It's Musical March Madness! The sprawling bracket — both a parody and a tribute to the NCAA basketball tournament, masterminded by MTV News' James Montgomery — takes the 65 biggest names in rock, splits them up into four regions, assigns them seeds and puts them up against one another in a single-elimination series of match-ups in a winner-take-all contest. We're leaving it to you to decide an actual champ in this field of 65. Over the next few weeks, we will present a series of polls that will allow you to vote for the match-ups presented in MTV News' Band Bracketology. You vote for the winners, we'll keep advancing the seeds and, in the end, we'll have some sort of champion. What will the winner receive? Little more than our esteem (as well as that of the fans) and some Internet bragging rights.
Murray State just knocked off Vanderbilt, but who will survive this round of games in the MTV News Musical March Madness tournament?
(8) Radiohead vs. (9) Spoon
Radiohead comes to this year's tournament as a former perennial champion looking to reclaim a spot on top of the mountain. Spoon have never won the big one, but they're on their way to becoming one of the most venerable acts in indie rock. This could be the beginning of a lengthy rivalry, like Duke/North Carolina or Central Connecticut State/Quinnipiac. Which one will stand tall?
(1) Coldplay vs. (16) Tokio Hotel
In the NCAA basketball tournament, a 16 seed has never beaten a top seed, so Tokio Hotel have history working against them. On the other hand, they're tenacious. Coldplay remain a dominant force even when you think they might have fallen off (Kansas Jayhawks fans know exactly what this is like). Will Tokio Hotel pull the ultimate upset?