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''British Hit Singles & Albums'' (originally known as ''The Guinness Book of British Hit Singles'' and ''The Guinness Book of British Hit Albums'') was a music
reference book A reference work is a document, such as a Academic publishing#Scholarly paper, paper, book or periodical literature, periodical (or their electronic publishing, electronic equivalents), to which one can refer for information. The information ...
originally published in the United Kingdom by the publishing arm of the
Guinness Guinness () is a stout that originated in the brewery of Arthur Guinness at Guinness Brewery, St. James's Gate, Dublin, Ireland, in the 18th century. It is now owned by the British-based Multinational corporation, multinational alcoholic bever ...
breweries, Guinness Superlatives. Later editions were published by
HIT Entertainment HIT Entertainment Limited (stylised as HiT) was a British-American entertainment company founded in 1982 as Henson International Television, the international distribution arm of The Jim Henson Company, by Jim Henson, Peter Orton, and Sophie Turn ...
(who had bought the Guinness World Records brand). It listed all the singles and albums featured in the Top 75 pop charts in the UK. In 2004 the book became an amalgamation of two earlier Guinness publications, originally known as ''British Hit Singles'' and ''British Hit Albums''. The publication of this amalgamation ceased in 2006, with Guinness World Records being sold to
The Jim Pattison Group The Jim Pattison Group is a Canadian conglomerate based in Vancouver. Jim Pattison, a Vancouver-based entrepreneur, is the chairman, CEO, and sole owner of the company. The Jim Pattison Group, Canada's second largest privately held company, ha ...
, owner of ''
Ripley's Believe It or Not! ''Ripley's Believe It or Not!'' is an American franchise founded by Robert Ripley, which deals with bizarre events and items so strange and unusual that readers might question the claims. Originally a newspaper panel, the ''Believe It or Not'' ...
''. At this point, the Official UK Charts Company teamed up with
Random House Random House is an imprint and publishing group of Penguin Random House. Founded in 1927 by businessmen Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer as an imprint of Modern Library, it quickly overtook Modern Library as the parent imprint. Over the foll ...
/
Ebury Publishing Ebury Publishing is a division of Penguin Random House, and is a publisher of general non-fiction books in the UK. Ebury was founded in 1961 as a division of Nat Mags and was originally located on Ebury Street in London. It was sold to Cent ...
to release a new version of the book under the
Virgin Books Virgin Books is a British book publisher 90% owned by the publishing group Random House, and 10% owned by Virgin Group, the company originally set up by Richard Branson as a record company. History Virgin established its book publishing ...
brand. Entitled '' The Virgin Book of British Hit Singles'', it was first published in November 2008 with a separate albums book and second editionThe Virgin Book of British Hit Singles, Volume 2 by Dave McAleer, Andy Gregory and Matthew White (Virgin Books/Ebury Publishing/Random House/Official Charts Company ) being published over the next couple of years. The first ten editions of ''The Guinness Book of British Hit Singles'' were compiled by
Paul Gambaccini Paul Matthew Gambaccini (born 2 April 1949) is an American-British radio and television presenter and author. He is a dual citizen of the United States and United Kingdom, having become a British citizen in 2005. Known as "The Great Gambo" and ...
,
Mike Read Michael David Kenneth Read (born 1 March 1947) is an English radio disc jockey, writer, journalist and television presenter. Read has been a broadcaster since 1976, best known for having been a DJ with BBC Radio 1, and television host for mus ...
and brothers
Tim Rice Sir Timothy Miles Bindon Rice (born 10 November 1944) is an English songwriter. He is best known for his collaborations with Andrew Lloyd Webber, with whom he wrote, among other shows, '' Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat'', ''Jesus C ...
and Jonathan (Jo) Rice (known as GRRR). 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.


Content

''British Hit Singles & Albums'' was generally considered to be the authoritative reference (and only) source for both the UK singles chart (since its inception in 1952) and the
UK Albums Chart The Official Albums Chart is the United Kingdom's industry-recognised national record chart for album, albums. Entries are ranked by sales and audio streaming. It was published for the first time on 22 July 1956 and is compiled every week by the O ...
. 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 the ''
New Musical Express ''New Musical Express'' (''NME'') is a British music, film, gaming and culture website, bimonthly magazine, and brand. Founded as a newspaper in 1952, with the publication being referred to as a " rock inkie", the ''NME'' would become a maga ...
'' (''
NME ''New Musical Express'' (''NME'') is a British music, film, gaming and culture website, bimonthly magazine, and brand. Founded as a newspaper in 1952, with the publication being referred to as a "Rock music, rock inkie", the ''NME'' would be ...
'') chart from November 1952 to March 1960, and the ''
Record Retailer ''Record Retailer'' was the only music trade newspaper for the UK record industry. It was founded in August 1959 as a monthly newspaper covering both labels and dealers. Its founding editor was Roy Parker (who died on 27 December 1964). The ti ...
'' (later ''
Music Week ''Music Week'' is a trade publication for the UK record industry distributed via a website and a monthly print magazine. It is published by Future. History Founded in 1959 as ''Record Retailer'', it relaunched on 18 March 1972 as ''Music We ...
'') chart thereafter. It could be said that this division is misleading, since the ''Record Retailer'' chart was little known until it was adopted by the
BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...
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 The Beatles were an English Rock music, rock band formed in Liverpool in 1960. The core lineup of the band comprised John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. They are widely regarded as the Cultural impact of the Beatle ...
' second single "
Please Please Me ''Please Please Me'' is the debut studio album by the English rock band the Beatles. Produced by George Martin, it was released in the UK on EMI's Parlophone label on 22 March 1963. The album's 14 tracks include cover songs and original ma ...
" 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 "19th Nervous Breakdown" is a song recorded by the English rock band the Rolling Stones. Written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, it was recorded in late 1965 and released as a single in February 1966. It reached number 2 on both the US ''Bi ...
" by
The Rolling Stones The Rolling Stones are an English Rock music, rock band formed in London in 1962. Active for over six decades, they are one of the most popular, influential, and enduring bands of the Album era, rock era. In the early 1960s, the band pione ...
, "
Stranger on the Shore "Stranger on the Shore" is a piece for clarinet written by Acker Bilk for his young daughter and originally named "Jenny" after her. The tune was written on a single scrap of paper by Bilk and handed over to arranger Leon Young who crafted the ...
" by
Acker Bilk Bernard Stanley "Acker" Bilk, (28 January 1929 – 2 November 2014) was an English clarinetist and vocalist known for his breathy, vibrato-rich, lower-register style, and distinctive appearance – of goatee, bowler hat and striped waistco ...
and the
Eurovision Song Contest The Eurovision Song Contest (), often known simply as Eurovision, is an international Music competition, song competition organised annually by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) among its members since 1956. Each participating broadcaster ...
entry " Are You Sure?" by
The Allisons The Allisons were an English pop duo consisting of Bob Day (born Bernard Colin Day; 2 February 1941 – 25 November 2013) and John Alford (born Brian Henry John Alford, 31 December 1939 – 13 November 2023). They were marketed as being brother ...
. Even after February 1969 the BBC-approved chart, as used by the Book 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 Hit Parade. 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 70s and 80s many books on British chart history referred to the New Musical Express and/or Melody Maker chart. 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 ''Melody Maker'' was a British weekly music magazine, one of the world's earliest music weeklies; according to its publisher, IPC Media, the earliest. In January 2001, it was merged into "long-standing rival" (and IPC Media sister publicatio ...
'', 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


