Customer Reviews

The Complete Book of the British Charts: Singles and Albums

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This book is a must for any popular music fan. It documents all singles, EPs and albums that have made it onto the UK charts and the statistics section is highly entertaining.
This book is incredibly precise, with record label, peak position and weeks on chart listed for every entry. Although I do not always agree with the UK charts (teen pop seems to be ruling the Top 10 singles nowadays - the album chart possibly the only true reflection of "real" music), this offers a wonderful insight into everything about the charts - a US version of this book would also be very good.
The only things that make this book not as good as The Guinness Book Of British Hit Singles (Edition 14) is the lack of colour and the lack of symbols. If a song or album has got to number one, there is no greater indication than a single that made No75. Also, a sales indicator would be brilliant (highlighting the entry a certain colour for a certain number of sales).
This book is a very interesting reference for the avid music fan or casual listener to the charts. Finally, I would like to express my feelings about the singles chart - it should be a Top 100, like the albums chart!

For content, the book easily scores five stars. It's exactly what's promised -- the complete singles and albums chart data all compiled in one book. I'm glad I own it and I refer to it constantly.

But I have to dock it two stars for the layout. Since 95% of the content is all database-driven, the value that the "authors" and editors are adding is in the packaging, and some of the design choices here leave me shaking my head ... and reaching for a ruler. The way the book has been laid out it's almost impossible to read without a ruler in your hand, especially for any artist who's had more than a few hits. A senseless selection of column orders and typefaces make getting the information a challenge at times.

So, I'm happy I bought the book, but maybe next time the publisher could just lift the design of Joel Whitburn's Billboard books, or even of the Guiness Book of British Hit Singles, which both feature a vastly superior layout.

I have several books at home regarding the UK singles charts, but since I received my copy of this book a few days ago I have already become addicted to it. Although it lacks information on the recording artists, except for their country of origin, this book is unique in other details. If a song is extracted from a musical or a film soundrack, it is easy to know now because it's specified below the names of the songs. Also if a song had already been recorded, but did not hit the charts, the book specifies the original recording artist. Incredible. Other details found in this book are found elsewhere too, but since this book contains also all long playing albums, extended plays and cd's which have hit the charts, then this is the only book you need to have at home for UK music charts reference.

There are now three of these reference works on British pop chart statistics. Amazon's synopsis succinctly describes this one, although since publication the latest edition of the long running Guinness book has been issued, with album chart material added. However, only this book contains full details of entries in the separate compilation album chart. None of the books look at the classical album chart.

At over 1500 pages, on good quality paper, it is quite heavy and chunky, but will fit on all normal bookshelves. You do have to take a little care in use; because it's thick but not very wide the spine of the book can split if you're less than gentle in opening it. The print quality is good but small; only the artists' names headings are in bold (white on a black strip), and under each one the singles are listed followed by EPs and albums - as with the similar books it's a good eyesight test.

This is definitely the most complete reference book on the British pop single and album charts. The size and scale of this mean that it is rather minimalist - there are no illustrations or extra features at all (the twelve pages of "chart feats" at the end don't really count). There are now three competing works of this genre, all slightly different but all worthy of top marks; take your pick.

This excellent book gives all the information you need to know on the charts over the last fifty years. It lists every act and all the singles they had released, their record labels, chart positions and number of weeks in the chart up to the end of 2001. Ideal if you remember the name of a single but can't remember the artiste. It also inadvertantly shows how the chart has degraded over the years to the "new week new number one" occurance that is now commonplace. There's also facts and figures that will create many a pub quiz (as well as boring everyone to death with). One word of warning though, this book is addictive and I can't put it down!

This review pertains to the third edition, covering the period 1952 to 2003.

For many years, the Guinness book of British hit singles was the definitive guide to the British charts. Now there are rivals and while none are ideal, I prefer this ahead of the alternatives. Of course, if Joel Whitburn (of Billboard fame) were to publish a British chart book, that would be better still - he sets the standard for presentation.

The basic problem for all chart books is the sheer volume of data. This explains the small, difficult to read, type although if this is a particular problem, you could go for the books published by Collins instead. They publish separate books for singles and albums although each individual book is about the same size as this one. Thus, there is more room for larger typeface but it obviously comes at a price.

While Guinness likes to include pictures, this book provides extra information about cover versions (who originally recorded it) and soundtrack songs (which film). This information is incomplete, so under Elvis Presley's relevant hits you are told who originally recorded Hound dog (Big Mama Thornton) but not who originally recorded Blue suede shoes (Carl Perkins) or Blue moon (Glen Gray). However, the other books do not provide this information at all. Against that, Guinness provides brief descriptions for some of the artists - however, I prefer to use a music encyclopedia for this type of information. The notes about cover versions and soundtrack songs is much more useful to me. While I knew a lot of this info already, this book expanded my knowledge. I hope that future editions will fill some of the gaps beginning with the examples I gave above.

The section on compilations is interesting (mainly listed by record label) and even includes a section on selected series so you can find (for example) all the Now compilations under one heading. What it doesn't do is segregate according to muical genre, but I can see that this would be an almost impossible task.

With all the data presented, perfect presentation at an affordable price is impossible but the information provided makes this a better choice than the alternatives - so far. As there are now several rival publications, we can only assume that they are looking to see what each other is doing and will all improve what they offer with successive editons.

Lovely book. very informative and exactlyb what i wanted. This book has a lot on what I've been interested in for a while now

This was bought as a present for some one who does a alot of quizes and they love this book as it has so much imformation

If you want the UK pop chart info, where else are you gonna go? Some interesting tidbits are included, such as who did the original version on many of the cover hits. Some of those will surprise you. In the US we have the Whitburn books, and if you get the annual(s), you get songwriter info. This UK book only shows writers for #1 hits, but Whitburn's Top 100 book gives no songwriter info. All in all, a wonderful reference.

Excellent quality, very, very happy with it. Oh! and don't get me started on how cheap it was. Brilliant. Nineteen, Twenty, hows that.