itunes classifying albums with guest singer as various artists/compilation

There are no instant fixes I'm afraid, but a better approach is to change the song title to *Title \[Feat. Guest]*, remove the guest info. from the Artist field and set Compilation to No. For more info. see my post on Groupng Tracks Into Albums.

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I have been playing around with this for a while as it was annoying that, for example, the triple album of Jah Wobble's "I could have been a Contender" appeared in compilations because it is a career retrospective featuring many collaborations, name changes and tracks as Public Image Ltd. Jah Wobble was not listed in Artists in List View, nor was he listed under Artists on my iPod.

I just discovered that if I type 'Jah Wobble" in Album Artist, set Compilation to No then his name appears in the 'Artist' column in List View followed by a list of the artist + feat. guests.

If I then select all the feat. guests > get info > options change Compilations back to YES. This removes the multiple artist listing and moves them to compilations list. However, the main Artist remains in the list and includes the tracks with guests.

Unfortunately I cannot get this to replicate when I sync my iPod as only the tracks without a guest artists are listed under JW and those with are only in Compilations, effectively breaking up the album.

Any ideas why this works in iTunes but not on the iPod?

Regardless of what the artist is, if it is set as Part of a compilation, it will be in compilations.
Selct the songs, then right click get info.
Select the Options tab, tick *Part of a compilation* and set it to No.