Rating: 
Summary: HITTING ALL THE RIGHT NOTES
Review: Author Fred Bronson has updated and expanded his edition of the classic bestseller, following the history of popular music through the end of 2001. What makes Bronson’s effort stand out from the copycats is his approach to all things tuneful --- the book devotes separate chapters to such categories as artists, writers, producers, subjects, years, even labels. The best of the best is also here, such as “The Top 50 Songs Written By Holland-Dozier-Holland,” “The Top 20 Songs of The Carpenters,” “The Top 100 Pre-Rock Era Remakes,” “The Top 30 Songs Produced By Snuff Garrett.” Especially fun is “The Top 100 Songs By One-Hit Wonders” … remember Zager & Evans? Laurie London? Clint Holmes? The most astounding list is “The Top 5,000 Hits of the Rock Era,” chronicling the years from 1956 through 2001. We could do with better photos (or at least better reproduction), but hey, one bad note ain’t so bad when all these fascinating facts and figures hit all the right ones. A must-have reference book for any and all music mavens.
Rating: 
Summary: Bronson's Charts Smart!
Review: Fred Bronson has painstakingly compiled a chart lovers'
companion filled with vital statistics, facts, and glorious pictures. What really sets this book apart is Mr. Bronson's seemingly unending wealth of often fascinating, and sometimes uncanny, chart revelations. Fred Bronson spins his tales of pop culture into gritty bites of timeless trivia. Highlights include The Top 100 Songs from Motion Pictures with fun anecdotes such as 1976 Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci's connection to the movies and The Top 100 Songs of 1963, the year before The Beatles broke and forever changed America's musical landscape.
Many writers have created other chart compendiums of a similar nature, but no one tackles the Rock Era with the zest and creativity of a true chart champion and enthusiast quite like Fred Bronson.
Rating:
Summary: Highlight: The Top 100 songs of each year!
Review: Fred Bronson is a chart trivia columnist for Billboard magazine and his love of the charts shines through in this book. It consists primarlity of lists of songs from the Billboard Hot 100, either by artists, producer, label, year or topic. So you get the top 100 Beatles songs, the top 100 Motown songs, the top 25 songs written by Diane Warren, the top 100 songs of 1979, etc. It keeps the biggest for last: a 5000 song chart of the biggest hits of all time. The only problem is that all lists are based on equally weighted weeks from the history of chart music. So the 50's (where songs were fewer and chart life longer), and the 90's (where singles were largely abandoned and those that were releases remained on the charts for over a year) tend to dominate many of these lists. More than half the top 100 of all time are from 55-57 or the 90's. Is 'A Blossom Fell' by Nat King Cole really a bigger hit than Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean"? It is here. In fact, with the fast turnover of hits in the 60's only "Hey Jude" makes the top 100. Pity there wasn't some way to balance this info, possibly by factoring in Top 40 listener stats or total singles sales by year as a way to adjust for historical imbalances. The saving grace of the book is the Charts by Year section. Here the songs have an even playing field, so you can compare songs like "Love Will Keep Us Together" with "Jive Talkin" in 1975, or "Sunshine Superman" and "Hanky Panky" in '66, or "Wind Beneath My Wings" to "Love Shack" in '89. If you want more specific info on a song, you should also check out Fred's Billboard Book of Number One Singles, a treasure trove of musical trivia.
Rating:
Summary: The missing variable
Review: Here are the 10 top singles of the Rock era, according to this book. 1. "Smooth," Santana featuring Rob Thomas (1999)
2. "Un-Break My Heart," Toni Braxton (1996)
3. "Macarena" (Bayside Boys Mix), Los del Rio (1996)
4. "One Sweet Day," Mariah Carey & Boyz II Men (1995)
5. "I'll Make Love to You," Boyz II Men (1994)
6. "I Will Always Love You," Whitney Houston
7. "Candle in the Wind 1997" / "Something About the Way You Look Tonight," Elton John (1997)
8. "How Do I Live," LeAnn Rimes (1997)
9. "End of the Road," Boyz II Men (1992)
10. "Too Close," Next (1998) What do the ten have in common, and what does that have to do with the sad fact that there are no Beatles, Elvis or Micheal Jackson's singles up there in the top 10, where they surely belong? Well, what they have in common that is most relevant to the point beng made here, namely that a variable was missing in the criteria, is the non-surprising fact that none of them had to compete against back-to-back singles by the same performer, which partly explains ( no matter how good each one of those singles were, no matter how musical, no matter how long they spent in the Top Ten) why none are really representative of the rock era the way "I want to hold your hand", "Hound Dog", or "Billie Jean" would be. And these latter singles are representative not merely because they were huge hits, but because they were a part of the re-writing of the rock chart history, each in its own way. But they also had in common the so-called missing variable: they are representative, of each one of those eras, because they went to # 1, and remained in the top ten, deflecting the competiton not only from other artists' singles out there, but from other singles by the same artist. A point system, awarding extra credit, weekly, each time that a song from a performer shared the top then with another from the same performer, should have been devised.
