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.
We close out the Midwest bracket with a couple of truly unexpected pairings. On Friday, the second round wraps up with the South. All voting for the second round of MTV News' Musical March Madness closes on Sunday evening (March 28), and Monday (March 29) kicks off the Sweet 16. Keep voting, and keep leaving your thoughts in the comments!
(4) The White Stripes vs. (12) OK Go
The White Stripes used balance and consistency to put away aggro-punkers Rise Against, while OK Go pulled something of an upset against much-beloved masked metal icons Slipknot (apparently, all those views of the "This Too Shall Pass" video added up to some killer online good will). Will Jack White put another notch in his belt, or will the Internet-savvy upstarts in OK Go score another win as an underdog?
(9) Patrick Stump vs. (16) The Hold Steady
Of all the upsets in the first round, the Hold Steady defeating Nickelback may be the most surprising, simply because of the discrepancy between the size of the two groups. Can their fans keep pushing them through the tournament, or will Stump use the momentum created by his first round victory and his recent performance at SXSW to land in the Sweet 16?