Customer Reviews

Billboard Hot 100 Charts: The Seventies

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Sure, there are lots of books out there with opinions of what songs of the past were the best. Even some books ranking the songs using many different methods. But the ultimate reflection of the popularity of a song is how well it performed on the Billboard Charts. And this book shows every Hot 100 chart from Billboard that was published during the '70's.....which I believe to be the best decade ever for popular music. There is nothing like looking at these charts and remembering what it was like in the '70's to listen to radio, and to follow the progress of your favorite records as they climbed the charts. If you listened to Casey Kasem every week, you heard the Top-40. These charts give you a chance to not only re-live those times, but also to see how your favorite songs performed both before and after they appeared in the Top-40. Every Billboard Hot 100 chart of the '70's duplicated at about 70% of it's original size. It is amazing to look back at times such as when music from Saturday Night Fever dominated Billboard charts. You can almost see John Travolta dancing....almost hear the Bee Gees singing. And then there are the moments when you discover a song on a chart that you had forgotten ever even existed! I could go on and on, but I need to get back to the book....it is hard to stay away from it. If you are a Seventies music fan, I guarantee that this book will not disappoint you. It is worth evey penny.

This book is great. I constantly refer to this book while doing research on The Rolling Stones chart positions in the Seventies. Of course it can be used for just general research, or for a particular artist. It tracks the Top 100 singles and how they charted week by week. You see how each song climbs to its peak position and then declines off the charts. It was great looking at the charts during a decade when I remember these songs being big hits and hearing them on the radio for the first time. I can't believe it's been almost 30 years since atists like Paul McCartney & Wings and Elton John first came on the scene. I highly recommend all the other "Billboard Hot 100" books from this series.

This book is once again in print and available from Record Research's Web site for $79. Don't get fleeced by merchants asking $600 for an ex-library copy of this book!

There are certain things that help to color the events of your life, and for me, music has always been a key ingredient to evoking memories of my childhood.

So, it is with great satisfaction and glee that I can thumb through the pages of this book and let my mind drift back to so many images and feelings that were framed by the music that was popular at the time. Plus, I have always been a fanatic of the charts, so much so, that I subscribed to Billboard for a time in the mid 1970s, and paid for it from my meager paper route earnings.

Beyond the mere duplication of the charts, I can find nuggets like the fact, that for a 13 week span in early 1978, the Bee Gees composed and/or performed the top 2 songs. Or, that the "You Ain't Seen Nothin Yet" by BTO raced to #1, dropped to #34 2 weeks later, and then strangely, jumped back into the Top 10 for 2 weeks, before slowly descending down the Hot 100.

If you enjoy the music of the 70's, have a strange affliction for tracking the progress of songs, and can get past the sometimes grainy black and white reproduction of the charts, then this book will fit into your chest of book treasures.

This is my 4th Billboard related book, all by Joel Whitburn. There is no intrinsically redeeming value from combing the charts of 30 plus years ago, and yet it has a permanence that speaks to an era when music was maybe a little less confusing, in that if your song was played enough on the radio stations of America, you could get on Billboard and maybe have a career.

For some, it may have happened just once, but instead of guessing as to what was popular, I now have a piece of music history, from a period that was formative time in my life.

The book is straightforward. Every single Hot 100 weekly chart for 10 years. I just wish the type was a little bigger. It would be even better if the charts themselves were reproduced in color the way it looked back then. Still, a very good book

Joel Whitburn's compilation of all the Billboard Hot 100 charts of the 1970's provides you with every list of the most popular songs of the me decade. You can chronicle the change from the last time the Beatles actively made the chart to the singer-songwriter takeover to the disco explosion and everything in between.

I bought this book for my husband's birthday. He loves it. He has the Eighties version as well.

The seventies hold many good memories for those who grew up listening to the music in the decade. The book represents the development in the music industry in form of this weekly chart documentation. From the charts, the history of music during the era is well represented. The book reminds me of the days of classic pop, the birth of rock legends to the emergence of disco.

Starting in the early 90's,Record Research began publishing books,which featured complete reproductions of the vintage "Hot 100" charts-I've got all of the books-Without a doubt,the 70's was certainly a decade of diversity-It was around that time that I became a regular listener to "American Top 40",which initially used the Billboard charts as their primary source-I'm glad I'm able to relive those old memories once again.

I am a big fan of the books in this series, and currently own the 60's, 80's and 90's. Unfortunately I've had this 70's edition on backorder for about 11 months from Amazon. During early 2007, if you were to inquire from a bookdealer or the publisher themselves, they said it was out of print and would remain that way until it was maybe released on a CD-Rom version, but never again in book form. Some people were milking what the market would bear on auction and sale sites and getting $150 or more for this book. Well, not any more! It looks as though someone had a change of heart. Record Research has gone back to the press, and now has this edition in stock and shipping from their website at the retail price of $79.95, so don't overpay for this. I myself will be waiting until I can get it cheaper on Amazon with free shipping. At that time I will update this review :)