Rating:
Summary: The missing variable
Review: Here are the 10 top singles of the Rock era, according to this book. 1. "Smooth," Santana featuring Rob Thomas (1999)
2. "Un-Break My Heart," Toni Braxton (1996)
3. "Macarena" (Bayside Boys Mix), Los del Rio (1996)
4. "One Sweet Day," Mariah Carey & Boyz II Men (1995)
5. "I'll Make Love to You," Boyz II Men (1994)
6. "I Will Always Love You," Whitney Houston
7. "Candle in the Wind 1997" / "Something About the Way You Look Tonight," Elton John (1997)
8. "How Do I Live," LeAnn Rimes (1997)
9. "End of the Road," Boyz II Men (1992)
10. "Too Close," Next (1998) What do the ten have in common, and what does that have to do with the sad fact that there are no Beatles, Elvis or Micheal Jackson's singles up there in the top 10, where they surely belong? Well, what they have in common that is most relevant to the point beng made here, namely that a variable was missing in the criteria, is the non-surprising fact that none of them had to compete against back-to-back singles by the same performer, which partly explains ( no matter how good each one of those singles were, no matter how musical, no matter how long they spent in the Top Ten) why none are really representative of the rock era the way "I want to hold your hand", "Hound Dog", or "Billie Jean" would be. And these latter singles are representative not merely because they were huge hits, but because they were a part of the re-writing of the rock chart history, each in its own way. But they also had in common the so-called missing variable: they are representative, of each one of those eras, because they went to # 1, and remained in the top ten, deflecting the competiton not only from other artists' singles out there, but from other singles by the same artist. A point system, awarding extra credit, weekly, each time that a song from a performer shared the top then with another from the same performer, should have been devised.
Rating:
Summary: SWEET INSPIRATION
Review: The above title is charted as #4631 of the Top 5000 singles of the rock era and also the feeling one gets when thumbing through this absolutely essential book--absolutely essential for any individual with the slightest interest in popular music of the past 47 years all the way to the deepest trivia buff, anyone who has ever had a taste of list-o-mania. Along with Mr. Bronson's "Billboard Book Of Number One Hits" and Joel Whitburn's "Top Pop Singles", this is the one of the three necessary reference items for any home library with a section dealing with pop music. Mr. Bronson covers the songs, artists (sections for Elvis, Elton, Abba, Aretha, Beatles, Stones, Sinatras, etc.) producers, songwriters and record labels, that have spun around our turntables. cassette decks and CD players since 1955. Specialized sections deal with such diverse subjects as music from motion pictures, names of girls and boys, food, animals and the calendar. It is not just the list that make this book essential; it is the historical articles which feature thousands of little known facts. The ultimate list is the Top 5000 songs of the rock era (1955-present). Some fine illustrations accompany the text. Some readers will take offense that most of the biggest songs of the rock era are from the 1990s. However, Mr. Bronson explains how chart methodolgy created this situation (For instance the highest ranking Beatles song is #41). For those 1960s (or other decades)purists , there are sections devoted to each decade. For the statisticians, the author has revised his methodology to emphasize high chart position, a significant improvement. This book will settle many arguments about popular music and related pop culture issues. In summary, buy it.
Rating:
Summary: This isn't your average Hot 100!
Review: The incredible trivia and detail which Fred Bronson has labored to include in this book are worth the purchase by any music fan! The table of contents alone is six pages long, dividing the book in the top songs by The Artists, The Writers, The Producers, The Labels, Charts and Configurations, The Years, and The Subjects.
So we are taken from the lists showing John Lennon and Paul McCartney writing over 100 hit songs, to producers L.A. Reid and Babyface charting with their Top 50 list. In the record label section, the companies with 100 Top Hits are A&M, Arista, Atlantic, Capitol,Colubia, Epic, MCA, Mercury, MGM, Motown, RCA, and Warner Brothers. Each label's top songs are listed.
The trivia subjects are fun: Top 100 songs about animals (Elvis wins the top two with "Hound Dog" and "Teddy Bear"). Picking out a name for a baby? Here are the Top 100 songs with names of boys or girls in the title.
The Years begin with 1956 and go through 2001, with an added section on the Top 100 of each decade. A special section ends the book: The Top 5000 Songs of the Rock Era. #1? "Smooth" by Santana.
Buy this book if you love music chart facts and trivia with rare photos of the artists who achieved the Top 100.
Rating:
Summary: Fred Bronson has done it again...
Review: This book is amazing. Here is what you get:
Different chart categories such as:
The top songs divied by popular artists (Elvis, Mariah Carey andanyone else with a large singles list)
The top songs from producers and writers.
The top tongs devided into record company.
The top songs of each year from 1955-2001.*
The top songs in various categories (Boys Names, Girls Names, Food, Weekdays etc.)
And the top 5000 songs of all time!!! (from 1955-May 2002)
It also contains biographies of the popular artists, the description of each year and category and an explnation of how he came up with the results.
* The year end charts are not the same as billboard magazine's year-end charts, he used a different methodology, and the songs are categorized under the year in which they hit their peak position.
Great Book, and even if you are not interested in Billboard, it is still very interesting!!
Rating:
Summary: Perfect fun
Review: This book is essential for music trivia and popular culture fanatics. The most interesting part is reading the Top 100 hits of each year, year by year. It is a fascinating study in shifting trends in public taste, and you literally "see and hear" the changes in U.S. history, reflected through its music, over the coarse of five decades. From the Elvis Presley, Perry Como and Doris Day era of the 1950's, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones in the 1960's, Donna Summer, Abba and Bee Gees in the 1970's, Madonna in the 1980's and Snoop Dogg, Eminem and Mariah Carey, this book is fun and fascinating from start to finish. Good job Fred!
Rating: 
Summary: Good for music trivia tid-bits
Review: This book is loaded full of factoids about various music stars from when the Billboard Hot 100 chart began in the mid-1950's to 1995. The factoids may be interesting, but this book also provides a ranking of hit songs by year, artist, label, etc. I think many people would find the ranking algorithm disputable, and thus, the order of the song rankings disputable as well. It's still good for flipping through and finding random interesting facts about an artist, a year, a label, etc.
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