Customer Reviews

Top 10 Singles Charts 1955-2000

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There's not a lot of explanation needed for this book. It is, quite simply, the listing of the ten hottest songs on the Billboard Pop Charts, each week, from January 1, 1955 through December 30, 2000.

But, it is a bit more than that. Each of the weekly charts shows where every song was positioned the week before and how many weeks it had been on the charts as well. Also, once you get through the 46 years worth of charts, the index lists the songs for you by title and the week it peaked, making it easy to find the song you're looking for fast, if you don't know the date of the recording.

It wouldn't be a Joel Whitburn tome without some little known info and another index gives you trivia about the biggest and the best hits on the charts and some other interesting facts. It makes a great companion book to Whitburn's "Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits" and is different enough to merit getting both!

My only complaints are very minor: it would have been great to have index markings for each year on the pages, or at least markings for each decade, just to help find things more quickly. And an index to find songs by their musical performers would have been useful as well. But, it's nothing to complain about! This is a very worthwhile resource guide for anyone interested in pop music and examining how it fits into history!

Recommended!

The best part of this book, is that you can see who beat who out of the top spots. For instance "Billie Jean" gets knocked out of the #1 spot by "Come On Eileen" only to be ousted by "Beat It" one week later. Go Michael ! Hee ! Hee ! See why your all time favorite song "Start Me Up" NEVER made it to #1. Too bad "Arthur's Theme (best that you can do)" and "Private Eyes" were burnin' up the chart. Get the hardcover and pull it out for years to come.