Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Songs

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It has been proposed that every WikiProject choose a single article which represents what the Project members hope each article will eventually look like, so that interested onlookers can see where a Project is heading. If this project is ready to choose such an article, please do so and link to it after the Project name at Wikipedia:WikiProject. If there are no articles ready for this yet, you may wish to focus as a group on an article which is close and/or will be relatively easy to research.

Contents

[edit] infobox

See Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums for an infobox. Tuf-Kat 14:11, Feb 11, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Project

OK - it seems like no-one has touched this project for a while. If nobody minds, I'll take over for a while and try to revive and improve it.--Moochocoogle 21:09, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Formatting

As these are created, please work towards proper formatting -- song titles go in "quotes", album titles are italicized. Also, if the intent is to have a comprehensive set of song articles for the albums so treated, it might make sense to go ahead and link songs (even ones that don't have articles yet) at the outset, or these links will have to be placed in later. Jgm 21:00, 7 Mar 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Dislike

Must confess to a profound dislike of the phrase "Off of (album name)". Could we use "From the album (album name)" instead? - MykReeve 00:55, 7 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Ok... That does sound better - Fizscy46 01:00, 7 Mar 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Previous and next

Some thoughts on this. I'm new to Wikipedia, but would like to contribute. I can't see the point of showing the previous and next songs on the album, it doesn't seem very useful. Also, how about showing chart positions? --Auximines 15:19, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)

How isn't it? It saves time from having to go back to the album pages. Chart positions are good for sure. Billboard especially. - Fizscy46 02:52, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)
I aggree that chart positions should be included for singles. --Moochocoogle 03:18, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Track listing at the end

Rather than do a track listing at the end of the album box, why not have a singles' chronology if the article is on a single? Don't get me wrong, if the song was not a single then the current set up makes sense. However, singles are more likely to get articles, and thus the set up I'm suggesting would work better in most cases. -- [[User:LGagnon|LGagnon]] 02:26, Nov 6, 2004 (UTC)

I agree with this. On most albums, I think only one or two songs, if any, deserve an article, and thus we shouldn't need to link to them in the infobox. Tuf-Kat 04:34, Nov 6, 2004 (UTC)
Yes, single chronology is probably better (though, I suppose, both could be included). --Moochocoogle 03:18, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Triple J Hottest 100

Is anyone outside of Australia familiar with the Triple J Hottest 100? It is a fairly prominent chart (poll) in Australia, the largest of its kind in the world. Would listing it under 'chart success' for bands, albums and songs be appropriate? -- Chuq 22:40, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I think Triple J is plenty notable. If a band made it onto the chart, it should be noted it in the band article. If it exists, it should also be part of the appropriate section in the article about the recording (i.e. Appetite for Destruction#Chart positions). I'm not sure if that is what you mean, but it's worth establishing anyway. The ARIA charts should probably be treated the same way. Tuf-Kat 22:52, Jan 30, 2005 (UTC)
Cool - I have a database of Hottest 100 charts, when I get home I will add it to the Hottest 100 page (or talk page so they can be ticked off as done.). To start with, I will add them to the artist pages only - the album pages can come later if someone can be bothered! -- Chuq 02:30, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Stubs

To help sort out Category:Music stubs, I made a new stub template for specific song articles, Template:Song-stub. (I hope no one here minds. It seemed that there were an awful lot of song articles being tagged as music stubs.) To use it, just use {{song-stub}} instead of {{stub}}.

[edit] Charting b-sides?

What do you do with a B-side that was actually included on an album and made the charts (example: The Jackson 5's "Who's Lovin' You", the b-side to "I Want You Back" and a #1 R&B hit of its own)? Do you use the yellow, green, or orange table? --FuriousFreddy 07:34, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

  • As explained on the project page, a track that is a B-side and an album track counts only as an album track. If it was a single then that's what it should be. Your example of a B-side that was also an A-side single in its own right should have the yellow infobox. It should also be mentioned in the article for "I Want You Back" (if there is one) under 'Single track listing'. Remember that the chart details in the infobox is the Billboard Hot 100 when referring to american charts (though others can be mentioned in the article, of course). --Moochocoogle 12:58, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)
    • "Who's Lovin' You" wasn't an a-side of its own; it just happened that the b-side got as much play on R&B radio as the a-side did on pop AND R&B radio. I just made the "I Want You Back" article, btw. --FuriousFreddy 01:46, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
      • Oh, well just make a B-side infobox for it then. --Moochocoogle 02:34, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
    • Oh, correction there - just read the article. If it was a B-side for another artist then it should probably have 2 infoboxes (although this hasn't been fully defined yet). See: "Radio Ga Ga" for an article on a song released by 2 different artists.
      • Might want to look at the article Single (music) and at the Categories Singles by year and Singles by artist and other lists (which may reveal more duplication of effort). - CQ 22:31, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Notability

I notice that your WikiProject has not set down any guidelines for notability yet. I was hoping to consult them as to the notability of the song Vive la rose, which I have nominated for deletion. Has any discussion occurred yet as to what makes a song notable enough for its own article? --DropDeadGorgias (talk) 19:11, Apr 13, 2005 (UTC)

Yes, this is becoming a problem. There has not yet been any real discussion on the subject (mainly because I'm the only person active on this project). In terms of singles, I, personally, would consider any single that appear's in a country's primary Top 40 to be notable. I do understand, however that this means a lot of songs would be 'notable'. For now, I generally only create articles for songs that have appeared in the UK Singles Chart (ideally in the top 20) and that I can write at least a paragraph stub on. Of course, songs can be notable in other ways. Well known traditional and folk songs often deserve their own articles, as do some famous album tracks and single B-sides. All this said, I do spend way too much time (most of my wiki-editing time) deleting or expanding and recategorising one-sentance stubs, dumped in Category:Songs and it's really starting to annoy me. --Moochocoogle 20:14, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I suggest adding them to Notability and Music Guidelines (that page is only about musicians now, but there has been discussion on talk of including guidelines for record labels and genres as well). I agree it would be a great idea. Tuf-Kat 21:47, Apr 13, 2005 (UTC)
Well I think that individual songs are more complicated to define as notable or not than artists or albums but I'll try suggesting some criteria on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Music/Notability and Music Guidelines. --Moochocoogle 01:32, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] I Got The Power

