Pop music thrives on charts. It appeals to a compulsive list-making instinct in many music fans - young obsessive men in particular - and further satisfies that tribal need to place your particular totem at the top. They also give fans a chance to feel somehow influential on the lives and careers of their loved ones.
Charts strengthen those illusory bonds between artist and punter, deity and disciple, superhero and ordinary joe. They sell magazines to the curious and argumentative. And they also make for punch-ups among trainspotters.
In Q magazine's recent poll of the Top 100 Stars of the 20th Century, it is The Beatles and their fans who triumph in glory. John and Paul are now permanently enshrined at the summit, while the other two, a little further down, are present even so. No surprise really given that Lennon and McCartney are already very firmly in the canon, but now that they also lord over Q's end-of-the-century list, here is a glossy confirmation (of sorts) in very bold print. As if it matters.
Q readers were each asked to vote for five separate stars. Multiple entries were torn up and it was strictly a one star/one vote system. The magazine's particular demographic is clearly the major factor here and given its readership, it's perhaps not surprising that Lennon and McCartney come in at 1 and 2 respectively. These, after all, are readers who own records by Captain Beefheart, Patti Smith and Sly Stone. But, while they are clearly of a certain age, they are fallible even so. Cobain higher than Presley? Both the brothers Gallagher in the Top Ten? Call me old-fashioned but . . .
The breakdown is as follows: 46 per cent of the artists are British, 41 per cent American and 13 per cent "other" including Ireland's only entry, Bono. Van Morrison was apparently just outside the post at 101. (Robbie Williams was 102.)
Further examination indicates that 69 per cent of those on the list are singers, 1 per cent are rappers, 11 per cent are guitarists and 10 per cent are women. 68 per cent of the artists are still alive, 31 per cent - leaving 1 per cent disappeared (Richey Edwards of the Manics). Of those dead, 55 per cent died of unnatural causes. You may, if you have little to do, ponder these vital statistics at your leisure.
Mercifully the list contains scant evidence of the current horrors - Carey, Houston and the D'ion woman are not at the races at all. These, and others like them, with an output that will never change anything about the world they live in - apart from to further dumb it down - surely cannot really qualify as true stars. A real star, if we can possibly take the word seriously, must surely have the capacity to surprise us and these so-called divas of today will never, ever surprise anyone.
On the other hand, those who certainly can keep us on our toes feature prominently enough - Madonna, Dylan, Bowie and Eno all figure. Others who really did shake things up in their time but are no longer with us include Presley at 5, Marley at 12 and Sinatra at 14.
More distant history gets a rather cursory nod with Robert Johnson, Hank Williams and Woody Guthrie making token appearances as if to momentarily suggest that this is a survey of some import. But then in comes Lauryn Hill and Ricard Ashcroft from The Verve. And, while I admire both very much indeed, surely this is all just a little premature - 100 greatest artists of the century? Maybe they mean the next one?
But, of course, this list is not really about influence and impact - it's about the nature of pop music itself. How else would Woody Guthrie be so far below Dylan? How else would James Brown or Frank Sinatra be below anybody? How else can Cerys Matthews from Catatonia be two places above Charlie Parker? I'm aware I'm asking a lot of questions here, but that's the real success of the list. It actually begs questions. And perhaps the biggest question of all - how can it be that Lonnie Donegan, the first British pop star of all, is bizarrely omitted from this very British poll?
Stardom - whatever it is - must surely, we assume, be about talent and, perhaps rather more crucially, its fulfilment. In fact that actual fulfilment of talent is what really sets certain people apart. There's no doubt that there is a host of very talented people who never quite became stars, and an even bigger horde of patently less talented particles of dust (memento homo) who have managed somehow to glow very brightly indeed. A few of them make this list - but not many.
According to my dictionary, a "star" is "a celebrity, especially from the entertainment world". But the word's original meaning may, in fact, be rather more pertinent in the circumstances - "a celestial body, often visible in the night sky, consisting of a sphere of gaseous material held together entirely by its own gravitational field". And here I resist the temptation to name names.
Among the many varieties of star on offer, the most interesting is perhaps the shooting star or meteor - basically a particle of dust which enters earth's atmosphere, burns up and emits a brief flash or streak of light. It's a cliched image by now, yet it still serves to elevate the brief lives of many from Hank Williams to Marc Bolan.
Whether the particle of dust flares up into either a blaze of glory or a pathetic fizzle is essentially beside the point - rock martyrdom being the traditionally sure-fire if rather drastic way of getting on a list.
And then there is naked hype itself to contend with. In the music business, with so much dependent on the very nature of pop itself, there are bound to be a few wobbles in a list such as this. Current trends are everything in pop and so certain flavours of the month are inevitably going to appear. All of them fine people from fine bands - but clearly only in these ranks because they are in the limelight as we speak. How else can the bloke from The Verve appear above Stevie Wonder, Muddy Waters, Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong? No harm to him, but to make the top 100 suggests little more than that The Verve are one of the biggest bands of the moment. That plus a possible "vote early, vote often" policy among their devotees.
To find a genuine star (and people such as Richard Ashcroft may well turn out to be one), we look for people with talent, vision and the personal strength to pursue those talents wherever they lead and beyond. Real stars grow as they push further and further, stretching themselves and breaking through their own limitations. They have an impact. They have influence. They have a momentum.
Of the old guard still living, not many still meet these requirements or come even close. Certainly people such as Lou Reed are constantly developing as artists - but there are others who coast ever more cynically on past glories and, these days, produce nothing much of genuine worth at all - not so much stars as black holes. Quite refreshingly, most of them didn't make the list.
In fact, the Q list is not a bad list at all - mostly the right people, mostly in the wrong order, but no matter. No actual star is likely to lose much sleep over anything like this unless he/she really is a sphere of gaseous material held together entirely by his/her own gravitational field.
And within and without this particular pantheon there may well be one or two.