iTunes - various artists, album artists sorting

I'm trying to find a way to correctly display artists in the 'Artists' listing when the source is a compilation album.

Take for example, Jules Holland's 'More Friends' album which has various artists including Jules Holland. I've got it checked as a compilation so that in album view it displays all songs together under one album—tick!

This caused it to be originally filed under 'various artists', so I've collectively edited the entries to put Jules Holland as the Album Artist, now it appears in the album listing under Jules—tick!

But when I want to see what tracks I have by Robert Plant (in the Artists view), there's nothing for this album, everything is under Jules.

So the Artists view can never actually be trusted?

It seems the only way to accurately display 'songs by artist' is by going into the Songs view, sorting by Artist, and scrolling through. Or... by using the search library facility. Not exactly state-of-the-art!

Is there any way where I can have the tracks by artist showing correctly without messing up the tracks by album?

Confused of London

Thanks for the response, though it didn't really address the issue.

I already have the album sorting together and so long as compilation is checked it doesn't seem to make any difference whether Album Artist is blank, or filled with 'Various", it seems to have the same effect.

What I wanted to do was to keep the album sorted together in Album view, but in Artists view to see the tracks under the Artist name not under 'various artists'.

I had a play with the Sort Album Artist field and can't see that this helps here?

Found something weird.

If the artist has an album in their own name then there's a listing for them under the Artists view. Click on the artist name and you get to see all other tracks including those in compilation albums. **

If the artist doesn't have an album in their own name, then there's no listing.

** But... if you've given the compilation album an Album Artist name, then they don't appear in the list, they appear under the Album Artist.

It seems the only way to reliably retrieve artists is to use the search box, and hope you've not had too much to drink when you try to spell Lynyrd Skynyrd or Mahavishnu Orchestra.