Customer Reviews

Joel Whitburn Presents Songs & Artists 2006: The Essential Music Guide for Your iPod and Other Portable Music Players

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

A book like this is necessarily subjective. Picking the 14,000 "essential" songs of the past 50 years is a tough call. Fans of certain groups will be disappointed by either the choice of songs from that group or the very absence of the group from the list. I'd say this selection is a pretty good representation of the hits from the mainstream of the popular genres. It is useful for figuring out who recorded a song if you know it's title or for compiling a collection of a broad range of hits from the past fifty years.

That said, it does not help me with my most frequent problem. It's frustrating to know just some lyrics that aren't actually the title or, worse yet, to know only the melody. I'm too shy to hum melodies for some employee of a record store. I've found some web sites that can be used to search based on lyrics, but this can be tedious. I'd like to find a better search engine. When I hear a song in a commercial that I like, there are websites that can help find those. Now all I need is one that can search based on a hummed melody.

Anyway, this is a fun book for the price. At the very least, it gives me some ideas of which songs to try first when sampling a group I've never listened to before.

I love this book don't get me wrong but somethings missing. i think Joel dosen't cover all but most the the history of the top forty leaving out little hits such as Girl i Used To Kniw by Brother beyond and Let G By sharron Bryant to namwe a few. I wish 2 things to make this book a 5

1. That Joel included each and every top 40 hit on the Billboard pop charts and didn't miss any not even 1

2 that his recard reserch web site had a update for the new songs that he would pick that were too new for this book. I am a music collecer with a very large Cd libary of over 8000 cd's and am having a very hard time trying to figure out what to put on my players and Joels book is very helpful. I had to go to the billboqard site to find out what was charting for the second half of 05 and all of 06 as it is not mentioned in this book. I also think that joel is a little bit skimpy when choosing to include songs from other charts and below the top 40 on the pop charts.

I've complained long enough there are meny things that make this book a 4 star .

1. He included a verylarge amount of album track that did not chart witch is not limited to the pop genre.

2. he does go into the other charts some what I weould go further but he did give it a great try.

3. this book is very easy to use and a great buy for the price.

If your not a prtson for perfection when I comes to your music lists this book is for you. If you just want to sampling of the top hits for your player this book is for you. all in all it was and will be very helpful in my recoprding songs for my mini machine just nexdt time think about the songs that are too mew for tyhe book and maybe look to the web for the answer