Rating: 
Summary: An excellent guide to help you in your music buying.
Review: This work is comprehensive and includes anecdotal notes about the artists. The book lists all the Billboard Top 40 hits, in alphabetical order by artists. The listing includes the dates on which the hits first charted. There is a section in the back of the book which lists the hits by song title, which comes in handy if you cannot recall the artist who performed the song.I find this book to be indispensable when deciding whether or not to purchase a CD, and the price the CD should command (I find it hard to shell out $14.99 for a CD with only one hit song). The book will also help you decide whether a "Greatest Hits" package includes all the artist's top 40 hits (which is not always the case, and not due to lack of space on the CD). The only drawback I have about this book is that it's not sufficiently current; but this is a limitation imposed by the publishing process rather than a fault of the book itself. The author, Joel Whitburn, has other titles which I also found to be indispensable. Just check them out, you can thank me later. :)
Rating:
Summary: Hey, Reader from Columbus!
Review: To answer a previous reviewer's question, the reason Stevie Nicks is not identified as having a duet credit on Kenny Loggins' "Whenever I Call You Friend" is because she wasn't credited on the label. Joel Whitburn is a stubborn stickler to accurate detail. Stevie's contribution is probably credited as a footnote, but in the pre-Puffy days, not everyone who walked by the studio got a credit on singles. Similarly, Elton John is not officially credited on "Bad Blood", or Odia Coates on "Having My Baby", or Thomas Dolby on "Urgent". There's a reason why this book is considered the Bible of chart information. It's as accurate as is humanly possible.
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