genre?
Prog metal
Prog metal was the sound of Voice Coils, which lasted from 2013 to 2015. Mitski stepped back from the band as her own third album took off.
Q 28Which collaborator, whom Mitski met at college, has produced every one of her albums since her debut, Lush?
Patrick Hyland
Patrick Hyland has produced each record after Lush and also plays in her live band, where he serves as musical director.
Q 29Which independent label signed Mitski in December 2015 and has released her albums from Puberty 2 onward?
Dead Oceans
Dead Oceans, based in Bloomington, Indiana, got its first US top-ten album from her in 2022, when Laurel Hell was the country's best-selling album in its release week.
Q 30Which Semisonic frontman became Mitski's first-ever co-writer when he helped finish The Only Heartbreaker?
Dan Wilson
Dan Wilson, who wrote Someone Like You with Adele, got the song when Mitski sat down at his piano during a session meant for other artists.