The Post You Can't Scroll Past
Someone you follow posts it. First concert, last concert, worst concert, a column of answers, and a "what's yours?" at the bottom.
You don't reply. You just start answering in your head.
First concert comes fast, or it feels like it does. Last concert is easy. Worst concert takes about half a second, and you're already smiling about it. Then you get to "seen the most" and stall, because you're torn between two bands and you honestly can't say which one you've seen more.
That's the whole trick of the concert questionnaire. It looks like a quick list. It's really a memory test, and most people fail at least one question.
It's also one of the few music memes that has nothing to do with taste. Nobody is asking what you listen to. The questionnaire asks where you were.
The Ten Questions
The version going around now has ten questions. Each one is asking something a little different than it looks.
- First concert. The one that started it, or at least the one you're willing to claim.
- Last concert. Your most recent show. Easy, unless it's been a while, in which case it stings a little.
- Worst concert. The confession. Everyone has one, and everyone wants to tell it.
- Loudest concert. The only question you answer with your ears.
- Best concert. The brag.
- Seen the most. The artist you've shown up for again and again. Harder to count than you'd think.
- Most surprising. The show that wasn't supposed to be good, or the night something happened that nobody saw coming.
- Happy I got to see. The artist you caught before it was too late.
- Wish I could have seen. The one you missed.
- Next concert. The only question about the future. A blank here says something too.
Older versions had seven or nine questions, and the wording drifts from post to post. "Act seen the most in concert." "Haven't seen but want to." "Wish I could've seen." The spirit has barely changed in years.
Where It Came From
Nobody knows who started it. The earliest posts that can be traced point back to ones that have since been deleted, and no one has documented a clear first version. What can be traced is how it spread.
2006: MySpace surveys. Long "get to know me" surveys passed between friends on MySpace and reposted to blogs. They asked dozens of questions, a handful of them about music. The concert questionnaire is a direct descendant of that copy-paste culture, though not of any one survey.
2009: The Facebook tagging era. "25 Random Things About Me" swept Facebook in early 2009, with The New York Times reporting close to 5 million of those notes written in a single week. Concert confessions were part of the fun. One of the Times' own examples was someone admitting they'd paid good money to see Whitesnake.
2011: The first concert question on its own. A writer for WBEZ in Chicago asked her Facebook friends what their first concert was, pitched it as an ice-breaker, and published about 40 of the answers. Her observation holds up: the embarrassing answers are more fun to talk about than the cool ones.
2017: "10 concerts I've been to, one is a lie." You listed ten shows, slipped in one fake, and let your friends guess. It clogged Facebook feeds that April and got coverage from CNN, CBS News and others, partly because security experts started warning people about it.
2019: "What's your concert history?" In September 2019 a fill-in-the-blank version spread across X: first concert, last concert, next concert, best, worst, seen the most, haven't seen but want to. When the UK ticket seller The Ticket Factory posted a blank copy, it drew 551 quote-posts, people adding their own answers on top of it. Over the next few months, versions with "loudest concert" started showing up.
2020: The ten-question version. By January 2020 a longer edition was making the rounds on Facebook. Canadian radio host Alan Cross shared it and answered it himself, with "loudest" and "most surprising" now on the list.
2023: The "worst concert" wave. In mid-December 2023 a numbered nine-question version took over music X. Within three days it had write-ups in Loudwire, Taste of Country and American Songwriter, and musicians and label people were posting their answers alongside fans. One answer post passed 158,000 views on its own. All three outlets built their coverage around the same question: worst concert.
Now. It hasn't gone away. It just splits into single questions. An October 2026 post on X asking which band people regret never seeing pulled 286 replies.
Why Nobody Can Resist It
Part of it is that the questionnaire is about showing up, not about taste. Plenty of music memes ask you to rank albums or defend a favorite. This one asks where you were standing. It's hard to argue with someone's worst concert. You can only top it.
The other part is the mix. The questions run from a brag (best concert) to a confession (worst) to a plan (next), so every set of answers gives your friends something to reply to. Somebody always has an opinion about your best show. Somebody always has a worse worst.
