Joel Whitburn's Billboard Pop Hits, Singles & Albums, 1940-1954


Book Description

Pop Hits Singles and Albums is four big books in one covering the wonderful era of big bands, classic crooners, classy female vocalists and smooth vocal groups. The first section is an artist-by-artist anthology of classic pop songs with complete chart data and now shows every record's B-side. Following is a year-by-year ranking of all the hits which includes each song's songwriter(s). For the first time ever are the Top 10 charts for every week from 1940-54. And finally, the complete story of the early pop albums chart is told artist-by-artist - showing all chart data and every track from every album!




The Beach Boys


Book Description




Joel Whitburn Presents Billboard Top Adult Songs, 1961-2006


Book Description

(Book). A comprehensive collection of one of today's hottest music formats. This book provides a 46-year history of Adult Contemporary (AC) music complete with over 8,500 songs, and 2,000 artists that appeared in Billboard's "Adult Contemporary" and "Adult Top 40" charts. This is the first time ever that a complete Adult Top 40 Chart history book has been published and it covers artists as diverse as Counting Crows, Sheryl Crow, Goo Goo Dolls, Lenny Kravitz, James Blunt, Kelly Clarkson, Jack Johnson and Daniel Powter. In the standard format that Record Research has made standard, all the essential song and artist info is included. Also, for the first time, songwriters are shown for every title. Many other bonus sections are added including lists of top artists organized by different themes and all-time rankings. Previous edition: Top Adult Contemporary, ISBN 089201497




Joel Whitburn Presents Top R & B/hip-hop Singles, 1942-2004


Book Description

The only complete history of Billboard's "Hot RandB/Hip-Hop Singles" chart, this book by Joel Whitburn is a mammoth monument to one of America's most beloved music styles. All the chart hits are here with complete with in-depth chart data, essential artist information and much, much more! Arranged by artist, this authorized Billboard Chart book includes everything from the the early RandB bands, doo-wop groups, sweet soul singers, hot funk unites, sexy divas and the hottest hip-hop stars of today. Each listing has a bio summary and then shows peak chart position, chart debut date, total weeks charted for every song that cracked the charts. Over 4,400 artists and nearly 20,000 song titles.




Encyclopedia of Great Popular Song Recordings


Book Description

Volumes 3 and 4 of the The Encyclopedia of More Great Popular Song Recordings provides the stories behind approximately 1,700 more of the greatest song recordings in the history of the music industry, from 1890 to today. In this masterful survey, all genres of popular music are covered, from pop, rock, soul, and country to jazz, blues, classic vocals, hip-hop, folk, gospel, and ethnic/world music. Collectors will find detailed discographical data—recording dates, record numbers, Billboard chart data, and personnel—while music lovers will appreciate the detailed commentaries and deep research on the songs, their recording, and the artists. Readers who revel in pop cultural history will savor each chapter as it plunges deeply into key events—in music, society, and the world—from each era of the past 125 years. Following in the wake of the first two volumes of his original Encyclopedia of Great Popular Song Recordings, this follow-up work covers not only more beloved classic performances in pop music history, but many lesser -known but exceptional recordings that—in the modern digital world of “long tail” listening, re-mastered recordings, and “lost but found” possibilities—Sullivan mines from modern recording history. The Encyclopedia of Great Popular Song Recordings, Volumes 3 and 4 lets the readers discover, and, through their playlist services, from such as iTunes toand Spotify, build a truly deepcomprehensive catalog of classic performances that deserve to be a part of every passionate music lover’s life. Sullivan organizes songs in chronological order, starting in 1890 and continuing all the way throughto the present to include modern gems from June 2016. In each chapter, Sullivanhe immerses readers, era by era, in the popular music recordings of the time, noting key events that occurred at the time to painting a comprehensive picture in music history of each periodfor each song. Moreover, Sullivan includes for context bulleted lists noting key events that occurred during the song’s recording




The Words and Music of Sting


Book Description

Sting has successfully established himself as one of the most important singer-songwriters in Western popular music over the past twenty years. His affinity for collaborative work and disparate musical styles has pushed his music into an astonishing array of contexts, but no matter what the style or who the collaborator, Sting's voice always remains distinct, and this fact has earned him success amongst a correspondingly broad audience. The Words and Music of Sting subdivides Sting's life and works into rough periods of creative activity and offers a fantastic opportunity to view Sting's many stylistic changes within a coherent general framework. After analyzing Sting's musical output album by album and song by song, author Christopher Gable sums up Sting's accomplishments and places him on the continuum of influential singer-songwriters, showing how he differs and relates to other artists of the same period. Aside from his commercial success, Sting is also interesting for the use of recurring themes in his lyrics (such as family relationships, love, war, spirituality, and work) and for his use of jazz and world music to illustrate or work against the meaning of a song. Sting's life also sheds light on his music, as his working-class roots in Newcastle, England are never far removed from his international superstardom. Throughout his life, he has been musically open-minded and inquisitive, always seeking out new styles and often incorporating them into his compositions.







The Byrds


Book Description




Billboard


Book Description

In its 114th year, Billboard remains the world's premier weekly music publication and a diverse digital, events, brand, content and data licensing platform. Billboard publishes the most trusted charts and offers unrivaled reporting about the latest music, video, gaming, media, digital and mobile entertainment issues and trends.




Rocking the Closet


Book Description

The all-embracing, "whaddya got?" nature of rebellion in Fifties America included pop music's unlikely challenge to entrenched notions of masculinity. Within that upheaval, four prominent artists dared to behave in ways that let the public assume—but not see—their queerness. That these artists cultivated ambiguous sexual personas often reflected an understandable fear, but also a struggle to fulfill personal and professional expectations.Vincent L. Stephens confronts notions of the closet—both coming out and staying in—by analyzing the careers of Liberace, Johnny Mathis, Johnnie Ray, and Little Richard. Appealing to audiences hungry for novelty and exoticism, the four pop icons used performance and queering techniques that ran the gamut. Liberace's flamboyance shared a spectrum with Mathis's intimate sensitivity while Ray's overwrought displays as "Mr. Emotion" seemed worlds apart from Little Richard's raise-the-roof joyousness. As Stephens shows, the quartet not only thrived in an era of gray flannel manhood, they pioneered the ways generations of later musicians would consciously adopt sexual mystery as an appealing and proven route to success.