I haven’t been as active on social media platforms over the past… well… decade, but I had seen some of these types of brackets in a Facebook group I follow called Role of Cinema. All of the brackets there are movie-themed, of course, but I really liked the idea. The premise is simple: post one matchup each day, collect and tally the votes, advance the winner, and repeat.

My boys and I love talking about this kind of stuff. We have a podcast themed after these type of discussions, after all. With my recent deep dive into collecting physical media (CDs, cassettes, vinyl, stereo equipment, stickers, etc.), this idea seemed like a natural extension of my current interests and hobbies.

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Seeding

The most difficult part of all of this was (1) choosing 32 bands to represent a decade of rock music and (2) seeding the final 32 in a way that was non-biased by my own personal taste. I consulted with my buddy (ChatGPT) to choose a variety of bands that represented different genres within 90s rock – grunge, nu metal, industrial, post-grunge, punk, prog rock, brit rock, pop rock, etc, and then we got to work on seeding. I used a formula that weighted album sales, radio play, presence in the 90s, representation of the 90s, and staying power. After the seeds were computed, I didn’t change them. I didn’t look ahead at future matchups and move things around. I wanted to… I wanted to give Nine Inch Nails an easy path to the semis. But I resisted the temptation and let the bracket play out as originally intended.

I should note that I didn’t include metal in this bracket. I wish I had – at least maybe Pantera – but I was posting this in a group on Facebook called 90s Alternative Rock Music, and metal seemed a bit of a stretch for that group. If I could start over, I would include Pantera to represent metal. I also left out some major players in the 90s rock scene that I felt were better suited for another decade. For example, Metallica, Guns n’ Roses, and Van Halen all had success in the 90s – but to me they all peaked in the 80s and I would rather save them for an 80s Rock Tournament. There were also some like Incubus, Blink-182, and System of a Down that I classify as 2000s bands, which I also plan on doing at some point.

With all of that, the 32 bands chosen and seeded ended up as follows:

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Voting

I posted each matchup daily, after a 24-hour voting window had passed. The post included an updated bracket depicting which band had advanced from the prior matchup, and which 2 bands were facing each other that day. I posted these in three different places: my personal Facebook page, the 90s Alternative Rock Facebook group, and TikTok.

For the Facebook posts, reactions to the photo are what counted as votes. There was a lot of discourse in the comments, as to be expected, but votes were only tallied by photo reactions. On TikTok, I counted all the comments for each band. Total votes for each matchup ranged between 5,000 and 25,000. I suppose some of that variation can be attributed to the relative interest level in the matchup, but I think most of the variation was probably related to algorithm sharing that I have no control over, and do not understand. For example, the first round matchup of Rage Against the Machine vs Korn got A LOT of attention on TikTok. For whatever reason, TikTok’s algorithm really latched on to that matchup. On Facebook, anything with Green Day, Stone Temple Pilots, or Pearl Jam got a lot of attention.

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The Bracket

Here is the final bracket, in all its glory.
Alice in Chains emerged as your champion 🏆
Below the bracket Ill get into my observations, the individual matchups, and some statistics.

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Tournament Takeaways

🔶 The Korn Konundrum

Korn ended up being the weirdest and most divisive band in the bracket. In the first round, 17-seed Korn was paired up against the 16-seed, Rage Against the Machine. As a 16 vs 17 matchup should be, this was a tightly contested battle. Many people complained this should have been a semi-finals matchup (this is a recurring theme for basically every matchup, mind you). Korn upset Rage and advanced to the second round, and it left me thinking that maybe the formula under-seeded Korn?

Then something interesting happened.
Rage won comfortably on my personal Facebook page.
Korn edged out Rage in the Facebook group.
On TikTok, Korn Dominated.

To me, this implied an age-factor. My personal Facebook page is filled with people my age (45), while TikTok is a younger crowd. Nu metal appeals more to this crowd… and I believe that’s the crowd that was shouting Korn should have been a higher seed. This is where I first noticed this tournament wasn’t just measuring popularity – it was also measuring who was voting.

But… then Korn was thoroughly trounced in the 2nd round by Nirvana. Stone Temple Pilots, in the 3rd round, put up a much better fight against Nirvana. So… the seeding worked as it should. A close 16 vs 17, then a slaughter against a higher seed in the next round.

