Pop Music
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
8correct to beat the crowd
This pop and modern music trivia quiz has 150 free questions with answers and spans the stars teenagers stream today and the ones who built the charts before them: Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, Olivia Rodrigo, Harry Styles, Dua Lipa, BTS, Sabrina Carpenter and Chappell Roan alongside Michael Jackson, Madonna, Whitney Houston, ABBA and the Spice Girls. It is written to work as music trivia for teens at a party or in a classroom, with plenty of easy questions on current hits, and it still has hard rounds on records, awards and music history for the grown-ups. Every answer has been checked against a reliable source and each question shows its citation once you have answered.
30 of 150 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01MTV launched in August 1981 by playing which song as its very first clip?
Video Killed the Radio Star
'Video Killed the Radio Star' by the Buggles opened MTV at 12:01 a.m. on August 1, 1981, although the single, by then nearly two years old, had climbed no higher than number 40 on the US chart.
Q 02Which artist is often referred to as the 'King of Pop'?
Michael Jackson
Michael Jackson's publicists embraced 'King of Pop' around 1989, the year Elizabeth Taylor called him 'the true king of pop, rock and soul' at the Soul Train Music Awards.
Q 03Which pop star calls her fans 'Little Monsters' and is known to them as 'Mother Monster'?
Lady Gaga
Lady Gaga had 'Little Monsters' tattooed on herself as a dedication, and in 2012 botanists at Duke University named a fern species Gaga monstraparva, 'little monster', in honour of her fans.
Q 04Which pop artist released the album '1989', named after their birth year?
Taylor Swift
Taylor Swift, born in December 1989, released her fifth studio album 1989 in October 2014, marking her full pivot from country to pop.
Q 05Which pop artist co-founded the record label OVO Sound?
Drake
Drake co-founded OVO Sound with producer Noah '40' Shebib and manager Oliver El-Khatib; the name shortens October's Very Own, the banner he had used for his early mixtapes and blog.
Q 06Which country singer wrote and first recorded 'I Will Always Love You', Whitney Houston's 1992 hit?
Dolly Parton
Dolly Parton wrote it in 1973 as a farewell to her mentor Porter Wagoner when she left his show; Houston's version was recorded for The Bodyguard.
Q 07Which pop artist's 2017 album is titled '÷' (Divide)?
Ed Sheeran
Ed Sheeran's ÷ put all 16 of its tracks in the UK top 20 in one week of March 2017, nine of them in the top 10, which led the chart's compilers to limit each lead artist to three entries.
Q 08Who has been dubbed both the 'Queen of Latin Pop' and the 'Queen of Telenovelas'?
Thalía
Thalía earned the second crown through 1990s telenovelas such as Marimar and María la del Barrio, which aired in well over a hundred countries alongside her Latin pop hits.
Q 09Which pop artist is known for the song 'Baby One More Time'?
Britney Spears
Britney Spears rejected the first concept for the '...Baby One More Time' video and asked for a school setting that would reflect her fans' lives; the debut single went on to top the Hot 100.
Q 10Which act was the first to reach 20 number-one singles on the Billboard Hot 100?
The Beatles
The Beatles scored their 20th Hot 100 number one with 'The Long and Winding Road' in June 1970, two months after Paul McCartney announced he was no longer working with the band.
Q 11Which 1982 album became a global phenomenon and remains one of the best-selling records ever?
Thriller
Thriller, Michael Jackson's sixth studio album, surged after his televised moonwalk in May 1983 and the title-track video; Jackson won a record eight Grammys at the 1984 ceremony.
Q 12Which British girl group of five took 'Girl Power' mainstream in the mid-1990s with 'Wannabe'?
Spice Girls
Spice Girls' 1996 debut 'Wannabe' spent seven weeks at number one in the UK, and the group were in Japan when they heard it had reached the top.
Q 13Which female artist reached a record 35 Grammy wins at the February 2025 ceremony?
Beyoncé
Beyoncé passed conductor Georg Solti's 31 in 2023 and reached 35 awards at the February 2025 ceremony, more than any artist, male or female.
Q 21Sabrina Carpenter's 2024 hit 'Espresso' was the lead single from which album, her sixth?
Short n' Sweet
Short n' Sweet is named for Sabrina Carpenter's briefest relationships, which she said hit her hardest, with a nod to her own height; 'Espresso' won Best Pop Solo Performance at the 2025 Grammys.
Q 22Who won Best New Artist at the 67th Grammy Awards in February 2025?
