Pop Punk Trivia
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This pop punk trivia quiz has 50 free questions with answers and runs the whole history of the genre: the late-70s roots in Buzzcocks, the Ramones and the Descendents, the Lookout! and Epitaph years, the 1994 breakout of Dookie and Smash, the Blink-182 second wave with Enema of the State and the first punk album ever to debut at number one, the Warped Tour generation of Sum 41, Good Charlotte, New Found Glory, Simple Plan and Avril Lavigne, the emo-pop crossover of Fall Out Boy and Paramore, and the 2020s revival led by a former rapper and Travis Barker. The questions cover where the bands formed, how they got their names, who produced what, which records broke which chart, and the odd stories behind them: the mud fight at Woodstock '94, the album renamed after 9/11, the band that counted the days until Warped Tour and called themselves after the number, and the Grammy that Dookie won. It starts easy enough for anyone who owned a studded belt and gets hard enough for people who can name Blink-182's first drummer. Every answer was checked against a reference source and each question shows its citation once you have answered. No lyrics are quoted.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Bolton band, formed in 1976 by Pete Shelley and Howard Devoto, laid the groundwork for pop punk?
Buzzcocks
Buzzcocks lost Howard Devoto within a year, when he quit to form Magazine, so Pete Shelley took over the singing and wrote the band's best-known songs.
Q 02The Ramones all took the surname Ramone in tribute to a pseudonym once used by which musician?
Paul McCartney
Paul McCartney billed himself as Paul Ramon on an early Beatles tour of Scotland; bassist Dee Dee, a fan, took the surname first and talked his unrelated bandmates into it.
Q 03Which Milo Aukerman-fronted band from Manhattan Beach, California, is a key influence on pop punk?
Descendents
Descendents named their debut album Milo Goes to College after their singer's plan to quit for university; he went on to juggle the band with a career as a biologist.
Q 04Which acoustic Green Day ballad, released on 1997's Nimrod, became a staple of graduations?
Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)
Good Riddance (Time of Your Life) began as a kiss-off: Billie Joe Armstrong wrote it when his girlfriend moved to Ecuador and put his anger in the title, yet it became a fond farewell song.
Q 05What was Green Day called before adopting the Green Day name in 1989?
Sweet Children
Sweet Children took their new name from Bay Area slang: a 'green day' was a day spent doing nothing but smoking pot.
Q 06Which Berkeley club was the hub of the Bay Area punk scene that produced Green Day?
924 Gilman Street
924 Gilman Street is an all-ages, collectively run club that barred major-label acts, so Green Day were shut out once they signed to Reprise, and wrote the song '86' about it.
Q 07Which drummer joined Green Day in 1990, after John Kiffmeyer left the band to go to college?
Tré Cool
Tré Cool had drummed in a neighbour's punk band since before he was a teenager; he stepped in for Kiffmeyer as a temporary fill-in and has held the seat ever since.
Q 08Who produced Dookie, Green Day's 1994 major-label debut, beginning a long partnership with the band?
Rob Cavallo
Rob Cavallo produced Dookie for Reprise, a major-label leap that got Green Day branded sellouts by early fans and barred from the punk club where they had started.
Q 09Which song on Dookie had Green Day already recorded once, for their earlier album Kerplunk?
Welcome to Paradise
Welcome to Paradise came out twice: Billie Joe Armstrong wrote it about leaving home for a West Oakland warehouse full of punks and artists, then cut it again for Dookie.
Q 10What did Green Day famously start during their set at Woodstock '94?
A mud fight
A mud fight broke out between the band and the rain-soaked crowd, and bassist Mike Dirnt came out of it with some of his teeth knocked out.
Q 11Green Day's 2004 rock opera American Idiot was adapted into what in 2010?
A Broadway musical
A Broadway musical: Green Day and director Michael Mayer first tried the show out at a theatre in Berkeley in 2009, then took it to New York, where it won two Tony Awards.
Q 12Which Blink-182 single came with a video spoofing boy bands such as the Backstreet Boys?
All the Small Things
All the Small Things was written by Tom DeLonge for his girlfriend, and it drew on real life: the roses she once left him by the stairs went into the lyrics.
Q 13Which 1994 Offspring album on the indie label Epitaph is often called the best-selling independent-label album ever?
Smash
Q 21In which Ontario town was Sum 41 formed in 1996?