1977–96 original editors

The first edition was published as ''The Guinness Book of British Hit Singles'' in November 1977. It was not the first Guinness music reference publication, as the previous year a book called ''The Guinness Book of Music Facts & Feats'' had been published. It also contained feats from the world of
classical music Classical music generally refers to the art music of the Western world, considered to be #Relationship to other music traditions, distinct from Western folk music or popular music traditions. It is sometimes distinguished as Western classical mu ...
. 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 the ''
New Musical Express ''New Musical Express'' (''NME'') is a British music, film, gaming and culture website, bimonthly magazine, and brand. Founded as a newspaper in 1952, with the publication being referred to as a " rock inkie", the ''NME'' would become a maga ...
''. 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 publication ''The Guinness Book of Records'', each edition of ''British 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 were
photographs A photograph (also known as a photo, or more generically referred to as an ''image'' or ''picture'') is an image created by light falling on a photosensitive surface, usually photographic film or an electronic image sensor. The process and pra ...
(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.


1997–2006

From the 12th edition onwards (published in 1999), the book was published every year rather than bi-annually. In 2004, the book merged with ''The Guinness Book of British Hit Albums'' 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 Jasper Cini (October 7, 1927 – October 13, 2009), known professionally as Al Martino, was an American traditional pop and standards singer. He had his greatest success as a singer between the early 1950s and mid-1970s, being described as "one o ...
's "
Here in My Heart "Here in My Heart" is a popular song written by Pat Genaro, Lou Levinson, and Bill Borrelli, first published in 1952. A recording of the song by Italian-American singer Al Martino made history as the first number one hit on the UK singles cha ...
" on 14 November 1952 to
Elvis Presley Elvis Aaron Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977) was an American singer and actor. Referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll", he is regarded as Cultural impact of Elvis Presley, one of the most significant cultural figures of the ...
'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 with
The Official Charts Company The Official UK Charts Company Limited (formerly Music Industry Chart Services Limited), trading as the Official Charts Company (OCC) or the Official Charts (formerly the Chart Information Network), is a British inter-professional organisation ...
expired, which saw that organisation sell the contract to
Virgin Virginity is a social construct that denotes the state of a person who has never engaged in sexual intercourse. As it is not an objective term with an operational definition, social definitions of what constitutes virginity, or the lack thereof ...
.


Features in each edition


Associated merchandise

Following the success of the ''Guinness 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.


See also

* The Virgin Book of British Hit Singles *
Fred Bronson Fredric M. "Fred" Bronson (born January 10, 1949) is an American journalist, author and writer. He is the author of books related to number one songs on the ''Billboard'' Hot 100 chart and other books related to various music charts as well. He ...
– author of ''The Billboard Book of USA Number One Hits'' (in the UK, also published by Guinness Books) *
Joel Whitburn Joel Carver Whitburn (November 29, 1939 – June 14, 2022) was an American author and music historian, responsible for setting up the Record Research, Inc. series of books on record chart placings. Early life Joel Carver Whitburn was born in W ...
– author of ''The Billboard Book of USA Top 40'' (in the UK, also published by Guinness Books)


References and further reading

*Roberts, David. ''Guinness Book of British Hit Singles & Albums''. Guinness World Records Ltd. 18th edition (May 2005). *Roberts, David. ''Guinness Book of British Hit Singles & Albums''. Guinness World Records Ltd. 19th edition (June 2006). *Roach, Martin. ''The Virgin Book of British Hit Singles''. Virgin Books (Nov. 2008). *McAleer, Dave. ''The Virgin Book of British Hit Singles – Volume 2''. Virgin Books (Nov. 2010).


References


External links


Everyhit.comChart Stats''UKChartsPlus''
Official Top 200 Singles & Album charts {{DEFAULTSORT:British Hit Singles and Albums Music guides 1977 non-fiction books 1977 establishments in the United Kingdom 2006 disestablishments in the United Kingdom Guinness World Records World record databases