How the Breakup Songs bracket works
Best breakup songs ranked without dragging anything into rows. You get one matchup at a time — Someone Like You or We Are Never Getting Back Together? Un-Break My Heart or Nothing Compares 2 U? — and after 23 picks the bracket has a champion, with everything else placed by how far it got. A straight list invites you to hedge. A matchup does not, and that is what makes the final 24-deep order worth screenshotting.
This bracket runs 5 rounds at the default 24-slot size (Round of 24, Round of 16, Elite 8, Final Four, Championship), with every one of the 24 tracks in the field. 24 is not a power of two, so 8 of them draw a first-round bye — spread evenly across the draw rather than handed to whoever happens to land at the top of it. Entrants are drawn at random each time, so an early upset in one run may never happen in the next. You can also play it at 8 or 16 slots for a shorter or longer run.
23 picks, 5 rounds
- Round of 248 matchups
- Round of 168 matchups
- Elite 84 matchups
- Final Four2 matchups
- Championship1 matchup
Roughly 2-3 minutes start to finish.
All 24 entrants
All 24 entrants are listed below, including Someone Like You, We Are Never Getting Back Together, Un-Break My Heart and Nothing Compares 2 U.
Someone Like You
Adele
We Are Never Getting Back Together
Taylor Swift
Un-Break My Heart
Toni Braxton
Nothing Compares 2 U
Sinead O'Connor
Cry Me a River
Justin Timberlake
Since U Been Gone
Kelly Clarkson
drivers license
Olivia Rodrigo
Before He Cheats
Carrie Underwood
Irreplaceable
Beyonce
good 4 u
Olivia Rodrigo
Somebody That I Used to Know
Gotye
thank u, next
Ariana Grande
Go Your Own Way
Fleetwood Mac
All Too Well
Taylor Swift
It's Too Late
Carole King
You Oughta Know
Alanis Morissette
Say Something
A Great Big World & Christina Aguilera
Back to Black
Amy Winehouse
Flowers
Miley Cyrus
I Will Survive
Gloria Gaynor
Tears Dry on Their Own
Amy Winehouse
Kill Bill
SZA
No Tears Left to Cry
Ariana Grande
Dancing on My Own
Robyn
Would rather group them than rank them? Open all 24 in the tier list maker and sort them into S, A, B, C, D and F tiers instead — same entrants, no matchups.
How everyone else ranked them
Aggregated from 3 completed Breakup Songs brackets. Win rate is the share of head-to-head matchups each entrant has won across every play.
- 1
drivers license
6W - 2L · won 1 bracket
75%
win rate
- 2
Tears Dry on Their Own
6W - 2L · won 1 bracket
75%
win rate
- 3
Somebody That I Used to Know
5W - 2L · won 1 bracket
71%
win rate
- 4
It's Too Late
2W - 1L
67%
win rate
- 5
We Are Never Getting Back Together
5W - 3L
63%
win rate
- 6
Back to Black
3W - 2L
60%
win rate
- 7
Flowers
3W - 2L
60%
win rate
- 8
Since U Been Gone
3W - 3L
50%
win rate
- 9
Say Something
3W - 3L
50%
win rate
- 10
Kill Bill
3W - 3L
50%
win rate
Getting a ranking you actually agree with
- 1Go with the track you would rather hear right now — instant reaction beats a considered take.
- 2The default run puts all 24 tracks in the draw. Short on time? Drop to 16 slots — a quicker run over a random 16 of them.
- 3Watch for the track you keep beating reluctantly. That is usually the sign you should undo and reconsider the pick before it.
Breakup Songs bracket FAQ
How many tracks are in the Breakup Songs bracket?
The pool holds 24 tracks. A default run puts all of them in the draw and takes 23 picks across 5 rounds: Round of 24, Round of 16, Elite 8, Final Four, Championship. 8 entrants start with a first-round bye, spread evenly through the draw. Other field sizes are available too — 8, 16, 24 slots.
Which tracks are included?
Someone Like You, We Are Never Getting Back Together, Un-Break My Heart, Nothing Compares 2 U, Cry Me a River, Since U Been Gone, drivers license, Before He Cheats, Irreplaceable, good 4 u, Somebody That I Used to Know and thank u, next, plus 12 more. Every entrant is listed further down this page with its artwork.
How long does the best breakup songs ranked take?
About 2-3 minutes — 23 choices at the default size, or 7 if you drop to a 8-slot bracket. There is no sign-up and nothing is stored until you reach the final.
Is this a breakup songs tier list or a ranking?
Both are here, and the bracket is closer to a tier list than it looks. It ends with a champion, a runner-up and then every other track grouped by the round it went out in — which is exactly a set of tiers, decided by 23 direct comparisons rather than by your first guess at a layout. What it deliberately does not do is claim a precise gap between two tracks that never met. If you would rather place the tracks into S through F rows yourself, the tier list maker loads all 24 of them at bracketranker.com/tier-list-maker.
Is there a community breakup songs ranking?
Every completed bracket feeds the Breakup Songs community results page, which aggregates win rates across all plays and tracks how often each of the 24 entrants takes the title. It updates continuously, so it moves as more people play.
Can I change which tracks are included?
Use the bracket maker: add your own tracks, name it, and share the link so other people play the same field. That is the route to take when this pool of 24 is missing something you would have picked, or when you want a version scoped to one era, label or franchise.