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.
The real NCAA basketball tournament has already seen a major upset (Old Dominion over Notre Dame), and second-ranked Villanova was nearly bested by underdog Robert Morris. Meanwhile, upsets are also afoot in Musical March Madness. Who is next? Two more high-powered showdowns in the East.
(4) Vampire Weekend vs. (13) Pavement
This is an intriguing one, as the recently-returned kings of indie square off against one of the dominant forces on that same scene. Pavement picked up a lot of momentum with their reunion tour, but Contra may be too good an album to overcome. What do you think?
(5) Phoenix vs. (12) The National
Two feisty upstarts square off here, though only one has had the pleasure of talking to Snooki. Phoenix are from France, a country that doesn't churn out a whole lot of quality basketball talent (save for Tony Parker and Boris Diaw), and National frontman Matt Beringer has some height. Whose will come out on top?