Best Music Genre

Genres only. No artists, no albums, no scenes — just the shape of the music itself, which turns out to be a much stranger thing to hold an opinion about than it first appears. Most people discover partway through this bracket that they do not really like a genre, they like about eleven records that happen to sit inside one. That is a fair thing to notice, and it is also what makes the question worth asking, because it forces a choice between the breadth a genre offers and the specific handful of things you actually return to. Jazz and classical carry enormous ranges and comparatively few personal favourites. Pop is the exact reverse, and metal is somewhere unhelpful in the middle.

There are thirty-two genres in it, with no images attached — the names have to do all of the work, which is deliberate rather than an oversight.

Voting tends to expose loyalty rather than taste. Nobody enjoys knocking out the genre they told people was their favourite when they were nineteen. The bracket does not care, and the honest answer comes out eventually anyway.