The Complete Book of the British Charts: Singles and Albums [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

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 musical 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.

1500+ pages. Yikes, it's GIGANTIC! Exhaustive, almost three inches thick. Absolutely invaluable. However, one glaring omission: no record release numbers. If you want to use this volume as a discography source, that is an obstacle. I suggest, as companions to this reference, two books by Paul Gambaccini, Tim Rice, and Jonathan Rice, BRITISH HIT SINGLES (I have the 8th edition, c. 1991), and BRITISH HIT ALBUMS (1992). These two works will help fill in the record release numbers, should you want/need to look up a specific record release questing for artists and/or titles.