How the Country Songs bracket works
Rank country songs without dragging anything into rows. You get one matchup at a time — Friends in Low Places or Jolene? Ring of Fire or Take Me Home, Country Roads? — 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 Friends in Low Places, Jolene, Ring of Fire and Take Me Home, Country Roads.
Friends in Low Places
Garth Brooks
Jolene
Dolly Parton
Ring of Fire
Johnny Cash
Take Me Home, Country Roads
John Denver
The Dance
Garth Brooks
Before He Cheats
Carrie Underwood
Need You Now
Lady A
Cruise
Florida Georgia Line
Man! I Feel Like a Woman!
Shania Twain
Forever and Ever, Amen
Randy Travis
Strawberry Wine
Deana Carter
Wagon Wheel
Darius Rucker
Tennessee Whiskey
Chris Stapleton
Humble and Kind
Tim McGraw
9 to 5
Dolly Parton
Chicken Fried
Zac Brown Band
Live Like You Were Dying
Tim McGraw
Fancy Like
Walker Hayes
Body Like a Back Road
Sam Hunt
Meant to Be
Bebe Rexha & Florida Georgia Line
Remember When
Alan Jackson
I Walk the Line
Johnny Cash
Stand by Your Man
Tammy Wynette
Fast Car
Tracy Chapman
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 2 completed Country Songs brackets. Win rate is the share of head-to-head matchups each entrant has won across every play.
- 1
Forever and Ever, Amen
4W - 0L · won 1 bracket
100%
win rate
- 2
Chicken Fried
7W - 1L · won 1 bracket
88%
win rate
- 3
Friends in Low Places
2W - 1L
67%
win rate
- 4
Ring of Fire
3W - 2L
60%
win rate
- 5
Strawberry Wine
3W - 2L
60%
win rate
- 6
Remember When
3W - 2L
60%
win rate
- 7
Take Me Home, Country Roads
2W - 2L
50%
win rate
- 8
Need You Now
2W - 2L
50%
win rate
- 9
Meant to Be
2W - 2L
50%
win rate
- 10
Wagon Wheel
1W - 2L
33%
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.
Country Songs bracket FAQ
How many tracks are in the Country 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?
Friends in Low Places, Jolene, Ring of Fire, Take Me Home, Country Roads, The Dance, Before He Cheats, Need You Now, Cruise, Man! I Feel Like a Woman!, Forever and Ever, Amen, Strawberry Wine and Wagon Wheel, plus 12 more. Every entrant is listed further down this page with its artwork.
How long does the rank country songs take?
About 2-3 minutes — 23 choices at the default size, or 7 if you drop to a 8-slot bracket. No account is needed, and you can abandon a run at any point without losing anything.
Can I turn the result into S/A/B tiers?
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.
Can I compare my order with other people's?
Every completed bracket feeds the Country 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.
What if a track I wanted is missing?
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.