Creator / Virgin Records

The original Virgin logo (1972-77), designed by Roger Dean.

The second Virgin logo (1977-2013; 2020-present), known as "the scrawl".

The Virgin EMI Records logo (2013-2020).

Virgin Records is a British record label with a long, colorful history and one of the most diverse catalogues in the music industry.

Virgin had humble origins; it was founded by counterculture entrepreneurs Richard Branson, Simon Draper, and Nik Powell in 1972, as an extension of a record store they already owned. Its first release, Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells, was an album consisting of one track: an eerie, 48-minute instrumental (mostly) that hardly seemed like chart-topping material at first. However, when excerpts from the album were featured on the soundtrack of The Exorcist, it became a critically acclaimed smash. Virgin soon established itself as a home for adventurous Progressive Rock and Krautrock performers such as Tangerine Dream, Kevin Coyne, Hatfield and the North, Faust, Henry Cow, Slapp Happy and Gong. Virgin also operated a sister label, Caroline Records, for less commercial releases, similar to the relationship between Atlantic Records and Atco Records or Warner (Bros.) Records and Reprise Records.

Virgin changed its "hippie" image in 1977 by taking on the Sex Pistols, who had already burned their bridges at EMI and A&M. The Pistols and their spinoffs (most notably Public Image Ltd.) wound up staying with the label, and Virgin then signed many Post-Punk and New Wave Music acts such as XTC, Magazine, Devo, The Human League, Penetration, The Records, Fingerprintz, The Ruts, The Members, and The Motors. It also dabbled in Reggae, eventually devoting a subsidiary label called Front Line to Jamaican music.

During The '80s, the company began signing more pop-oriented acts such as Culture Club and Cutting Crew. By the beginning of The '90s, Virgin had transformed into a mainstream label, spending huge amounts of money to sign The Rolling Stones and Janet Jackson. Subsidiary labels were established in other countries, including the United States and Canada (previously, North American distribution of Virgin acts was negotiated with a variety of labels, as well as an American arm distributed by Atlantic Records). Two sublabels devoted to Classical Music, Virgin Classics and Virgin Veritas, began operations. In the midst of all this, Branson was able to further his Virgin brand into a successful international business whose assets have included Virgin Media Television, an airline, a winery, and a mobile phone company, among many other products and services.

In 1992, the label was purchased by Thorn EMI. Around the Turn of the Millennium, the company experimented with a Country Music division, Virgin Records Nashville; it didn't last long, and its roster was either transferred to Capitol Records or dropped. Capitol returned to the Virgin story in 2007, when the two labels merged to form the Capitol Music Group.

In 2013, after EMI's demise, ownership of Virgin Records passed to Universal Music Group, which merged it with Mercury Records' UK branch to form Virgin EMI Records, with a roster consisting primarily of British/European artists. On June 16, 2020, Virgin EMI Records was renamed EMI Records, reviving the EMI brand; Virgin itself returned to being an EMI imprint. In 2021, after Universal acquired Ingrooves and merged its indie distribution arm Fontana (which had been divested as part of Universal’s EMI acquisition) into Caroline Distribution (itself inherited from Virgin), Universal renamed Caroline as Virgin Music & Artist Services, keeping the Virgin name alive. Outside of this, Universal still keeps active Virgin branches in some countries, most notably Germany and Japan.

Virgin had a song publisher, which EMI sold to BMG Rights Management in 2013.

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Original Virgin Records artists

