Pop Culture Bracketology: Music, Miscellaneous Region

With March Madness upon us, WEEKEND has gone a little bracket crazy. Over the next month, our staff will debate, discuss and argue their way through three 64-team pop culture-centric brackets to determine the best TV series on the air, the best active film director and the best music act of the moment. We will now post the pairings and starting next Monday, March 15, we'll begin weeding out the pretenders and celebrating the contenders. Posts will be updated accordingly.

For our music bracket, we are trying to figure out the artist of the "moment," meaning the acts here have released an album, single, etc. in 2009 or 2010. The four regions are as follows: Hip-Hop, Pitchfork, Pop and Miscellaneous. Below are the pairings in the Miscellaneous Region. Other pairings can be found in the right sidebar.

Metal Sub-Region

1. Mastodon
16. Cobalt

8. Between the Buried and Me
9. Converge

Alternative Sub-Region

5. Brand New
12. Thrice

4. Manchester Orchestra
13. Say Anything

R&B Sub-Region

6. Mary J. Blige
11. Trey Songz

3. Alicia Keys
14. Robin Thicke

Miscellaneous Miscellaneous Sub-Region

7. Yeah Yeah Yeahs
10. Muse

2. John Mayer
15. Metric