Music Video Trivia
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This music video trivia quiz has 50 free questions with answers and starts before MTV even existed, with Soundies, Scopitones, the Beatles' promo films and Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody clip, then runs through the MTV era of Thriller, Take On Me, Sledgehammer and Money for Nothing, the 90s auteurs like Spike Jonze, Michel Gondry and Mark Romanek, and the YouTube age of Gangnam Style, Despacito and Baby Shark. You will be asked who directed the videos, what they cost, where they were shot, which ones set view records and which ones won the most Moon Persons at the VMAs. There are easy questions for casual pop fans and genuinely hard ones about budgets, dates and behind-the-scenes details. Every answer has been checked against a reliable reference, so the facts you learn here are safe to repeat at pub quiz night.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which song's video was the first ever played on MTV when the channel launched in 1981?
Video Killed the Radio Star
Video Killed the Radio Star was an odd choice of opener: the Buggles single dated from 1979 and had only reached number 40 in the US, where few people knew the band.
Q 02Who directed Michael Jackson's 1983 'Thriller' video?
John Landis
John Landis got the call after Jackson saw his horror comedy An American Werewolf in London. By the director's account, the singer wanted to turn into a monster himself.
Q 03In 2009, 'Thriller' became the first music video added to which American archive?
The National Film Registry
The National Film Registry is the Library of Congress's list of films to preserve. Its coordinator said the time was right for Thriller after Jackson's death earlier that year.
Q 04The pencil-sketch animation in a-ha's 'Take On Me' video was created using which technique?
Rotoscoping
Rotoscoping means tracing over live footage frame by frame. An earlier version of the song had flopped in Britain; with this video it reached number one in the US.
Q 05Which video won nine MTV Video Music Awards in 1987, still the most for a single clip as of 2025?
Sledgehammer
Sledgehammer was shot one frame at a time, and Peter Gabriel spent 16 hours lying under a sheet of glass for a single sequence.
Q 06Which studio worked on the stop-motion sequences in Peter Gabriel's most famous video?
Aardman Animations
Aardman Animations gave the scene of dancing oven-ready chickens to animator Nick Park, later famous for Wallace and Gromit.
Q 07Queen's 1975 'Bohemian Rhapsody' promo video let the band appear on which TV show without playing live?
Top of the Pops
Top of the Pops had acts mime in the studio, and the band thought so complex a song would look wrong mimed. The film was shown in their place.
Q 08Which video was the first on YouTube to reach one billion views, in December 2012?
Gangnam Style
Gangnam Style later ran past 2,147,483,647 views, the most YouTube's counter could hold, and the site had to rebuild the counter to keep up.
Q 09Which video overtook 'Despacito' in November 2020 to become the most-viewed on YouTube?
Baby Shark Dance
Baby Shark Dance is a South Korean company's take on a song no one can claim: it had been a children's singalong for decades, and its original writer is unknown.
Q 10The 'Despacito' video was filmed in the La Perla neighborhood of which city?
Old San Juan
Old San Juan felt the effect: as tourist interest in Puerto Rico rose, tour operators added La Perla and the bar La Factoría, also seen in the video, to their routes.
Q 11Which Guns N' Roses wedding epic was the first video made before YouTube existed to pass a billion views there?
November Rain
November Rain spared little expense: for Slash's guitar solo outside a lonely chapel, the band had a church building transported to New Mexico just for the shoot.
Q 12Guinness World Records listed which 1995 video, costing $7 million, as the most expensive ever made?
Scream by Michael and Janet Jackson
Scream by Michael and Janet Jackson got the listing, but its director Mark Romanek says Guinness was wrong: two other videos of the era, he says, cost millions more.
Q 13Which Lady Gaga video won seven MTV Video Music Awards in 2010, including Video of the Year?
Q 21At the first VMAs in 1984, Madonna performed 'Like a Virgin' wearing what?
A wedding gown and 'Boy Toy' belt
A wedding gown and 'Boy Toy' belt it was. In 2003 MTV opened its 20th awards by restaging the moment: two younger pop stars climbed out of a wedding cake singing the song, and Madonna herself followed.
Q 22Weezer's 'Buddy Holly' video splices the band into footage from which sitcom?