Even more weird… after Korn defeated Rage, people commented on that match in literally every proceeding matchup. “Korn beat Rage?! This bracket is invalid”. Over and over and over I saw this… more than any other comment anywhere else in the matchups. So that’s why I say Korn was divisive. If you love Korn, you think they should be a top 4-seed… if you don’t, you’ll neverunderstand how they beat a 90s staple like Rage.

🔶 Nirvana LIves Rent Free

Nirvana was discussed in literally every matchup, in every part of the bracket, before, during, and after their elimination. And, I get it… Nirvana has a mass appeal similar to The Beatles or Elvis Presley… EVERYONE knows Nirvana, 12-year olds wear Nirvana t-shirts, and they have been crowned as the kings of grunge, the most influential rock band of the 90s, and credited for changing rock music forever by dethroning Michael Jackson on the Billboard charts and effectively killing hair metal from the 80s.

I see why that rubs people the wrong way, and leads to statements like “Nirvana is the most overrated band ever”, which I saw quite a bit in the comments. I even saw people saying things like “How did Nirvana beat Creed?” CREED. FUCKING CREED. Of course they beat Creed (it was a 90%/10% split). If you’re a fan of Alice in Chains or Stone Temple Pilots, for example, and believe that Layne Staley and Scott Weiland have much better voices than Kurt Cobain… or believe that Tool’s technical proficiency dwarfs Nirvana’s… but see Nirvana getting all of this love, praise and credit in the general public – yes, it leads to people being dramatic and saying things like “Nirvana is the most overrated band ever”.

Personally, I think that’s absurd. I didn’t live through Beatlemania. I’m not a huge fan of their music and much prefer other artists from that time. But I would never have the audacity to say they are overrated… and much less “the most overrated band ever”. It’s so dramatic. I saw this comment a lot and engaged in conversation several times, always politely asking the age of the commenter when I saw it. Inevitably, it was someone 10ish years younger than I am… which means they did not live through the Nirvana era. Not having experienced the way Nirvana dominated MTV and album sales, the way the landscape of rock music seemingly changed overnight – yeah, they don’t get it. They aren’t stupid and they don’t have bad taste – they are just uninformed.

This was further evidenced by comments like “Nirvana will win but it’s only because Kurt Cobain died”… which is even more absurd to me. Kurt is not comparable to say, Heath Ledger. Ledger’s tragic passing happened just as his legendary performance in The Dark Knight was out in theaters, and his legacy was enhanced in some ways by the timing of his passing combined with his performance. Kurt was a legend when Nevermind released in 1991, 3 years before his passing. When he passed, kids at my school cried. MTV stood still. It wasn’t the same thing.

Lastly, tastes change over time. If I had filled out this bracket in the mid-90s, Nirvana would have dominated very easily for me. When it came time to battle Alice in Chains in the semi-finals, I was torn. Nirvana meant so much more to me as a teenager, but I prefer Alice in Chains as a 45-year old. I do believe Alice in Chains has better music. I abstained from voting in these as the Tournament Director, but this was the only matchup I really couldn’t decide who I would have voted for. I found myself rooting for Nirvana as votes were coming in, just because I was annoyed by the people following the trendy “Nirvana is overrated” tagline. You’re not edgy… it’s a tired opinion. I would argue that so many people say it now, that Nirvana has actually become underrated.

Either way, Nirvana’s legacy lives on and they live rent-free in plenty of people’s minds. Not a bad place to be.

🔶 The Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails Problem

Both of these bands excel and suffer for similar reasons. They are both better than their opponents, but also both niche in their fandom.

Radiohead was upset by Weezer in the 2nd round, which upset a lot of people. This isn’t to throw shade at Weezer – I actually really like them… but taking down a powerhouse influential band like Radiohead was unexpected. It was a very close matchup, and people complained about it A LOT in following posts. I think the point stands here… Radiohead is “objectively” a better band, but a lot of people do not like how Radiohead sounds.