Ajax
Ajax, a town east of Toronto, is where Deryck Whibley's band Kaspir fell so hard for the skate punk of NOFX that it started over under a new name, Sum 41.
Q 22What does the 41 in Sum 41's name refer to?
Days into a summer break
Days into a summer break: the band, until then called Kaspir, took the name 41 days into the summer of 1996, so the 'Sum' is short for summer, not a total.
Q 23Which Sum 41 single topped the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart and remains their biggest hit?
Fat Lip
Fat Lip began with the jokey Beastie Boys-style raps the band wrote for fun; Deryck Whibley has said it was never meant to be a single.
Smash sold over eleven million copies for the punk label Epitaph, and two years later the band left it for the major label Columbia.
Q 14Which Offspring single is built around the spoken hook 'You gotta keep 'em separated'?
Come Out and Play
Come Out and Play took its hook from a laboratory: Dexter Holland thought of the line while working with samples he had to keep apart, and a friend of the band spoke it on the record.
Q 15In which San Diego suburb was Blink-182 formed in 1992?
Poway
Poway is where Tom DeLonge was hunting for bandmates in 1992; a friend's girlfriend, Anne Hoppus, introduced him to her bass-playing brother Mark.
Q 16Who was Blink-182's original drummer, before Travis Barker?
Scott Raynor
Scott Raynor dropped out during a 1998 tour, and Travis Barker of the support band the Aquabats learned the whole set in under an hour to cover for him, then kept the job.
Q 17Which producer became Blink-182's key creative partner starting with Enema of the State in 1999?
Jerry Finn
Jerry Finn had already left a mark on Green Day's Dookie: the band disliked its first mix, so he helped redo it. He then produced every Blink-182 studio album until his death in 2008.
Q 18Who is pictured in a nurse's uniform on the cover of Enema of the State?
Janine Lindemulder
Janine Lindemulder, an adult-film star, wore a red cross on her nurse's cap in the first pressings; it was removed after the American Red Cross objected to the use of its emblem.
Q 19Which Blink-182 album debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in 2001, the band's first chart-topper?
Take Off Your Pants and Jacket
Take Off Your Pants and Jacket nearly went out without its hits: 'The Rock Show' and 'First Date' were written overnight after the band's manager said the album still lacked a single.
Q 20Which Alkaline Trio singer filled in for Tom DeLonge in Blink-182 from 2015 to 2022?
Matt Skiba
Matt Skiba was drafted to cover some 2015 shows after Tom DeLonge's exit and stayed for seven years, recording the albums California and Nine before DeLonge came back.
Q 24Paramore formed in 2004 in which Tennessee town?
Franklin
Franklin became Hayley Williams's home in her teens; a label signed her there to be a solo pop singer, but she insisted on playing rock with the local friends who became Paramore.
Q 25Which 2007 Paramore hit did Hayley Williams drop from live sets for four years over one of its lyrics?
Misery Business
Misery Business was shelved in 2018 because Williams no longer stood by a line that insults another girl; she first sang it again in 2022, as Billie Eilish's guest at Coachella.
Q 26Fall Out Boy took their name from a character in which TV show?
The Simpsons
The Simpsons: at the band's second show an audience member shouted the name of Radioactive Man's sidekick, Fallout Boy, and it stuck.
Q 27How do Fall Out Boy split their songwriting?
Wentz writes words, Stump writes the tunes
Wentz writes words, Stump writes the tunes: Stump wrote the early lyrics himself until bassist Pete Wentz, who took them far more seriously, argued him out of the job.
Q 28Which 2013 album ended Fall Out Boy's hiatus and became their second US No. 1?
Save Rock and Roll
Save Rock and Roll was recorded in secret, so its 2013 announcement came out of nowhere; Elton John sings on the title track after the band joked about asking him.
Q 29Who conceived the Warped Tour, which first toured in 1995?
Kevin Lyman
Kevin Lyman, a former Lollapalooza stage manager, put the first tour together in 1995 and needed money to keep it going; a skate-shoe sponsor rescued it the next year.
Q 30Which shoe brand became the Warped Tour's title sponsor after its first year?
Vans
Vans had been looking for someone to run a touring amateur skate contest; the festival's cash-strapped founder pitched his tour instead, and the brand has sponsored it since its second year.