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At its heart, listomania is a guilty pleasure. Maybe it’s the lazy immediacy; the whiff of arrested adolescence; the crushing inevitability by which the same old bands, films and songs triumph by default. It’s a genre to be devoured without thought or feeling, which at its worst is little more than empty commentary on a stranger’s CD collection.
If RC writer Popoff’s text falls into the usual traps — a dash of predictability here, a sprinkle of self-importance there — then it’s carried through by the author’s infectious obsession with his subject. Refreshingly, this doesn’t equal the backslaps and fawning of similar books. Indeed, as this list is based on the choices of global metal fanatics rather than those of the author, the best moments come when Popoff disagrees with their selections; there’s a palpable sense of fury that his own project is being wrestled off him by public opinion. Popoff is an engaging host — frank, funny, and scathing as the fancy takes him — while his pithy analysis of each entry is backed by first-hand comment from the artist.
If this fails as a reference book — skimming over such details as tracklistings and line-ups — then it makes compelling reading for rock’n’roll number-crunchers. Having completed his rundown, the final pages find Popoff donning anorak and NHS specs to collate the results by band, year, theme and country in a bid to make sense of it all. It’s endearingly geeky; a fitting end to a book that sails just the right side of the playground debate.
