We sometimes have to explain this to those new to The Barking Crow, so let’s try to do that quickly here:
We do brackets in the summer.
A little longer explanation, maybe?
Back in 2020, we didn’t know what to do when sports shut off, so we started constructing brackets of various things of huge cultural importance: License Plates, Commercials, Animals You Do Not Want in Your Home—the classic questions of our time. We’d run each bracket over two weeks, with champions decided via voting on Instagram, Twitter, and our own website. At times, voters would get feisty. At times, voters would have fun. It got us through the gap between college basketball’s sudden end and college football’s hesitant beginning, and we decided that, since our two primary foci here on the blog are college basketball and college football, we’d keep doing it in the months between the two seasons for years and years to come. Or, you know, at least the next couple years.
We’re back at it, with eleven brackets between last night’s exhibition contest ending in New Orleans and Nebraska kicking off against Northwestern in Dublin (Ireland, not Ohio). Voting for the first will begin a week from today, but between now and then, we need your help.
Our most popular bracket that first year was the 90’s Bangers Bracket, a collection of 64 songs from the 90’s that absolutely banged. (Bung?) Similarly, our most popular bracket last year was the 2000’s Bangers Bracket, which was the same premise except it was songs from the first decade of the new millennium and a shadowy figure calling themselves Mr. Darkside launched an attack on the integrity of the brackets that legitimately cost me some sleep on Tax Day (don’t worry—the feds gave Texans an extension because of that lil natural disaster in February). This year, we’re trying to wrassle out every last bit of nostalgia we can from your sentimental heart, with Bangers III: 2010-2014.
The premise is simple: We will construct a 64-song bracket of music released between January 1st, 2010 and December 31st, 2014 that absolutely bangs. Think: “I Love It,” by Icona Pop & Charlie XCX, which was released on May 9th, 2012. To construct that bracket fairly, though, we need your help. Today and tomorrow, we’ll be accepting nominations of songs. Thursday and Friday, we’ll vote on which songs to insert into the bracket. Monday, we’ll unveil the bracket itself (along with a playlist, of course). Tuesday, we’ll bang. Erm…we’ll begin voting.
Nominations can be submitted through this form, and you can submit as many nominations as you want. If you have trouble using the form for any reason, email us or DM us on social media. We want your bangers. We want the tunes. Give them to us.
It’s an exciting time for fans of bangers, which makes it an exciting time for all of us, really. Let’s get to it.
