British Hit Singles & Albums
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British Hit Singles & Albums was a music reference book published in the United Kingdom by HiT
Entertainment's "Guinness World Records". It listed all the singles and albums featured in the Top 75 Charts in
UK, as compiled by the editors of British Hit Singles & Albums. In 2004 the book became an amalgamation of
two earlier Guinness publications, originally known as British Hit Singles and British Hit Albums and
publication of this amalgamation ceased in 2008. A new version of the book published by Virgin, was
entitled The Virgin Book of British Hit Singles. The first edition of The Virgin Book of British Hit Singles was
published in November 2008.
Contents
[hide]
1 Content
2 History
2.1 19771996 original editors
2.2 19972005 merger and collectors edition
2.3 2006 19th edition
2.4 2007 aborted 20th edition
3 Associated merchandise
4 References and further reading
5 External links
Content [edit]
British Hit Singles & Albums was generally considered to be the authoritative reference source for both the UK
Singles Chart (since its inception in 1952) and the UK Albums Chart. It listed all the singles and albums ever to
have been in UK Top 75 Charts, listing them in alphabetical order and by both artist and song title. The entries
also included the date of chart entry, highest position, catalogue number and number of weeks in the chart.
Short biographical notes accompanied many of the artists' chart details.
The book's sources are the New Musical Express (NME) chart from November 1952 to March 1960, and
the Record Retailer (later Music Week) chart thereafter. It could be said that this division is misleading, since
the Record Retailerchart was little known until it was adopted by the BBC in 1969 and that by adopting this
chart as its standard, the editors had a non consensual view. An example often given is the case of The Beatles'
second single "Please Please Me" which was recognised as a number one hit by every other publicly available
chart of the time, but not by Record Retailer and therefore not by British Hit Singles. Other records to which this
applies include "19th Nervous Breakdown" by The Rolling Stones, "Stranger On The Shore" by Acker Bilk and
the Eurovision Song Contest entry "Are You Sure" by The Allisons.
Co-founder Jo Rice has defended the book's choice of source material on the grounds that Record Retailer was
the only chart to consistently publish a Top 50 from 1960 onwards. This can be substantiated by the fact that
charts published in the NME were of a shorter format and other chart listings such as those in Melody Maker,
became less and less informative although they were probably more accurate. Subsequent research has shown
that during the "disputed" period of the 1960s, the samples sizes of the Record Retailer chart were considerably
inferior to those of the other charts: around 30 shops in 1963 in comparison to more than 100 used by Melody
Maker, and later around 80 in comparison to NME's 150 and Melody Maker's 200. As a result the placings in
that chart were more open to error and manipulation a situation further worsened by the larger number of
records listed in the chart.
History [edit]
19771996 original editors
[edit]
The cover of the 1989 7th edition of theGuinness Book of British Hit Singles
The first edition was published as The Guinness Book of British Hit Singles in July 1977. The founding editors
were Paul Gambaccini, Tim Rice, Jonathan Rice, and Mike Read. Read left the team in the mid-1980s and the
other editors resigned in 1996.
Throughout this period British pop-music fans bought each edition to maintain a check on the career of their
favoured band or soloist in particular the final position in the all-time charts in terms of singles and albums. Thus
any apparent errors by the three original co-authors in the aggregation processes behind these charts went
unchallenged and became fact by default until the 18th edition when some apparent errors were uncovered,
called into question for the attention of the editor, David Roberts.
19972005 merger and collectors edition
[edit]
This title was merged with its sister publication The Guinness Book of British Hit Albums in 2004 to form The
Guinness Book of British Hit Singles & Albums. The eighteenth edition of the book (2005) was billed as a
"Special Collector's Edition" as it featured detailed information on the 1,000 Number Ones in the UK Singles
Chart from Al Martino's "Here in My Heart" on 14 November 1952 to Elvis Presley's "One Night / I Got Stung"
(Limited Edition Collector's re-issue), 22 January 2005.
The eighteenth edition drew a very heavy postbag of bad-tempered mail to its editor David Roberts in the wake
of a retrospective reappraisal of the career of Cliff Richard's former backing group,The Shadows. The Shadows
had previously been ignored in terms of their obvious support towards Cliff Richard's success in both singles
and albums charts during 19581968 and beyond. However, following a well intentioned appeal for a belated
re-appraisal, by a committed Shadows fan, for a retrospective and long overdue error correction to benefit the
Shadows in all subsequent lifetime charts resulted in the Shadows being dramatically promoted in the all-time
career charts from a lowly 30th to a 3rd position just behind Elvis Presley (1st) and Cliff Richard (2nd) both in
terms of singles and albums. Coincidentally, the career of The Supremes and Diana Ross also received a
similar retrospective reappraisal and promotion along with the Shadows but did not attract anything like the kind
of fierce anger generated by British pop-music lovers.
2006 19th edition
[edit]
The nineteenth edition was published in June 2006. A series of compilation albums, with editorial notes based
on the book, were released in association with Sony BMG three days later. The 19th edition included a list of
the top 100 songwriters in British chart history. The book's last editor was David Roberts[disambiguation needed] and its
chart consultant was Dave McAleer.
2007 aborted 20th edition
[edit]
Before June 2007, many followers of the book questioned on chart forums why Guinness have not announced a
then forthcoming edition. Due to the event of adding any digital download to the chart compilation regardless if
there is a physical format released or not, has seen a long list of download-only hits. As a result Guinness then
changed plans to release the book later in the year so these could be included in the book as soon as possible.
However, the organisation later lost interest with chart reference books after their contract with
the OCC expired, which saw that organisation sell the contract to Virgin.
Associated merchandise [edit]
In recent years a number of spin-off products have been launched under the same branding. These include
compilation albums, annual trivia calendars and a DVD TV game British Hit Singles & Albums No.1 Music
Quiz, editions of which were released in both 2005 and 2006. The 2006 edition features over 1,200 questions
and stars comedian Steve Furst as the host.
References and further reading [edit]
Roberts, David. Guinness Book of British Hit Singles & Albums. Guinness World Records Ltd. 18th
edition (May 2005). ISBN 1-904994-00-8
Roberts, David. Guinness Book of British Hit Singles & Albums. Guinness World Records Ltd. 19th
edition (June 2006). ISBN 1-904994-10-5
Roach, Martin. The Virgin Book of British Hit Singles. Virgin Books (Nov. 2008). ISBN 0-7535-1537-7
McAleer, Dave. The Virgin Book of British Hit Singles - Volume 2. Virgin Books (Nov. 2010). ISBN 9780-7535-2245-5
