the march danceness 2024 bracket & tourney field

Here is the tournament bracket as a pdf, Excel, or a Google Sheet (if you use the Google Sheet, you must make a copy of the master bracket to fill it out). To enter, all you have to do is make your picks for each game using whatever criteria you want, and email it to marchxness@thediagram.com no later than midnight 2/29/24.

Thanks to @mishupishu we have a Youtube playlist of all the tournament songs. Youtube is probably the only service that has the A+D mashup of Missy/Le Tigre. Here’s an Apple Music playlist of all tourney songs (less the A+D) courtesy of Stacy Kilroy.

The 2024 Tournament Songs — and Writers

But also, courtesy of Debbie Parker, here’s the Spotify playlist for the 2024 tournament; hopefully we’ll have Apple Music and Youtube playlists for you shortly.

  • 50 Cent, In Da Club — Dave Singleton

  • A+D (Le Tigre + Missy), Decepta-freak-on — Ander Monson

  • Christina Aguilera, Dirrty — Asha Galindo

  • Amerie, 1 Thing — Sejal Shah

  • The Avalanches, Since I Left You — Ashley Naftule

  • Gnarls Barkley, Crazy — Aaron Angello

  • Beyoncé, Single Ladies — Hea-Ream Lee

  • Bloc Party, Banquet — Mike Ingram

  • Blu Cantrell, Hit Em Up Style (Oops) — Katerina Ivanov Prado

  • Cascada, Everytime We Touch — Cameron Carr

  • Chemical Brothers, Star Guitar — Kyle Simonsen

  • Cher, Song for the Lonely — Drew Krewer

  • Cupid, The Cupid Shuffle — Marit Gookin

  • Darude, Sandstorm — Andy Briseño

  • Depeche Mode, Precious — Beanbag Amerika

  • Destiny's Child, Bootylicious — Avery Ferin

  • DJ Casper, Cha Cha Slide — Ben Jatos

  • DJ Sammy feat. Yanou & Do, Heaven — Michael A. Van Kerckhove

  • Dirty Vegas, Days Gone By— Scott Dickensheets

  • Electric Six, Danger, High Voltage! — Andrea Panczeka

  • Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Murder on the Dance Floor — Luuk Shokker

  • The Faint, Agenda Suicide — John Melillo

  • Fall Out Boy, Dance, Dance — Moira McAvoy

  • Fatboy Slim, Weapon of Choice — Anne Weisgerber

  • Felix da Housecat, Sinnerman (Heavenly House Mix) — Candace Walsh

  • Flo Rida, Low (feat. T-Pain) — Caroline Macon Fleischer

  • Franz Ferdinand, Take Me Out — Susannah Clark

  • Girl Talk, Bounce That — Brittney Uecker

  • Gorillaz, Feel Good Inc. — Em Pasek

  • The Gossip, Standing in the Way of Control — Joshua James Amberson

  • Hercules & Love Affair, Blind — Raquel Gutiérrez

  • Paris Hilton, Stars Are Blind — Emilie A Begin

  • Jewel, Intuition — Irene Cooper

  • Kelis, Milkshake — Jessica Bell

  • Ke$ha, TiK ToK — J. Nicholas Geist

  • The Killers, Mr. Brightside — Abigail Oswald

  • The Knife, Heartbeats — Patri Hadad

  • Lady Gaga, Bad Romance — Danielle Evans:

  • LCD Soundsystem, All My Friends — Kate Carmody

  • LMFAO, Party Rock Anthem — Brian Oliu

  • Jennifer Lopez, Get Right — Deanne Battle

  • Madonna, Hung Up — Ariana Eftimiu

  • Matt & Kim, It's a Fact (Printed Stained) — Kim Z Dale

  • Kylie Minogue, Can’t Get You Out of My Head — Diane Shipley

  • MGMT, Kids — Emma Thomason

  • Nelly, Hot in Herre — Katie Moulton

  • No Doubt, Hella Good — Kelly Shire

  • Outkast, Hey Ya — Robert Puccinelli

  • Panjabi MC, Mundian To Bach Ke — Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan

  • Peaches, Fuck the Pain Away — Jess Ducey

  • Katy Perry, Hot N Cold — Megan Culhane Galbraith

  • P!nk, Get the Party Started — Stephanie Austin

  • Rihanna, Don’t Stop the Music — Erin Langner

  • Robyn, With Every Hearbeat — Elliott Vanskike

  • Mark Ronson, Valerie (feat. Amy Winehouse) — EJ Haley

  • Scissor Sisters, Comfortably Numb — Karyna McGlynn

  • Shakira, Hips Don’t Lie — Sara Sams

  • Sisqo, The Thong Song — Crysta Parkinson

  • Sohodolls, Stripper — Rose Pacult

  • Britney Spears, Toxic — Kendra DeColo

  • Spoon, I Turn My Camera On — Peter McDade

  • Tilly and the Wall, Rainbows in the Dark — Allie Leach

  • Usher, Yeah! (feat. Lil Jon & Ludacris) — Andrea Mele

  • The Veronicas, Untouched — Elise Gorzela

  • Robbie Williams, Rock DJ — Katie Darby Mullins

  • Yelle, Je Veux Te Voir — Matthew Lawrence

  • Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Heads Will Roll — Erin Keane

As of July 2023, we’re still tweaking the March Danceness 00s Longlist, which runs to about 140 songs at the moment. It makes for a hell of a playlist (Apple Music / Spotify), we must say!

Here’s the working list @ Google Docs. We’ll be tweaking it until the lottery is done (mid-August).

If you’re new to the tournament, the way it works is that we do a lottery each summer (first week of August 2024, so get your name in if you’d like to write @ the link in the menu above). From that lottery 64 writers are selected. Each writer chooses an eligible song and writes an essay about that song. The 64 songs the writers select are the songs in the tournament. Writers may select a song from the longlist (which we offer as a starting point) or pitch another song.

Eligible songs must be commercially released 2000-2009. They must be dance songs, whatever that means exactly (this is a question the tournament itself addresses each year). Dance songs are typically songs meant to be danced to. Just because you can dance to a song doesn’t make it a dance song, but some songs migrate to the dancefloor. If a song mentions dancing, the floor, ass-shaking, da club, etc, that helps its prospects re danceness. If it was actually a club hit, even better! We have a relatively inclusive approach. So this year’s tournament absolutely will involve indie dance, hip hop, electroclash, dance-punk, plenty of mainstream dance-pop or straight-up pop, maybe some synthwave, and more.

We’re trying to restrict the longlist to one song per artist except for some of the absolutely major ones (Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, LCD Soundsystem, Madonna, Kylie, Rihanna, Britney, etc). Remixes are okay. New versions of older songs (like DJ Sammy’s dance cover of “Heaven”) are fine, as are rereleases (“Something Good ‘08”) if they had significant spins/airplay/club play.

A minor remix of a 80s or 90s song, however, is unlikely.

Most of our playlist is upbeat. We have a few comedown songs on the playlist but these are a minority.

Our tournament is primarily about American music, and our playlist reflects that, though plenty of songs that were big in the UK or other countries may also factor here, as the Selection Committee sees fit.

Once the writers have selected their songs, we’ll post the list here.

bracket Methodology

To be determined.