Nine Inch Nails had a similar fate, but did survive relatively close 1st and 2nd round matchups with Sublime and The Offspring. Admittedly, I love NIN, so my bias is prevalent here… but seeing them narrowly avoid defeat against the guys who made “Pretty Fly for a White Guy” was disheartening. I understand it though – NIN is niche. Not everyone loves industrial rock. NIN eventually did get defeated by Pearl Jam in the quarterfinals, which was expected. The 90s Alternative Rock group I posted in wasn’t the best place for niche bands like NIN and Radiohead… but I did take some solace in the fact that NIN won on TikTok, and in the comments section on Facebook.

Great art isn’t always the most popular art. Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails ask more of the listener than most bands in the bracket, and that’s probably both their greatest strength and biggest disadvantage in a popularity contest.

🔶 Did Smashing Pumpkins Get Screwed?

The closest matchup of the entire bracket occurred in the 2nd round, when 13-seed Red Hot Chili Peppers defeated 4-seed Smashing Pumpkins by just 17 votes. 17 votes out of 3,611!

At the 24-hour cutoff, RHCP had cleanly won on my personal Facebook page, Smashing Pumpkins had cleanly won on TikTok, and the Facebook rock group was dead even. The lead changed at least 20 times throughout the voting window. I needed to advance the brackets, so I crowned RHCP the winner and moved on, which did hurt me some – I was definitely rooting for Smashing Pumpkins.

Within just a couple of hours after the voting window closed, Smashing Pumpkins reclaimed the lead—and never gave it back. By the time RHCP’s quarterfinal matchup began, Smashing Pumpkins led by roughly 75 votes and maintained that advantage for the remainder of the tournament.

So… did they get screwed? I followed the rules of battle I had set up for the bracket, and RHCP actually did give Alice in Chains a solid battle in the quarterfinals, but it still leaves me wondering whether Smashing Pumpkins were victims of the tournament’s timing rather than its voters.

🔶 Tournament Mechanics and Rude Ass People

This last bit is just some whining from me… but there were an absurd amount of people that just didn’t read the caption, don’t understand how brackets work, or were just entirely too dramatic or rude for my taste.

First off, I got a lot of really nice comments and thoughtful people. One lovely individual in the Facebook group took the time to explain how to vote, individually, to many people who were not doing it correctly (they were commenting emojis instead of applying them as a reaction to the photo… *facepalm*). Many people participated in every round and left thoughtful comments, even if they were disparaged by their favorite band losing.

However, there were some very rude people. It’s not my first day on the internet, so it wasn’t surprising… but I did hide or delete any comments that included slurs or slur-adjacent disparaging language. I did politely comment on a few people that said things like “rigged” or “this bracket sucks”, explaining that it’s pretty difficult to rig a tournament when all I’m doing is counting reactions, and trying to ascertain why they think the bracket sucks (spoiler alert – most of the time it’s because their favorite band rand into a juggernaut in round 2 instead of having an easy path to the semifinals).

There were also lots of people that I believe have never filled out a March Madness bracket. Seeds exist for a reason… I would not put all the grunge groups in one quadrant, for example, because some of the favorites would be facing off in the 2nd and 3rd round. Duke and Kentucky don’t face in the 2nd round. Brackets work in a way that favors the favorites… weird, huh? If someone disagreed with the seeding – fine – but I did take the time to describe how all of my personal bias was removed in the seeding process. They just wanted me to use their personal bias instead.

The last whining tidbit – I do not understand the “apples and oranges” mentality when it comes to these kind of things. You literally just have to pick which band you like more. “But Foo Fighters and Pearl Jam are too different for me to choose between”… really? REALLY? 2 rock bands with overlapping careers are too different to choose between? It’s not like I paired up Pantera and Justin Bieber… but EVEN THEN… could you not tell me who you like more between Pantera and Justin Bieber? I’ll never understand why some people need two options to be nearly identical before they’ll make a choice. And where’s the fun in comparing options that are so similar? Be decisive! That’s the whole point of a tournament. Difficult choices are what make them interesting.

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Final Thoughts

Despite the occasional rude comment, this ended up being one of the most enjoyable projects I’ve done in years. Over 100,000 votes, hundreds of conversations, and countless debates reminded me why I love talking about music in the first place. I’d absolutely do it again – and plan to soon. A few people recommended something that was already stirring in the back of my mind – another 90s rock tournament, this time focusing on bands that weren’t quite as mainstream as the 32 included in this one. Coming soon!