The second round. 32 bangers! 32!!!!! The signs are everywhere.
Voting is open for the second round of Bangers IV. You can view full first round results here. As we’ve been saying, our one rule here is to be cool when it comes to voting, which basically means: Don’t spam the votes. If you’re wondering if you’re breaking the rule, you’re probably breaking it, and we’ll probably end up outvoting your votes and sending you to the eternal principal’s office of the damned.
Thoughts on the bracket below, but before those:
Here’s the link to our Instagram, where voting is live in our stories.
Here’s the link to the Google Form, for those practicing social media abstinence (respect).
Voting will be open on Instagram until the stories expire, and votes on the Google Form will be accepted if they’re submitted prior to Tuesday, April 18th at 3:00 PM EDT.
Full second round results will accompany Round of 16 voting, currently scheduled for Wednesday.
Here’s the link to the playlist, which has been updated to put the 32 remaining bangers at the front, in bracket order. There’s a rumor going around that if you listen to it front to back while you sleep, you’ll wake up with the biomarkers of a 19-year-old, but I don’t know what a biomarker is and I’m not sure 19-year-olds are healthy, so please be careful if you choose to go that route.
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One of the tough things about these Bangers Brackets, for me, is how much they illustrate my poor grasp of my own readership’s opinions. Half the time I think something is a shoo-in for the next round, I’m very, very wrong. I do think, though, that I’ve been able to gather some tips these last three years for identifying which bangers will do well:
First, most voters don’t go back and listen to the songs as a whole. If they don’t recognize a title, they let it go. This is bad for songs like “Tubthumping,” which is not titled, “I Get Knocked Down!” It is also good for songs like “Tubthumping,” which has some weird extraneous stuff at the beginning and end of the track which they cut off on the radio edit but we don’t cut off because we respect artistry.
Second, most voters don’t really care if a song is a banger or not. Some do, but many are just picking their favorite songs. This is actually a little different this year—Taylor Swift got shut out in the first round, which is unusual—but it’s a good rule of thumb. That said, because those who go to the trouble of voting in our nominations stage do value this distinction, the field has already mostly cut out non-bangers. There are only really three or four songs left at this point that I personally have a hard time labeling as bangers.
Third, even if voters do care if a song is a banger, they have differing definitions. “Smells Like Teen Spirit” is probably the best example of this. My understanding—and this might be wrong, but it’s my understanding—is that the word “banger” originated with “headbanger,” a term which originally (again, this is my understanding) applied to heavy metal fans. MTV even had a show called “Headbangers Ball” that first aired in 1987. One of its most famous episodes featured, of course, Kurt Cobain, whose band Nirvana was…actually a departure from metal, according to a lot of people.
Put in order, the word headbanger emerged in its widely used form sometime in the 1980s, but then started being applied to more punk and grunge in the 1990s. Today, its most used definition seems to be that found in Merriam-Webster: “An energetic song that is very striking or extraordinary.” Sometimes, though, an even broader definition is used: For many, a banger is just a good song.
What does this have to do with “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and Nirvana? Well, for some, including at least one voter I’ve spoken to about this, Nirvana still represents headbanging. For others, including at least one different voter I’ve spoken to about this, the song isn’t a banger at all because it’s so unhappy-sounding, and not in the major–key manner pop punk has made normal for us.
Personally, when I think of a banger, I think of a song that gets me amped, and a song that feels cathartic to sing along to at the top of my lungs. I do think being able to bang one’s head to it helps (that’s a common definition I hear), and I also think being able to jump in a mass on a dance floor to it is special. Really, it’s about how much a song releases me from inhibition. Sometimes, listening to these songs before voting, I’m surprised by which ones pull that off.
