Please note: This is a generalized recap of a recent music quiz style Sporcle Events game, not a question by question recap you may be accustomed to reading here. I’m only providing a sampling of the questions that were asked during the game, which was based almost entirely on audio clues presented to us.

All of that said…

Corner Brewery’s “second” trivia night – an all music trivia game – has really grown up from Chihuahua sized to Great Dane sized.

Here’s a photo photo I took at a Renaissance fair years ago showing a Chihuahua and a Great Dane together:

Before this turns into some sort of  dog blog 🐶🐕- let’s move on! 😜

Myself, Kim and occasionally a couple of other helpers have been playing the music quiz scene since the very beginning in 2025 at the “Corner Brewery.” We were there even before the music quiz scene started, and there were music bingo nights.

Corner Brewery has had a general knowledge trivia scene Wednesday nights since 2012. Those trivia nights get quite packed!

That being said, we have watched the music trivia scene grow from having maybe three or four regular teams to eight regular teams having played the requisite games this past season.

That’s not counting the other teams filling up the room that may not be registered league teams, or just random teams getting together occasionally with their 10 or so friends.

Fifteen total teams were in the mix on this bustling trivia night last week.

We finished fourth overall for the night, second overall for the season. 🥈

As for the game, just Kim and I teamed up surprising well on questions that at first, just appeared as absolutely frightening categories to us. 😳

Like “Jazz covers.” We would not have bet that we’d be able to do well on that category! We did well, but I’m still kicking myself for not remembering the nerd point answer asking who originally sang “La Vie En Rose.”

We also didn’t bet on us knowing anything about the category of “Electropop!” Let alone bet that not so little old me would be the one knowing the artist for that question (because of my abject hatred of this artist’s holiday album that I’m forced to listen to this time of year at my workplace).

Yes, it was an “Against all Odds” sort of trivia night for us for sure! Funny that I mention a Phil Collins single – we also had a question about a band Phil Collins fronted – and a horror comedy film in which a character in this movie pontificated about how much he liked Phil Collins’ band.

As circumstances would have it, two of our players who might have helped us out for that last game are teachers, and it was the dreaded parent-teacher conference night for both of them. Another potential helper stayed home after having an extremely stressful day at work.

See? I occasionally let my husband miss trivia games, contrary to popular belief! 🤣

So we played under the topical music-themed name “It Takes Two.”

Here were some highlights of the game:

Our game one categories were country classics, power ballads, 2020s indie pop (ugh), new wave, ’90s alt rock, soul, girl groups, and 80s #1s.

Predictably, 2020s indie pop was a huge nope for us. That was pretty much the only weak category for us in this game.

Kim was all over “power ballads” when they played a single called “Halo,” and she even knew the nerd point about a Kings of Leon song that beat out this song for something that I didn’t write down.

Since we’re two women of a certain age (which is of course 30 LOL 😉), New Wave was predictably a strong category for us. A song by a band headed by Ric Ocasek wasn’t gonna escape us – though we missed the nerd point about a singer who supposedly said Taylor Swift “ruined music.”

Side note about this nerd point singer Todd Rundgren – nearly every time I visit the Sheetz convenience store in Ypsi, I hear a song by this guy called “Hello, it’s Me.” I always try to finish my business in the store before the song’s over (it’s a bit TOO hippy drippy for me).

Seriously, I wonder why this song is even in the mix. Does the franchise operator like ’70s deep cuts? If so, I can appreciate you – I just don’t happen to like that deep cut very much (not as much as Sheetz subs or their super clean bathrooms with two hand soap flavors, anyway) 🤪😋

Kim was all over “girl groups,” quickly spotting the artist and title for the song “Work.” I chalked that up to “Yay, this is sh– Kim knows so I don’t have to know it!” Isn’t it great when trivia nights work that way? 🤔

I joked, “Your arms must get tired from doing most of the heavy lifting in these games.”

Both of the game one mystery rounds were easy for us. One of them asked us to identify bands/artists with screaming singers, the other asked us to use tennis term/scores answers for the songs (love, game, deuce, 40).

One comment – “They weren’t that bad at reggae for being a group of white British guys, were they?”

I was surprised Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song” wasn’t among the screaming songs we had to identify. Robert Plant’s scream in that song is legendary!

Apparently Rolling Stone made a list of the top songs with screams in them. Mental note – look at that list! I hope it’s not paywalled.

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/best-screams-in-music-history-1235635994/

What? Immigrant song is not on the list? Listen to me scream – Nooooooooo! 😲😮

Time for the game one final category! Movie soundtracks!  🎥🍿 🎵🎶

We had discussed before the game that wagering it all on championship final questions isn’t always the best idea. But we couldn’t resist wagering it all on this category!

We were in sixth going into the final with 59 points, behind Don’t Forget to Strip Your Bartender, 61; Marvin Gayme, Heather, Heather, Heather and Veronica and Text Me When You Get Home (three way tie), 62 and Tuna Piano was in first with 63 points.

Our question involved songs from a 2004 independent film starring a guy who also directed the movie.

They played four different songs from this movie, but because we were so laser focused on answering the question, I didn’t write down all of them. One of them was Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Only Living Boy in New York.”

