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British Hit Singles & Albums

Language	English
Subject	Music
Genre	Reference
Publication place	United Kingdom

British Hit Singles & Albums (originally known asThe Guinness Book of British Hit Singles andThe Guinness Book of British Hit Albums) was a musicreference book originally published in the United Kingdom by the publishing arm of theGuinness breweries, Guinness Superlatives. Later editions were published byHIT Entertainment (who had bought the Guinness World Records brand). It listed all the singles and albums featured in the Top 75 pop charts in theUK. In 2004 the book became an amalgamation of two earlier Guinness publications, originally known asBritish Hit Singles andBritish Hit Albums. The publication of this amalgamation ceased in 2006, with Guinness World Records being sold toThe Jim Pattison Group, owner ofRipley's Believe It or Not! At this point, the Official UK Charts Company teamed up withRandom House/Ebury Publishing to release a new version of the book under theVirgin Books brand. EntitledThe Virgin Book of British Hit Singles, it was first published in November 2008 with a separate albums book and second edition^[1] being published over the next couple of years.

The first ten editions ofThe Guinness Book of British Hit Singles were compiled byPaul Gambaccini,Mike Read and brothersTim Rice and Jonathan (Jo) Rice (known as GRRR).^[2] Read left the team in the mid-1980s (with the book copyright now belonging to GRR Publications Ltd) and the other editors resigned in 1996. Chart editor for many editions was David Roberts.

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British Hit Singles & Albums was generally considered to be the authoritative reference (and only) source for both theUK singles chart (since its inception in 1952) and theUK Albums Chart. It listed all the singles and albums ever to have been in the UK charts since 1952 (albums since 1958), 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 theNew Musical Express (NME) chart from November 1952 to March 1960, and theRecord Retailer (laterMusic Week) chart thereafter. It could be said^{[by whom?]} that this division is misleading, since theRecord Retailer chart was little known until it was adopted by theBBC 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 ofthe 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 byRecord Retailer and therefore not byBritish Hit Singles. Other records to which this applies include "19th Nervous Breakdown" bythe Rolling Stones, "Stranger on the Shore" byAcker Bilk and theEurovision Song Contest entry "Are You Sure?" bythe Allisons.

Even after February 1969 the BBC-approved chart, as used by theBook of British Hit Singles, suffered from errors. Reasons for these include low, late, unusable, or even complete lack of returns from record shops used to compile the chart. Typically only around 10% of stores sent in properly detailed sales information on time. The other major problem was "chart hyping". There were two main forms of this. The first was for record companies, or artists' management, to simply buy positions for their records in the chart. The second was, knowing that only 10% of sampled stores reliably sent in sales info, to find out which stores those were, and then send in "customers" to buy out all the stock of a particular record in those specific stores in a particular week, thus artificially giving that record a high chart placing. As such, even through the 1970s and 1980s many books on British chart history referred to theNew Musical Express and/orMelody Maker chart.

Co-founder Jo Rice has defended the book's choice of source material on the grounds thatRecord Retailer was the only chart to consistently publish a Top 50 from 1960 onwards.^{[citation needed]} This can be substantiated^{[by whom?]} by the fact that charts published in theNME were of a shorter format and other chart listings such as those inMelody 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 sample sizes of theRecord Retailer chart were considerably inferior to those of the other charts: around 30 shops in 1963 in comparison to more than 100 used byMelody Maker, and later around 80 in comparison toNME's 150 andMelody 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.

The first edition was published asThe Guinness Book of British Hit Singles in November^[2] 1977. It was not the first Guinness music reference publication, as the previous year a book calledThe Guinness Book of Music Facts & Feats had been published. It also contained feats from the world ofclassical music.

The first edition was issued to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the first UK singles sales chart, which was published in November 1952, by theNew Musical Express. Subsequently, a new edition was published every two years, adding a few hundred titles to each edition.

Keeping in line with the book's parent publicationThe Guinness Book of Records, each edition ofBritish Hit Singles also contained a 'facts and feats' section, which included various lists of remarkable chart feats such as 'most hits', 'most no. 1 hits', 'most weeks on chart' or 'Least successful chart artist'. Also included in the books werephotographs (often with captions) and introductions written by the four authors. They also wrote a bi-annual lookback on the major developments in the UK charts in the two preceding years.

The series was soon regarded as the number one source for music and chart reference, thanks to the commercial success of the books and its various sister publications (see below).

The series' 10th edition, published in June 1995, was the last to feature its original authors Rice, Rice and Gambaccini. From the 11th edition onwards, the book was compiled by in-house editors at Guinness Publishing and, later, by David Roberts who had already been a chart editor and designer for the original team.

From the 12th edition onwards (published in 1999), the book was published every year rather than bi-annually. In 2004, the book merged withThe Guinness Book of British Hit Albums to formThe 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 theUK singles chart fromAl Martino's "Here in My Heart" on 14 November 1952 toElvis Presley's "One Night / I Got Stung" (Limited Edition Collector's re-issue), 22 January 2005.The 19th edition (2006) was the last in the series. A supposed 20th edition was due to be published in 2007, but apparently the original publishers lost interest in chart reference books after their contract withThe Official Charts Company expired, which saw that organisation sell the contract toVirgin.

Following the success of theGuinness Book of British Hit Singles series, the original authors and Guinness quickly turned to other charts-related books and projects. The following books were written by them:

• The Guinness Book of Hits of the 70s (1980)
• The Guinness Book of 500 Number One Hits (1982)
• The Guinness Book of British Hit Albums (first issued in 1983, second edition in 1986 with bi-annual updates until 1996)
• The Guinness Book of Hits of the 60s (1984)
• The Guinness Hits Challenge (a pop quiz book) (1984)
• The Guinness Hits Challenge 2 (1985)
• The Guinness Book of Number One Hits (2nd edition) (1988)
• UK Top 1000 Singles (1988)
• Hits of the 80s (1990)
• The Guinness Hits Quiz (1990)
• Guinness Top 40 Charts (1992)
• The Guinness Hits Quiz 2 (1992)
• UK Top 1000 Singles 2 (1993)
• The Guinness Book of Number One Hits (3rd edition) (1994)
• Guinness Top 40 Charts 2 (1996)

In the late 1990s and 2000s several other merchandise was produced, such as karaoke CDs, a calendar, a DVD quiz (British Hit Albums and Singles No. 1 Music Quiz) and a series of themed compilation CDs with original hits from the book.

• The Virgin Book of British Hit Singles
• Fred Bronson – author ofThe Billboard Book of USA Number One Hits (in the UK, also published by Guinness Books)
• Joel Whitburn – author ofThe Billboard Book of USA Top 40 (in the UK, also published by Guinness Books)

• 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 978-0-7535-2245-5

• Everyhit.com
• Chart Stats
• UKChartsPlus Official Top 200 Singles & Album charts

• Music guides
• 1977 non-fiction books
• 1977 establishments in the United Kingdom
• 2006 disestablishments in the United Kingdom
• Guinness World Records
• World record databases

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