Pop Culture Bracketology: Music, Pop 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 Pop Region. Other pairings can be found in the right sidebar.

1. Lady Gaga
16. Boys Like Girls

8. Kelly Clarkson
9. Justin Bieber

5. Black Eyed Peas
12. Mariah Carey

4. Taylor Swift
13. Akon

6. Justin Timberlake
11. Jason Derulo

3. Rihanna
14. Adam Lambert

7. Britney Spears
10. Ke$ha

2. Beyonce
15. 3OH!3