Women in Music
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50 free Women in Music trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Women have written, sung, played and produced some of the most important music ever recorded, often while fighting for the stage time, credit and pay their male peers took for granted. Their stories are full of firsts, comebacks and the odd headline-grabbing outfit, which makes them perfect trivia. This quiz covers female musicians across genres and generations: the jazz and blues voices of the early twentieth century, the soul, country and folk stars of the 1960s and 1970s, the pop and rock icons of the MTV years, and the chart-toppers of today. There are questions on opera, classical music, hip-hop, Latin pop and African music too, along with an all-female band or two. Most questions are pitched for casual fans, with a handful of tougher ones for serious music lovers. It suits a Women's History Month event, an International Women's Day quiz night, a music class or a round at the pub, and every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Canadian singer won the 1988 Eurovision Song Contest while representing Switzerland?
Celine Dion
Celine Dion, then 20, sang in French and beat the United Kingdom by one point after Yugoslavia's jury gave the British entry nothing.
Q 02Which pop superstar spent part of her childhood on a Christmas tree farm in Pennsylvania?
Taylor Swift
Taylor Swift named a 2019 festive single after the farm. Her family moved to Tennessee when she was 14 to help her break into country.
Q 03Which instrument did Lizzo play on stage in 2022, using a crystal one once sent to James Madison?
Flute
Flute was Lizzo's classical study at university. The Library of Congress, which keeps the crystal one sent to Madison in 1813, let her play it at a Washington arena concert.
Q 04Which country star wrote 'I Will Always Love You' as a farewell to her mentor Porter Wagoner?
Dolly Parton
Dolly Parton wrote it in 1973 as she ended a seven-year partnership with him to go solo. She has said she wrote 'Jolene' around the same time.
Q 05Which pop star, whose stage name echoes a Queen song, wore a raw beef dress to the 2010 MTV awards?
Lady Gaga
Lady Gaga, born Stefani Germanotta, took her name from Queen's 'Radio Ga Ga'. Taxidermists later preserved the meat dress as a kind of jerky for display at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Q 06Which soul singer turned Otis Redding's song 'Respect' into a civil rights and feminist anthem?
Aretha Franklin
Aretha Franklin recorded her version in 1967, two years after his. In 1987 she became the first woman inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Q 07Which singer was declared a National Hero of Barbados on the night the island became a republic?
Rihanna
Rihanna, born Robyn Fenty in the parish of Saint Michael, received the honour from Prime Minister Mia Mottley during the 2021 republic ceremony.
Q 08Which singer co-wrote 'All I Want for Christmas Is You', which first topped the US Hot 100 in 2019?
Mariah Carey
Mariah Carey released the song in 1994, so the climb to number one took 25 years. It also made her the first artist to top the Hot 100 in four separate decades.
Q 09Which British singer named albums after her age when writing them, including '19' and '21'?
Adele
Adele once said '25' would be her last album titled this way, the end of a trilogy. She then released '30' in 2021.
Q 10Which singer, born Anna Mae Bullock in Tennessee, made a comeback with the album 'Private Dancer'?
Tina Turner
Tina Turner grew up in the farming community of Nutbush, which she later sang about in the hit 'Nutbush City Limits'.
Q 11Which pop star wore a cone-cupped corset by designer Jean Paul Gaultier on her 1990 Blond Ambition tour?
Madonna
Madonna recruited the French designer herself. The show was so provocative that Pope John Paul II publicly urged audiences to boycott it.
Q 12Which singer became the first Black woman to headline Coachella, a 2018 set filmed as 'Homecoming'?
Beyoncé
Beyoncé built the show around the marching bands and step shows of historically Black colleges. The festival was nicknamed Beychella that year.
Q 13Which singer's rendition of the US national anthem at the 1991 Super Bowl was released as a single?
Whitney Houston
Q 21Which rock band, fronted by sisters Ann and Nancy Wilson, had 1970s hits with 'Barracuda' and 'Magic Man'?
Heart
Heart entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2013, when the sisters played with the band's original members for the first time in 34 years.
Q 22Which Texas-born singer found fame at Monterey in 1967 fronting Big Brother and the Holding Company?
