How the Greatest Guitar Solos bracket works
Best guitar solos ranked without dragging anything into rows. You get one matchup at a time — Stairway to Heaven or Comfortably Numb? Free Bird or Eruption? — and after 23 picks the bracket has a champion, with everything else placed by how far it got. Comparing two tracks is far easier than sorting 24 of them at once, which is why the finished list tends to survive a second look.
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. The field is reshuffled on every play, so the same track can meet a different opponent in round one and finish somewhere else entirely. 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 Stairway to Heaven, Comfortably Numb, Free Bird and Eruption.
Stairway to Heaven
Led Zeppelin - Jimmy Page
Comfortably Numb
Pink Floyd - David Gilmour
Free Bird
Lynyrd Skynyrd - Allen Collins
Eruption
Van Halen - Eddie Van Halen
All Along the Watchtower
Jimi Hendrix
Hotel California
Eagles - Don Felder & Joe Walsh
Bohemian Rhapsody
Queen - Brian May
Sweet Child O' Mine
Guns N' Roses - Slash
November Rain
Guns N' Roses - Slash
Purple Rain
Prince
Crossroads
Cream - Eric Clapton
Texas Flood
Stevie Ray Vaughan
Sultans of Swing
Dire Straits - Mark Knopfler
Whole Lotta Love
Led Zeppelin - Jimmy Page
Little Wing
Jimi Hendrix
Voodoo Child (Slight Return)
Jimi Hendrix
Crazy Train
Ozzy Osbourne - Randy Rhoads
Master of Puppets
Metallica - Kirk Hammett
Alive
Pearl Jam - Mike McCready
Layla
Derek and the Dominos - Duane Allman
While My Guitar Gently Weeps
The Beatles - Eric Clapton
Money for Nothing
Dire Straits - Mark Knopfler
Shine On You Crazy Diamond
Pink Floyd - David Gilmour
One
Metallica - Kirk Hammett
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 4 completed Greatest Guitar Solos brackets. Win rate is the share of head-to-head matchups each entrant has won across every play.
- 1
Master of Puppets
9W - 1L · won 2 brackets
90%
win rate
- 2
Free Bird
4W - 1L · won 1 bracket
80%
win rate
- 3
Crazy Train
9W - 3L · won 1 bracket
75%
win rate
- 4
Hotel California
3W - 1L
75%
win rate
- 5
Bohemian Rhapsody
5W - 3L
63%
win rate
- 6
One
3W - 2L
60%
win rate
- 7
Comfortably Numb
4W - 3L
57%
win rate
- 8
Money for Nothing
4W - 4L
50%
win rate
- 9
Eruption
3W - 3L
50%
win rate
- 10
November Rain
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.
- 3Undo exists for a reason: an early-round mistake propagates all the way to the final, and there is no shame in taking it back.
Greatest Guitar Solos bracket FAQ
How many tracks are in the Greatest Guitar Solos 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?
Stairway to Heaven, Comfortably Numb, Free Bird, Eruption, All Along the Watchtower, Hotel California, Bohemian Rhapsody, Sweet Child O' Mine, November Rain, Purple Rain, Crossroads and Texas Flood, plus 12 more. Every entrant is listed further down this page with its artwork.
How long does the best guitar solos 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 greatest guitar solos 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 greatest guitar solos ranking?
Every completed bracket feeds the Greatest Guitar Solos 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.