How the Summer Songs bracket works
Best summer songs ranked without dragging anything into rows. You get one matchup at a time — Summertime Magic or California Gurls? Cruel Summer or Summer of '69? — and after 23 picks the bracket has a champion, with everything else placed by how far it got. The awkward pairings are the point: they are the calls a drag-and-drop tier list quietly lets you avoid.
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. Because the draw is shuffled, two people playing the same bracket rarely face the same matchups. 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 Summertime Magic, California Gurls, Cruel Summer and Summer of '69.
Summertime Magic
Childish Gambino
California Gurls
Katy Perry
Cruel Summer
Taylor Swift
Summer of '69
Bryan Adams
Hot Girl Summer
Megan Thee Stallion
Watermelon Sugar
Harry Styles
The Boys of Summer
Don Henley
Surfin' U.S.A.
The Beach Boys
Summertime
DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince
Blinding Lights
The Weeknd
Party in the U.S.A.
Miley Cyrus
Good Vibrations
The Beach Boys
Kokomo
The Beach Boys
Hot in Herre
Nelly
In the Summertime
Mungo Jerry
Steal My Sunshine
Len
Dancing in the Moonlight
King Harvest
Walking on Sunshine
Katrina and the Waves
Lovely Day
Bill Withers
Island in the Sun
Weezer
One Dance
Drake
Espresso
Sabrina Carpenter
Levitating
Dua Lipa
Africa
Toto
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 5 completed Summer Songs brackets. Win rate is the share of head-to-head matchups each entrant has won across every play.
- 1
Good Vibrations
5W - 2L · won 1 bracket
71%
win rate
- 2
Africa
7W - 3L
70%
win rate
- 3
Island in the Sun
6W - 3L · won 1 bracket
67%
win rate
- 4
California Gurls
7W - 4L · won 1 bracket
64%
win rate
- 5
Summer of '69
5W - 3L · won 1 bracket
63%
win rate
- 6
Dancing in the Moonlight
4W - 3L · won 1 bracket
57%
win rate
- 7
Walking on Sunshine
5W - 4L
56%
win rate
- 8
Hot in Herre
4W - 4L
50%
win rate
- 9
Espresso
4W - 4L
50%
win rate
- 10
Levitating
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.
- 3Use undo the moment you regret a pick. One reflex answer in an early round can knock out a favourite before it gets going.
Summer Songs bracket FAQ
How many tracks are in the Summer 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?
Summertime Magic, California Gurls, Cruel Summer, Summer of '69, Hot Girl Summer, Watermelon Sugar, The Boys of Summer, Surfin' U.S.A., Summertime, Blinding Lights, Party in the U.S.A. and Good Vibrations, plus 12 more. Every entrant is listed further down this page with its artwork.
How long does the best summer 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 summer 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 summer songs ranking?
Every completed bracket feeds the Summer 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.