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If you were having lunch with friends and the conversation turned to Favorite Albums of All Time, how would you go about narrowing the field and choosing a favorite? Well, it is March after all: You’d make a bracket. Of course, there’s no real situation, except when the conversation turns to Favorite Albums of All Time, when you particularly need to whittle your musical taste to such a jagged point. But our culture is obsessed with the best. We must know that this is the Best Week Ever, that these are the Most Awesomely Bad Videos Ever, the Best Celebrity Rivalries Ever. Forever-ever? We need to know: Who is top gun, top dog, Top Chef, America’s Next Top Model, whose cuisine will reign supreme.

With that in mind, navigating a field of beloved albums is fraught with anxieties familiar to anyone who’s ever filled out an NCAA basketball tournament bracket: Do I pick the album with more “artistic merit”—the proverbial stronger-schedule or deeper-bench team—or the one that’s more enjoyable to listen to—the proverbial run-and-gun, heave-and-pray, play-by-the-seat-of-their-pants team? Blonde on Blonde, or Blondes Have More Fun? North Carolina or Memphis? Do I choose the album that makes me look discerning for having chosen it, or the one I really want to turn up to 11? Purple Rain or Reign in Blood? When I filled out my bracket this year, I didn’t even consider choosing Belmont to upset Duke in the first round, but as I watched them push the Blue Devils to the brink of an ignominious first-round exit, I wished I had—it was like an unknown Nashville band with no record contract opening for the Stones and almost stealing the show on energy alone—just as I wished I had voted for a scrappy little album called All Systems a Go-Go after submitting my ballot for the Village Voice’s year-end music critics’ poll.

In its simplicity, clarity and fearful symmetry, the bracket is a thing of beauty, both visually (the cleanliness of it is sublime) and functionally (the system is ambiguity-proof). More ruthless, even, than the numbered list, the bracket pits the unstoppable against the unmovable, David(son) against Goliath, round after punishing round. And when your eyes follow any particular entry in the field—say, the Western Kentucky Hilltoppers—the pathway of victories is like the solution to a small maze, one that draws itself as the competition unfolds. It’s no wonder that the bracket meme has taken on a life of its own.

In the past year, ESPN has run two different bracket-style series on SportsCenter. Last summer’s ridiculous “Who’s Now” series pitted athletes against each other based on their ability, celebrity and, confusingly enough, their “nowness.” Five million votes were cast, and the contest’s voting page was the most-visited feature in the history of the network’s website. The station has since followed up with the “Greatest Highlight” bracket, a competition of momentous moments. I have to admit that I disagree with the way the Boise State Statue of Liberty play was presented. Throughout the competition, they showed both the play itself and Ian Johnson’s marriage proposal to Chrissy Popadics, his cheerleader girlfriend, after the game. Are those not separate highlights? If they’re going to allow two highlights to count as one, why not show the final out of the 2003 World Series between the Marlins and Yankees, then show Florida’s Ivan Rodriguez and Ugueth Urbina kissing afterward to celebrate the win? (That actually happened, by the way.)

But I digress. Once you start, it’s like the Tootsie Roll phenomenon: Everything you think you see becomes a bracket. As I joined other Scene staffers in eating our way to the best burger in Nashville, it was not long before the terms “sweet 16,” “dark horse pick” and “mid-major burger” were all on the table like so many condiment packets. (OK, that last one was said in jest once I realized that the bracket metaphor, once deployed, might as well be taken to its absurd extreme.) John McCain, the ultimate bracket-buster, is the Cinderella story of the Republican conference. You could say that, like Louisville, he got hot at the right time. (He has been called Sen. Hothead, after all.) McCain now awaits the winner of the Democratic semifinal, where Obama is still holding on to a lead over Clinton, the No. 1 seed, in a contest that may well go into overtime and at times feels like it will never end at all.

The bracket’s efficiency is, of course, also its downfall. There is no room for nuance. I imagine that if I were lucky enough—or rather, in the right tax bracket—to eat a meal prepared by Iron Chef Morimoto and then one by Iron Chef Batali, I’d be thanking my lucky stars, not trying to decide which one was superior. And I’m glad I’ll never have to see either The White Album or White Light/White Heat vanquished by the other in a classic showdown. But the bracket is so compelling for the same reason people still learn Shakespeare’s sonnets by heart: because we love form, especially when it is of our own invention. We’re only human, after all.