How a song bracket ended a six-hour road trip argument

Four of us drove from Denver to Moab last month. By the first gas stop we'd already had the fight every road trip has: who controls the music. Dana wanted nothing but 2000s pop punk, Marcus kept sneaking in ambient tracks, and I was trying to defend one Fleetwood Mac album as a whole personality.

Somewhere past Glenwood Springs, Priya pulled out her phone and said we were going to settle it properly. Everyone picked eight songs. She dropped all 32 into a knockout bracket, and every two songs we voted, loser out, winner moves on.

It worked better than it had any right to. A few things we noticed:

• Voting out loud is half the fun. People campaign for their songs like it's an election.
• Head-to-head picks are easier than ranking a whole list. Nobody can agree on a top ten, but everyone can pick between two songs.
• Upsets happen. An Abba song nobody had defended beat a song three of us claimed to love.
• By the final, nobody cared who "won". We were just singing.

Priya used a free song bracket maker in the browser, so she could build it in a couple of minutes at a gas station with one bar of signal.

The winner, for the record, was "Mr. Brightside". Nobody was surprised, and somehow nobody complained either. We've already agreed the drive home gets a rematch.

Written by the Song Brackets Team