Happy Days
Happy Days supplied Arnold's Drive-In, where the band seems to be playing. Microsoft then put the clip on the Windows 95 CD-ROM as a bonus file, and the song's popularity took off.
Q 23Where did Childish Gambino debut 'This Is America'?
Saturday Night Live
Bad Romance
Bad Romance took Video of the Year, and Gaga went up to collect that trophy in a dress made of raw beef. Its director, Francis Lawrence, went on to make the Hunger Games sequels.
Q 14Beyoncé's 'Single Ladies' choreography was inspired by a 1969 routine by which choreographer?
Bob Fosse
Bob Fosse devised the number, 'Mexican Breakfast', for his wife Gwen Verdon. Beyoncé said she kept much of his choreography and added J-Setting, a lead-and-follow style from the American South.
Q 15Whose 2009 VMAs acceptance speech did Kanye West interrupt to praise 'Single Ladies'?
Taylor Swift
Taylor Swift got her moment back later that night: when Beyoncé won Video of the Year for the same clip, she called Swift up on stage to finish her speech.
Q 16Which actor dances through an empty hotel lobby in Fatboy Slim's 'Weapon of Choice' video?
Christopher Walken
Christopher Walken, famous for menacing film roles, trained as a dancer in his youth, long before his film career began.
Q 17OK Go's 'Here It Goes Again' video, which won a Grammy in 2007, features the band dancing on what?
Treadmills
Treadmills carried a routine choreographed by the lead singer's sister, Trish Sie, and filmed in a single unbroken take.
Q 18Johnny Cash's acclaimed late-career video 'Hurt' was a cover of a song originally by which band?
Nine Inch Nails
Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor thought the idea sounded gimmicky until a tape of the video arrived. Moved by it, he said the song wasn't his anymore.
Q 19Which poet helped write the cue cards Dylan flips in the 1965 'Subterranean Homesick Blues' clip?
Allen Ginsberg
Allen Ginsberg is in the clip too, standing at the edge of the frame deep in conversation while Dylan drops the cards. Donovan helped letter them as well.
Q 20The MTV Video Music Award statuette depicts what?
An astronaut on the Moon
An astronaut on the Moon was MTV's own first image: the channel signed on in 1981 with Apollo 11 footage and its logo on the flag. Long nicknamed the Moonman, the trophy has been the Moon Person since 2017.
Saturday Night Live had him as both host and musical guest that night, and the video went online as he performed. Directed by Hiro Murai of his series Atlanta, it won the Grammy for Best Music Video.
Q 24Which Dire Straits video, an early use of computer-animated humans, was MTV Europe's first in 1987?
Money for Nothing
Money for Nothing began as a real gripe: Mark Knopfler overheard workers in a New York appliance store grumbling about the rock stars on MTV, and built the lyrics from what they said.
Q 25Which future Hollywood director shot Madonna's black-and-white 'Vogue' video?
David Fincher
David Fincher drew its look from the star portraits of classic Hollywood. He went on to direct Seven and Fight Club.
Q 26Nirvana's 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' video is set at what kind of event?
A high school pep rally
A high school pep rally, and the riot at the end was real: extras kept sitting on the bleachers all day were finally let down to mosh, and they smashed up the set.
Q 27Which actress starred in three Aerosmith videos in a row in the 1990s, beginning with 'Cryin''?
Alicia Silverstone
Alicia Silverstone was 16 when the first one was filmed. Director Amy Heckerling saw her in the videos and cast her as Cher in Clueless.
Q 28Which 2013 Miley Cyrus video drew a record 19.3 million first-day Vevo views?
Wrecking Ball
Wrecking Ball's tearful close-ups were modelled on Sinéad O'Connor's 'Nothing Compares 2 U' video. O'Connor answered with an open letter warning Cyrus about the music business.
Q 29Which comedian plays the sheriff chasing Lil Nas X on horseback at the start of the 'Old Town Road' video?
Chris Rock
Chris Rock's sheriff chases the outlaws through 1889. The song's first video had no cast at all: it was cut entirely from footage of the game Red Dead Redemption 2.
Q 30Beyoncé's 'Formation' video opens with her crouched on a police car sinking into floodwater in which city?
New Orleans
New Orleans is the setting, and the sinking police car recalls the floods of Hurricane Katrina. She sang the song at the Super Bowl a day after the video appeared.