Accolades
“ADD IT UP and you’ll get one answer: David Klein’s book is a musical and mathematical masterpiece.”
—David Wild, Rolling Stone, Huffington Post
“What may appear on the surface to be a light “bathroom book” is actually an exhaustively
researched music-nerd call-to-arms. Fascinating, addictive, occasionally provocative, frequently
uproarious, completely irresistible.”
—James Jackson Toth, Wooden Wand
“I want to be reborn as a patron of the Lotus bar on Clinton Street in New York’s Lower East Side when David Klein was there in 2006 coming up with the idea of Pop Music Numerology. Klein is a major pop music nerd, but he’s also a brilliant essayist with a huge and irresistible pair of ears.”
—Leslie Dunton-Downer, author of The English Is Coming! and co-author of the Essential Shakespeare Handbook
“For me the book is the perfect blend of a writer who takes music seriously—one doesn’t possess
that much knowledge about something without taking that something seriously—and who writes about music with a tremendous sense of humor and sense of history.”
—Rick Cornell, No Depression, Independent Weekly
“Ultimately, this book aspires to find a heightened cultural understanding through its numerical lens, as if the notes of each song were tea leaves at the bottom of a cup. Klein transcends the novelty of his idea’s barstool origins, delving sincerely and significantly into the mythos of each of these charged numerals that pop up in such a surprising number of the songs we love, hate or have never heard of. The particularly poignant stretch of 14 through 18 delves into the weird and nuanced transition from childhood into adulthood, achieving the kind of broad cultural analysis and commentary that draws readers to Greil Marcus’ work. Klein also touches upon songs with numbers in their lyrics—not solely in their titles—to capture the fine psychic gradations of how coming of age is conceived.”
—Chris Vitiello, IndyWeek.com
“David Klein does for numbers what the Beach Boys did for surfing and Bruce Springsteen did for the New Jersey Turnpike
—Jim Allen, Billboard, Mojo
“You think you know a lot about popular music? David Klein may not ever reach infinity, but he makes you realize there’s a happy humming universe of music out there that you’ve either forgotten or need to explore.”
—Gerry Hadden, reporter for PRI’s The World and author of Never
the Hope Itself: Love and Ghosts in Latin America and Haiti
“I feel certain it will be a major addition to the Rock Library here.”