"Worst" is the real hook, and the 2023 coverage shows it. Nobody led with best-concert answers. A best concert is a name. A worst concert is a story: the sound that never got fixed, the headliner who didn't want to be there, the set lost to a storm.
And then there's "loudest," which might be the most concert-only question on the list. Nobody remembers the loudest show by the setlist. They remember it by the ringing that still hadn't quit by Tuesday.
If you like this kind of game, it's a cousin of the Concert Alphabet, which asks you to see an artist for every letter and lose an argument about Q.
The Hard Ones
Most of the ten are quick. Three or four aren't, and they're the ones that make people put the phone down and go dig through old emails.
First concert. There's the first concert you'd like to claim and the one that actually happened. The real one is often a parent-approved show, an amphitheater at a theme park, or a band you'd rather not explain. For Matt, who founded Concerts Remembered, it was the Bangles at Marriott's Great America on September 2, 1989. If yours is blurry, it's usually still findable, and our piece on why the first concert sticks covers how to rebuild it.
Seen the most. This is the question people get wrong most often, because they answer from feel. The band you love most and the band you've seen most aren't always the same. Festivals make it murkier: does catching a band's afternoon set count the same as a headlining night? If you've never put your shows in one place, this is where you find out how much you don't know. Our guide on how to find your concert history walks through where the evidence hides.
Wish I could have seen. Easy to answer, harder to sit with. It's the shadow side of a concert life, and it's the subject of our piece on the two types of concert regret.
Next concert. If it's blank, that's an answer. It might also be a nudge.
The questions that trip people up are the ones that depend on memory: which show came first, who you've seen the most, what's actually next on the calendar. That's the part the Concerts Remembered app's My Concert Life does for you. Once your shows are logged, it fills in first concert, last concert, seen the most and next concert from your own history. You pick the fun ones, worst, loudest and the rest, and it turns all ten into one card ready for your feed.
What Your Answers Add Up To
Ten answers isn't a concert history. It's a sketch of one. But it's a sketch other people want to read, which is more than most of our concert memories get.
Matt's has 36 shows behind it and Led Zeppelin in the wish column. Yours probably has a story in every answer too. The questionnaire is just the excuse to tell them.
FAQ
What is the concert questionnaire?
It's a list of questions about your concert-going life that people answer and share on social media: first concert, last concert, worst concert, loudest concert, best concert, the artist you've seen the most, your most surprising show, one you're happy you saw, one you wish you'd seen, and your next concert. It has circulated on Facebook and X in different versions since at least 2019.
What questions are on the concert questionnaire?
The common ten-question version asks for your first concert, last concert, worst concert, loudest concert, best concert, the artist you've seen the most, your most surprising concert, an artist you're happy you got to see, one you wish you could have seen, and your next concert. Older versions had seven or nine questions and slightly different wording.
Who started the concert questionnaire?
Nobody knows. The earliest traceable posts point back to ones that have since been deleted or made private, and no one has documented a clear original. It grew out of the copy-paste survey culture of MySpace and early Facebook and has been rewritten by thousands of people since.
When did the "worst concert" trend go viral?
In mid-December 2023, when a nine-question version spread across X. Loudwire, Taste of Country and American Songwriter all covered it within three days, and most of the attention went to people's worst-concert answers.
What if I can't remember my first concert?
You can usually rebuild it. Start with what you do remember: the artist, the venue, roughly how old you were. Setlist.fm can often narrow it to an exact date, and old ticket emails, photos and family members can fill in the rest. If you've logged your shows in the Concerts Remembered app, it suggests the earliest one you've logged and lets you confirm it or pick a different show.
How do I make a concert questionnaire card?
In the Concerts Remembered app, open Encore and tap My Concert Life. The app fills in your first concert, last concert, the artist you've seen the most and your next concert from your logged shows. You pick the rest, then save the card or share it straight to your story. It's free on iOS and Android.
Make yours. My Concert Life answers the hard questions from your own shows and turns all ten into one card. Free on iOS and Android. See everything else the app does.
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