• Thirty Seconds to Mars
• Aaliyah
• Paula Abdul
• Air
• Alice in Chains
• And One
• Atomic Kitten
• Tony Banks
• Bastille
• The Birthday Party (Australia only)
• Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
• Blue Man Group
• The Blue Nile^note Handled worldwide distribution of their output with Linn Records, the small recording arm of Scottish audio equipment manufacturer Linn Products. Virgin would take full ownership of these recordings shortly before The Blue Nile jumped ship to Warner Bros.
• David Bowie^note Handled American distribution of his 1993-1998 output (with the exception of Black Tie White Noise, which was released through Savage Records in the US) and the 1999 remasters of his 1969-1989 albums prior to EMI's folding in 2012; 'hours...' in 1999 was also released exclusively through Virgin.
• David Byrne^note Released the soundtrack to The Last Emperor in 1987; later worked in partnership with Luaka Bop for Look into the Eyeball.
• Camper Van Beethoven
• Can
• Captain Beefheart
• Belinda Carlisle (outside North America)
• The Cat Empire
• The Chemical Brothers
• Phil Collins (UK and Ireland only)
• Culture Club
• Daft Punk (distribution only; through EMI France^note Rights transferred to Parlophone France after EMI's closure)
• Dark City
• Devo (Europe only)
  • Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!
  • Freedom of Choice
• Thomas Dolby
• Eurythmics
• Evanescence
• Ella Eyre
• Fiction Factory
• A Fine Frenzy
• Fishmans^note One of the few signings to Virgin’s Japanese division run under the Pony Canyon umbrella at the time, as part of Pony Canyon’s parent company Fujisankei Communications having a large equity stake in Virgin proper. Their Virgin catalog is currently held by Pony Canyon sublabel Media Remoras.
• Florence + the Machine
• Fluke (through Circa Records)
• Genesis (outside North America)
• Gong
• Gorillaz (US only; licensed from sister label Parlophone Records^note US distribution shifted to Warner (Bros.) Records after EMI's closure)
• David Guetta (distribution only; through EMI France^note Contract transferred to Parlophone Records France after EMI's closure)
• Françoise Hardy
• Heaven 17
• Henry Cow
  • In Praise of Learning (With Slapp Happy)
• The Human League
• Janet Jackson
• Joe Jackson
• Japan
• King Crimson (through EG Records and Discipline Global Mobile)
• Lenny Kravitz
• John Lydon
• Kirsty MacColl
• Magazine
• Massive Attack
• Meat Loaf
• Roy D. Mercer
• George Michael (outside North America)
• Mike Oldfield
• Roy Orbison
• A Perfect Circle
• Placebo
• Iggy Pop
• Eric Prydz
• Public Image Ltd.
• The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus
• Rise Against
• The Rolling Stones
• Roxy Music (through EG Records)
• The Rutles
• Katey Sagal
• Ryuichi Sakamoto^note Through much of the 80's and early 90's.
• Saxon
• Sex Pistols (outside North America)
• Simple Minds
• Slapp Happy
  • Casablanca Moon
  • Desperate Straights (With Henry Cow)
• The Smashing Pumpkins
• The Specials
• Spice Girls
• Stiff Little Fingers
• David Sylvian
• Yukihiro Takahashi
• Tangerine Dream
• Timbaland
• Peter Tosh
• Traffic
• Turbonegro
• Tina Turner
• UB40
• Hikaru Utada^note Their first English language album (as Cubic U) was famously shelved by Virgin Records America, but they remained on the label’s division Eastworld in Japan, and released their Japanese-language recordings under Eastworld, then Virgin proper after a label reorganization from Universal’s EMI acquisition, until their hop to Epic in the late 2010s
• The Verve
• Sid Vicious
• Scott Walker
• Sparks (Europe only)^note No. 1 in Heaven and Terminal Jive
• The Wallflowers
• Wendy & Lisa
• The Who^note A 1979 reissue of My Generation, licensed from producer Shel Talmy while he still held the rights
• Steve Winwood
• XTC
• Warren Zevon

Virgin EMI Records artists

• 2 Chainz
• ABC
• Ryan Adams
• Alesso
• Amorphis
• Avenged Sevenfold
• Bastille
• Beck
• Justin Bieber
• Black Sabbath
• Jake Bugg
• Alessia Cara
• The Chemical Brothers
• CHVRCHES
  • 2013 - The Bones of What You Believe
• Fall Out Boy
• Florence + the Machine
• Greta Van Fleet
• Halsey
• Isaac Hayes
• Hey Violet
• Incubus
• Elton John
• The Killers
• The Libertines
• Lorde
• Lene Marlin
• Massive Attack
• Shawn Mendes
• Mika
• Mike Oldfield
• Pearl Jam
• Katy Perry
• The Pretty Reckless
• Queen (reissues of their original albums)
• Keith Richards
• Rise Against
• Emeli Sande
• Squeeze
• The Stone Roses
• Taylor Swift
• Trippie Redd
• KT Tunstall
• Shania Twain
• Carrie Underwood
• Urban Dance Squad
• The Vamps
• Westlife

Artists whose songwriting credits were with Virgin Music Publishing

• Bullet for My Valentine
• Cannibal Corpse
• Culture Club
• Duffy
• Goo Goo Dolls
• The Human League
• Nirvana
• Ozzy Osbourne
• Pere Ubu
• Iggy Pop
• The Prodigy
• Siouxsie and the Banshees
• Take That
• Tears for Fears
• tool
• Warrant

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