It's, um, Popstrology

Popstrology is a system for achieving self-awareness through the study of the pop-music charts—specifically, by determining which pop song was No. 1 on the day of your birth. If, for example, you happen to have been hatched during that brief, blissful period in October, 1976, when the airwaves were ruled by “Disco Duck,” you may have inherited from its creators, the opportunistic d.j. Rick Dees and His Cast of Idiots, an ability “to parlay simple needs and even modest gifts into the precise degree of greatness to which you aspire.” (As it happens, 1976 was the Year of Rod Stewart.) Popstrology is no parlor game; its methodology is elaborate and broad—the book is almost four hundred pages long. Van Tuyl identifies forty-five constellations (Lite & White, Mustache Rock, Shaking Booty), and, for each No. 1 artist (or “birthstar”), he provides a chart, which maps the birthstar’s signature qualities on a matrix of sexiness, soulfulness, and durability, among other variables. (Van Tuyl has no truck with coolness; popstrologically, there are no bad pop songs.) In the introduction, he writes, “Popstrology is a powerful and flexible science, and where its adherents take it in the years ahead is anyone’s guess.”