Pop Charts
by Paul Copperwaite
This was one of those impulse purchases in the charity shop. It’s the sort of book I’d never buy for myself, although I might have given it to my brother for Christmas as a silly present if I’d spotted it in a shop. For a pound however, it was a bargain and it did make me laugh for a while.
Inside it’s full of charts – bar, pie, line, Venn diagrams, decision trees, pictographs, all types of charts you can think of are there. As you can see each one represents a song, or an artist, or contrasts different songs etc.
Some are very funny – ‘The Smiths mood index clock’ has from 12 until 1 – Happy in a drunken haze, then 11 until 12 again – Miserable now. There’s a fantastic chart contrasting noticeable traits of rabbits – with bars for Jefferson airplane and Chas n Dave. There is also a great world map of ‘Areas of reported rocking’ – I’ll leave you to work them out from my descriptions as I couldn’t really scan the pix in.
It was a bit of geeky fun, and definitely aimed at those familiar with 80s and 90s pop primarily. There are lots of other books on similar themes graphing pop, movies and more if you look on the web. Would I buy them? – No. Would I flick through and work the graphs out if if I came across them? – Of course, Yes.
