The Virgin Book of British Hit Singles - Martin Roach (Editor)

The "Virgin" Book of WHAT? I was a little surprised a few weeks ago to discover that after some 30 years the legendary Book of British Hit Singles was no longer published by Guinness but by Virgin. Aside from sentimental value however the change in publisher makes little difference to the overall value of this book. I will add that I would have greatly welcomed the change in publisher about 10 years ago when despite taking great care in ...
.../> A previous edition of the Guinness Book was labelled along the lines of 'The Bible of Pop' and I personally agree. For those who are unfamiliar with the series the Book of British Hit Singles in basic terms has two listings sections, firstly by artist/band/duo etc whose hit singles have made the top 75 in the singles charts since 1952 when the charts as we came to know them were first compiled. Basically you can search for an artist such as ABBA ... more

The "Virgin" Book of WHAT? I was a little surprised a few weeks ago to discover that after some 30 years the legendary Book of British Hit Singles was no longer published by Guinness but by Virgin. Aside from sentimental value however the change in publisher makes little difference to the overall value of this book. I will add that I would have greatly welcomed the change in publisher about 10 years ago when despite taking great care in compiling my christmas lists, 'Santa' would continually bring me the Guinness Book of "World Records" by mistake every year!

WHAT IS IT?

A previous edition of the Guinness Book was labelled along the lines of 'The Bible of Pop' and I personally agree. For those who are unfamiliar with the series the Book of British Hit Singles in basic terms has two listings sections, firstly by artist/band/duo etc whose hit singles have made the top 75 in the singles charts since 1952 when the charts as we came to know them were first compiled. Basically you can search for an artist such as ABBA and look at all of their singles that made the top 75 in the first section.

The second section lgoes on to list the hit singles by title, providing the artist names alongside the title entries which then enables you to search for the entry in the artists section and find out even more information. The listings by title are often the first point of reference for most users I would imagine (more later.)

In the listings by artist section, the entries also include information such as the highest chart positions of each hit single by the artist that has entered the top 75, the number of weeks it spent in the chart and the date the song first entered the top 75. For the lucky singles that peaked at Number 1 you can also find out how many weeks the single held on to that coveted top spot.

**UPDATE** A fellow ciao reviewer, like myself, was led to believe that the Virgin edition would only cover those singles which entered the top 40. I immediately checked this out for myself and am a bit lost because I have clearly seen many entries for singles that peaked outside of the top 40, including ones that only got as high as number 75, listed in the Virgin edition. It may be that the Virgin edition misses a few out that I have not seen to date or perhaps the issue is the fact the book only lists the "total number of weeks" the single spent in the top 40. I believe the Guinness editions used to list the total number of weeks a single spent in the top 75. However, the fact remains as I see it that singles which still reached the top 75 but peaked outside of the top 40 "are" in fact still listed in the Virgin edition.

The Virgin Book also indicates the singles which have gained the status of either 'silver,' 'gold' or 'platinum' selling and like the Guinness Books of old notes the singles which topped the American charts.) Furthermore you can also find out which record label the song was released upon when it charted, along with its unique catalogue number (perhaps this is something reserved for the aficionados.) Perfect pop trivia stuff basically.

BEST DAILY USE OUT OF THIS BOOK?

In the broadest sense the Virgin Book is perfect for those days when you hear a song on the radio or when out and about and the age old question "who sung that one again?" arises. We have all experienced times when a radio turn has simply failed to mention the title and artist of the song they have just played. Fear not for the Virgin Book of British Hit Singles will be ideal to solve the dilemma. In all seriousness 9 times out of 10 the book will deliver. By and large the only times I have been unable to find an answer is when I have completely managed to get the song title wrong or of course the song I'm looking for was never a uk chart hit.

The book is invaluable for the pop music fan, those looking to brush up on their general knowledge, pub/pop quiz masters and from my experience even radio presenters. 9 times out of 10 the book will deliver. By and large the only times I can't find an answer is when I have completely managed to get the song title wrong or of course the song I'm looking for isn't a uk chart hit.

ANYTHING MISSING?

I was used to the Guinness Books changing year after year and can remember being a bit annoyed that the section dedicated to listing the uk number 1 singles had been omitted one year. Sadly this is one feature that is also missing from the current Virgin Book and I only hope that in future editions this is remedied. However given that this is the first edition of the Virgin Book, perhaps certain features from the Guinness era will not be included in subsequent Virgin editions - time will tell I guess...

A second omission from the Virgin edition appears to be that whereas Guinness editions would list the songs that made up an Extended Play (E.P.) single that charted in the top 40 in a footnote, the Virgin edition only has an entry for the name of the E.P. Therefore for example the Virgin edition would not tell you that the Genesis '3x3 E.P.' had the song 'Paperlate' on it whereas the Guinness editions did. I hope that this is remedied in subsequent editions.

In addition those who have been collecting the more recent Guinness editions will also note that Virgin have returned to separate books for the british albums and singles whereas Guinness had combined the two in one volume in recent years. I must admit this makes very little difference to me and to be fair given that the Virgin Book is almost 700 pages in length, it is probably wise to have a separate book for the albums.

I seem to recall that later editions of the Guinness books also contained more information about the acts including how they ranked in terms of the best selling artists tables and other general stuff, examples of which included noting whether or not the artist in question or group members had died, instruments that band members played, that sort of thing. The Virgin Book does not include such information but this does not matter because the Virgin Book is not after all an all encompassing encyclopaedia and essentially does what it says on the cover. I personally admire the simplicity of this first Virgin edition in just sticking to being a volume that contains information about every single that has reached the top 75 chart since 1952 to the date of publication.

THE POSITIVES

I think there is scope to dwell on comparing the Virgin edition to Guinness ones and a danger of being too critical. However I am more than satisfied with the Virgin edition and am delighted that another publisher has chosen to continue the series.

The biggest thumbs up I can give the Virgin Book is that it is far more up to date by including singles from the year of publication than the Guinness editions ever were. For instance, the Guinness edition for say 1998 would only list the singles up to December 1997. I am very pleased that the Virgin edition which was published in 2008 is current up to April 2008.

The Virgin Book is extremely user friendly, is a nice compact size and has a fantastic editor in Martin Roach who has written some excellent articles featured within the book about moments in the British chart history which caused a shift including the Sex Pistols and the battle between Blur and Oasis in the mid-90s. For ABBA fans there is a very nice piece about ABBA conveniently placed in the book just before the ABBA entries.

The introduction by Roach is also excellent and well worth a read; Roach writes a witty but objective account about the current issues affecting the british singles charts, notably the major problems that record companies have faced, the demise of the CD single and the move towards downloading (legal and illegal) amongst others. I have read quite a few articles about the current state of the music biz and the British charts during the 2000s but Roach's introduction to the Virgin Book is a cut above the rest. I will definitely keeping an eye out for other work by Martin Roach on similar subjects after reading his editorial pieces.

In terms of user-friendliness, I am very impressed that there are now designated 'markers' in both the artists and song titles sections (A-D, E-H etc.) that in the table of contents direct you to page numbers. The size of the font is fine for myself although as with quite a few books I expect some would prefer to see far larger text.

Finally I would suggest that this book is a good gift idea for someone who is difficult to buy for but appreciates music or trivia in general. The RRP of £20.00 (I happened to purchase it for £13.99) in my opinion represents fantastic value for money; whilst the Virgin Book is a paperback, considering it contains almost 700 pages, is printed on high quality paper and should come in use time and time again, there is little to gripe about. 

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