Since the 70 Years series began in February 2022, completing in June 2023, I have been flat out running to ensure that has gone to time – something which has not always been plain sailing. At the time of writing this post, I have still got a couple of Decade volumes to produce as well as some tidying up of the database.
I’ve updated the website today with the 1990’s and 2000‘s decade volumes (Top 100’s) to purchase, should you wish to. Subscribers to the 70 Years Series 1990’s decade or 2000’s decade get these automatically. The next volume will be covering the singles charts for 2010-2019, as that is also promised for the 70 Years subscribers. But what after that? What can I tempt you with as forthcoming hidden gems?
70 Years Corrections
Once the final decade volume is completed, I’ll be going back and making corrections to the 70 Years series; ones subscribers have kindly pointed out and also ones that kept in as I went along. These do mean that the hit counts will change, as sometimes I’ve combined records I shouldn’t have. Some errors corrected here have bene ones copied across from the original database and I found one that had been entered from the old excel sheets I started to create in 2001! No idea how many times I’ve gone over the data to look for corrections, but I suspect this is just par for the course here. All chart books have errors and of course no author wants them to be present!
I shall also be offering the series as a digital download to subscribers, so that I can showcase the cover images at higher resolution. Some are still very poor, but better resolution is always good; even if that does make the file sizes much larger!
Record Mirror Version 2
Once the 70 Years corrections are made, I shall turn my attention to the Record Mirror charts. Brian, from UKMix, has scanned all the images of every single Record Mirror chart that exists and so I now have a full and verified run of them. I’m going through, correcting the database (some error correction resulting in changes from books dating back to the 1970’s) and will then create a new Record Mirror book, including their Singles and Album charts for the first time.
This should be the most up-to-date and correct account of these charts, so one I am most looking forward to producing.
Billboard
The Billboard Hot 100 turns 65 in August 2023, and so I am going to be marking this anniversary in a way similar to the 70 Years UK series. More details coming soon, but I am looking at how to add to the wealth of data Joel Whitburn’s Record Research company has put together, and so do not want to simply duplicate what they have done. I do not believe in doing that, as if I was going to do that it’s just much easier to buy their books. Stay tuned for more info.
UK Album Charts
And of course we have the next volume in the UK album chart decade series. It’s nearly done… just need to find some more album durations! The problem is, this is not an easy task and it can take several hours to locate. I’ve been half tempted on a few occasions to simply buy the album and time the tracks… I have;t yet, but I can absolutely see why Joel Whitburn decided to purchase them all for us Billboard chart collection! It does make archive research much easier.
Other Projects
And finally, we have other projects – some of which come from ideas generated by my readers. So is there a book/series/project you think I should create? Or a chart I should utilise? The database has lots of information, so adding new charts is always fun for me. What do you think I should do? Drop me an email to lonnie@thechartbook.co.uk and let me know if you have any thoughts.
I’ll also try and blog a little more often…. But I’ve said that before and then I get fascinated by the data and lose all track of time!