Funny. Though Kim and I usually disagree on which music genres are the best, we were in total agreement that this movie was a huge snoozefest! 🥱😴

We put in a wild guess and got it. But so did most of the teams ahead of us. A three way tiebreaker had to be settled by asking how many seconds long this movie soundtrack was.

Standings after the final:

Us, 74; Strip Your Bartender, 76; Marvin Gayme, Heather Heather Heather, Text Me, 77 and Tuna Piano, 78.

Sigh. Maybe if we’d brought someone Gen Alpha or at least someone knowledgeable about horrible recent music we’d known the 2020s indie pop question and finished a bit higher!

Let’s move on to game two, shall we?

Categories looked more frightening to us:

Funk, electro pop, pop soul, 2000s hip-hop, jazz covers, disco groups, kpop and punk rock.

The host accidentally played the opening notes of the funk song before game one wrapped, so that was a gimme for everyone.

Which always reminds me of a hilarious Chappelle’s Show bit:

Wasn’t the early 2000s a great time for comedy? I mean – “The Man Show” AND “Chappelle’s Show?” I think even “The Simpsons” was still funny then too!

As for the Rick James song everyone knew, everyone also knew which song famously sampled the distinctive riff in this.

Big shocker in electropop. They started playing it, and Kim almost wanted to guess one singer, but I wrote down the singer’s name in my notes. The one who did the horrible holiday album with “Candy Cane Lane” among other phoned in obnoxious and in some cases – virtue-signalling earworms? Australian? Three letter name?

Yeah her. Thankfully Kim made the right guess on the song title for an additional point. We also got the nerd point whose answer was Gillette Stadium (forget what the question was, my bad).

Seriously I’d never bet on me getting a question correct in this category 😭

“That was all you,” Kim said to me. 

Before we had 2000s hip hop, we brainstormed a few possibilities about who we guessed it might be. I joked “When in doubt, it’s Ludacris.” We also discussed Jay-Z, Nelly, Eminem, and dark horse candidate Afroman.

I was so hoping for Afroman! Alas it was not to be. 

We didn’t bet on it being a chick singer! Kim was all over this one for the artist and song title, which was “Family Affair.” We missed the nerd point asking who produced the track,  who was the Godfather of West Coast Rap or something…. Hey it’s not my job to know about rap music!

Though we were worried about the category of jazz covers, it did come to me, though slowly. The track was actually on the Wall-E soundtrack, which I actually bought, just because I liked the Peter Gabriel song “Down to Earth” that they played at the end. We’ve all done silly things like this in our quest for getting music, haven’t we? Like buying the Reality Bites soundtrack just for the Lenny Kravitz song?

Speaking of Lenny Kravitz, read on…

We correctly spotted the jazz covers song but damn it – I couldn’t remember the person who originally did the song. You know the one who also sang “No,. Je Ne Regrette Rien?” Played by Marion Cotillard in an Oscar winning role?

The song I just mentioned was played in the first episode of “Wednesday,” when the title character dumps piranhas in  pool full of male water polo players to punish bullies who messed with her brother Pugsley.

It’s so frustrating when you know all of these things about the question, except the one little thing that they want you to know! 😫

Speaking of things we didn’t know…Kpop. Let’s not speak of that category again, shall we? 😩🤫

I teased y’all about Lenny Kravitz earlier. For the “pop soul” category,  they played a song from his second album “Mama Said” here, they also wanted to know the name of his daughter for the nerd point. If you want to know about the saga of his relationship with his ex-wife Lisa Bonet, listen to his albums “Let Love Rule” and “Mama Said.” He didn’t hold anything back!

Side note, Lenny is, IMHO, totally  a fashion icon and can still…totally get it!

We teamed up well in the category of disco groups. I mean – who DOESN’T know the Bee Gees? The artist and song part was easy, harder for me was the nerd point asking for which British band did a cover of the song, which thankfully Kim knew. So awesome when you get all three parts of a music question right!

Now you guys know why I don’t do recaps of the music games every week! It’s…a lot, really.

The regular round ended easily enough with a Clash banger with some Spanish lyrics. For the nerd point, they wanted to know what New York sportsball stadium the video was filmed. We had our choices narrowed to two, we picked the one that would be “less boring” visually and got it.

Just like with game one, the mystery round questions were fairly easy for us.

The first one was all 80s one-hit wonders, had to identify the artist. The songs were “Maniac,” “Don’t Worry, Be Happy,” “Break My Stride” and “99 Luft Balloons.”

Was Pharrell Williams’ song “Happy” an unofficial sequel to “Don’t Worry, Be Happy?” Discuss!

I didn’t pay a lot of attention to the next mystery round, but we did get three of the four correct.

I didn’t get down the scores heading into the final question for game two.

We wagered cautiously on the category of SNL music  artists. We figured it could be any number of super complicated things, and since neither of us were experts in SNL, we only wagered half of our points.

They wanted to know what artist’s song Sinead O Connor sang in a cappella form before ripping up a picture of Pope John Paul II.

The artists they played as choices were Bob Marley and the Wailers, Tracy Chapman, Public Enemy, and Tori Amos.

We were debating between two of these people, but ultimately went with my guess, which (thank the gods) was correct.

We would have finished third had we wagered all of our points. But we shrugged it off…meh!

Overall, we were pleased with finishing fourth overall as a duo!

As Sparty On, Go Pods and stay classy, Edith Piaf!