Janis Joplin
Janis Joplin died in 1970 at the age of 27. 'Pearl', released the next year and titled after her nickname, became the biggest-selling album of her career.
Q 23Which singer became the first woman inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice, in 2019?
Stevie Nicks
Whitney Houston sang it during the Gulf War and the single's profits went to charity. Reissued after the September 11 attacks, it charted all over again.
Q 14Which Colombian singer performed 'Waka Waka', the official song of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa?
Shakira
Shakira borrowed its chorus from 'Zangaléwa', a 1986 hit by the Cameroonian band Golden Sounds that she had heard as a child in Colombia.
Q 15Which singer's 1998 dance hit 'Believe' pioneered Auto-Tune as a deliberately robotic vocal effect?
Cher
Cher was 52 when the song reached number one in the US, and the warped sound was copied so widely that it became known as the Cher effect.
Q 16Which Louisiana-raised singer went from 'The All-New Mickey Mouse Club' to her debut '...Baby One More Time'?
Britney Spears
Britney Spears was 16 when the single came out, and it topped the charts in more than 20 countries.
Q 17Which British group, whose members got nicknames such as Scary and Posh, debuted in 1996 with 'Wannabe'?
Spice Girls
Spice Girls owe those nicknames to the staff of Top of the Pops magazine, who made them up after a lunch with the group.
Q 18Which English singer's 'Running Up That Hill' became a hit again in 2022 after featuring in 'Stranger Things'?
Kate Bush
Kate Bush had topped the UK chart at 19 with 'Wuthering Heights', the first number one there by a woman with a fully self-written song.
Q 19Which Welsh singer recorded the themes for three James Bond films, starting with 'Goldfinger'?
Shirley Bassey
Shirley Bassey, born in Cardiff's Tiger Bay, went on to sing 'Diamonds Are Forever' and 'Moonraker' as well.
Q 20Which London singer of 'Back to Black' and 'Rehab' won five Grammys in one night in 2008?
Amy Winehouse
Amy Winehouse missed the Los Angeles ceremony because her visa was not approved in time, so she performed by satellite from a London studio.
Stevie Nicks went in with Fleetwood Mac in 1998 and as a solo artist in 2019. Her song 'Dreams' is the group's only US number-one single.
Q 24Which singer wore a dress shaped like a swan to the 2001 Academy Awards, where she performed a nominated song?
Björk
Björk mimicked laying an egg on the red carpet in the outfit, by designer Marjan Pejoski. She wore it again on the cover of her album 'Vespertine'.
Q 25Which French singer, whose stage surname is Paris slang for a sparrow, wrote the words to 'La Vie en rose'?
Édith Piaf
Édith Piaf stood only 142 centimetres tall, which helped inspire the nightclub owner Louis Leplée to nickname her the Sparrow Kid.
Q 26Which Detroit-born singer fronted the Supremes on twelve US number-one singles before going solo in 1970?
Diana Ross
Diana Ross joined the group as a teenager when it was called the Primettes, a sister act to the Primes, who went on to become the Temptations.
Q 27Which scat-singing jazz vocalist broke through in 1938 with the nursery-rhyme hit 'A-Tisket, A-Tasket'?
Ella Fitzgerald
Ella Fitzgerald co-wrote the song while singing with Chick Webb's band. Years later she forgot the words to 'Mack the Knife' live in Berlin, improvised new ones and won a Grammy.
Q 28Which jazz singer, nicknamed Lady Day, recorded the anti-lynching protest song 'Strange Fruit' in 1939?
Billie Holiday
Billie Holiday needed a one-session release from her Columbia contract to record it. She first sang it at Café Society, New York's first integrated nightclub.
Q 29Which New Zealand singer topped the US Hot 100 at the age of 16 with her debut single 'Royals'?
Lorde
Lorde chose her stage name out of a fascination with aristocracy, adding the final letter to make the word look more feminine.
Q 30Which Texas-born star, hailed as the Queen of Tejano Music, was played by Jennifer Lopez in a 1997 film?
Selena
Selena had to learn Spanish phonetically, with her father's guidance, to record her first album, and was still far from fluent years later.