Chappell Roan
Chappell Roan was dropped by Atlantic Records in 2020 and went home to Missouri, where she worked at a drive-through, before 'Good Luck, Babe!' and her debut album made her a star.
Q 23Which 2011 album won Album of the Year at the 2012 Grammys?
21
21, named for Adele's age when she wrote it, won Album of the Year at the 2012 Grammys and sold more than 31 million copies, the biggest album of the 2010s.
Q 14Disco took shape in early-1970s underground venues such as the Loft and the Sanctuary in which US city?
New York
New York hosted David Mancuso's Loft parties from Valentine's Day 1970: invitation-only nights in his own home rather than a commercial club; the polished soul of Philadelphia fed the new sound.
Q 15Which singer, dubbed the 'Queen of Pop', is known for reinventing her image since the early 1980s?
Madonna
Madonna set the pattern at the first MTV Video Music Awards in 1984, emerging from a giant wedding cake in a bridal gown and rolling across the stage to 'Like a Virgin'.
Q 16Which group launched its international career by winning Eurovision 1974 with 'Waterloo'?
ABBA
ABBA nearly entered 'Hasta Mañana' but chose 'Waterloo' because it featured Agnetha and Frida equally; at the 2005 'Congratulations' show it was voted the best song in Eurovision history.
Q 17Which 2019 hit ended 'Old Town Road's 19-week Hot 100 reign and won Record of the Year?
Bad Guy
'Bad Guy' sat at number two for nine weeks behind 'Old Town Road' before finally replacing it in August 2019; Billie Eilish and her brother Finneas had recorded it in his small bedroom studio.
Q 18Olivia Rodrigo became the youngest artist to debut at number one on the Hot 100 with which 2021 single?
Drivers License
'Drivers License', released when Olivia Rodrigo was 17, spent eight straight weeks at number one; its runaway success made her drop a planned EP and record a full album, Sour.
Q 19Which 2022 album by a former One Direction member took Album of the Year at the 65th Grammy Awards?
Harry's House
Harry's House takes its title from Hosono House, a 1973 album by Japanese musician Haruomi Hosono that Harry Styles heard during a stay in Japan; its single 'As It Was' topped the Hot 100 for 15 weeks.
Q 20What was BTS's first all-English song, the first Hot 100 number one by an all-South Korean act?
Dynamite
'Dynamite' was made as an upbeat lift for listeners during the COVID-19 pandemic, after BTS had to postpone a world tour; released in August 2020, it earned the group their first Grammy nomination.
Q 24Which singer headlined the Super Bowl LVII halftime show in 2023, confirming a pregnancy right after?
Rihanna
Rihanna had turned down the 2019 halftime show in solidarity with Colin Kaepernick; her 2023 set in Glendale, Arizona was her first live performance in five years, and the baby was her second child.
Q 25Which Cowboy Carter song made Beyoncé the first Black woman to top Billboard's Hot Country Songs chart?
Texas Hold 'Em
'Texas Hold 'Em' entered the chart at number one in February 2024; Beyoncé said the album was born of an experience years earlier in which she did not feel welcomed in country music.
Q 26Taylor Swift's Eras Tour, 149 shows over 21 months, played its final night on December 8, 2024 in which city?
Vancouver
Vancouver closed a tour that had opened in March 2023 in Glendale, Arizona, which renamed itself Swift City for the first shows and started a run of host cities paying tribute.
Q 27Which actor played a satirical Uncle Sam during Kendrick Lamar's Super Bowl LIX halftime show?
Samuel L. Jackson
Samuel L. Jackson narrated the February 2025 show in New Orleans as a satirical Uncle Sam; it averaged 133.5 million viewers, then a halftime record, and Serena Williams crip-walked during 'Not Like Us'.
Q 28Which 1984 music film won the Academy Award for Best Original Song Score?
Purple Rain
Purple Rain won Prince the Oscar for Best Original Song Score in 1985; its title track and two other songs were recorded live at a Minneapolis club show in August 1983.
Q 29Whitney Houston's performance of which song at Super Bowl XXV in 1991 became a top-20 hit single?
The Star-Spangled Banner
'The Star-Spangled Banner' was sung in Tampa ten days into the Gulf War; released as a charity single it reached the top 20, and reissued after the September 11 attacks it climbed to number six.
Q 30Michael Jackson first moonwalked on TV at a 1983 special for which label's 25th anniversary?
Motown
At Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever, taped in March 1983, Jackson mimed 'Billie Jean', the only non-Motown song on the show, while the single sat midway through seven weeks at number one.