Can someone write an article on this phrase/song/whatever? I am sick an tired of not knowing where this comes from, everytime an ad or movie preview uses that line. I have listed it on Wikipedia:Requested articles/music#Songs. Thanks, --Spundun 05:43, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

  • As far as I can tell, "I Got the Power" is a 1997 song by Puff Daddy from his album No Way Out - It doesn't seem notable enough for it's own article (considering the album doesn't even have one). There's also a 1990 #1 single called "The Power" by Snap! containing the lyrics I've got the power and I expect similar lyrics appear in many other songs too. I hope this is some help to you. --Moochocoogle 16:17, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Template / Infobox

OK, I finished making the infobox for this project, which can be seen here, and working examples are at Smells Like Teen Spirit and In My Place. It's not perfect yet and it has few differences with the proposed project. I guess you can edit it around and use it everywhere. I think it would be easier if we had this template. Oh yeah, someone please add the colour scheme because I was unaware of those three categories at the time of the making. and about the "from the album "<insert album>", would it be better to put it with the "Single by <artist>" or right below without being highlighted? If it is without highlighted below, it seems a bit hard to notice as it is not really an info about the song itself, but rather the artist, etc. I removed song from most thing because I do not think it's necessary, and also when it is a single CD, (or whatever), there would be more than one song, thus making it not a "Song length". I also put the "Chart position" in a separate place because there can be a lot of chart infos if we tried enough and it would look nicer to have it instead of getting mixed up with already full middle part. Anyways. WB 11:26, May 10, 2005 (UTC)

I like it. The song box was always just an awkward adaptation of the albumbox anyway. My only quibble is with the label field at Smells Like Teen Spirit -- wouldn't just putting DGC be plenty of information for virtually all readers? The details should certainly be in the article, but that takes up more space than its utility warrants. Tuf-Kat 21:24, May 10, 2005 (UTC)
It's quite true that DGC would give sufficient info for readers, yet people seem to like putting the catalog numbers in Wikipedia. About the templete, there would be problems with the "not featured on an original album". For example, in Hey Jude, my template would be harder to use. Maybe I should put an empty parameter to put things. I am not an expert on templates, but is there an option where you can have few options? WB 23:07, May 10, 2005 (UTC)
I'm pretty useless with templates too. You could ask at the village pump (either assistance or technical, I guess). Tuf-Kat 02:03, May 11, 2005 (UTC)
To deal with "not featured on an original album", you could replace the line
{{{Artist}}}<br>from the album ''{{{from Album}}}''
with
{{{Artist}}}<br>{{Source}}
and that should provide enough flexibility. Meantime, anyone know how to apply this box to "Amerika"? And also, it might also be a good idea to put a template on every song's talk page, to provide an easy way of listing every page in the project, like WikiProject Albums does with {{Album}}. grendel|khan 15:17, 2005 May 11 (UTC)

This needs to be fixed, redirected from films to songs. --Fantailfan 01:16, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

I've only done one template, but the WikiProject Songs template section snipped below
[[Category:WikiProject Films|{{PAGENAME}}]]
[[Category:WikiProject banners|{{PAGENAME}}]]
[[Category:Templates using ParserFunctions|{{PAGENAME}}]]
</noinclude><includeonly>{{#switch:{{{class}}}
 |FA=[[Category:FA-Class film articles|{{PAGENAME}}]]
 |A=[[Category:A-Class film articles|{{PAGENAME}}]]
 |GA=[[Category:GA-Class film articles|{{PAGENAME}}]]
 |B=[[Category:B-Class film articles|{{PAGENAME}}]]
 |Start=[[Category:Start-Class film articles|{{PAGENAME}}]]
 |Stub=[[Category:Stub-Class film articles|{{PAGENAME}}]]
 |Dab=[[Category:Disambig-Class film articles|{{PAGENAME}}]]
 |Template=[[Category:Template-Class film articles|{{PAGENAME}}]]
 |Cat=[[Category:Category-Class film articles|{{PAGENAME}}]]
 |=[[Category:No-Class film articles|{{PAGENAME}}]]
 |#default=[[Category:Unassessed film articles|{{PAGENAME}}]]
 }}</includeonly>

still points to Films.--Fantailfan 11:13, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Songs recorded by more than one artist.

When I was here earlier (see above discussion), I learned that songs recorded by more than one artist can have compund infoboxes added to them. However, there is an issue with the editors working on the Mariah Carey singles where seperate articles are being made for Carey's covers of hit or popular songs (examples: "I'll Be There" -> "I'll Be There (Mariah Carey song)", "O Holy Night" -> "O Holy Night (Mariah Carey song)"). Both of these articles were placed on Votes for deletion, with "O Holy Night (Mariah Carey song)" not reaching a consensus; "I'll Be There (Mariah Carey song)" is still being voted upon at Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/I'll Be There (Mariah Carey song). There should be a set precedent as far as how many articles for one song are needed in the Wikipedia; special rules cannot be made up for just one artist. --FuriousFreddy 02:42, 29 May 2005 (UTC)

  • Although i'm not a member of the WikiProject i'll comment. I think it depends on the artist, and the quality of the article. For example, if the article is too big or just doesn't work as one (ie, too big a difference inbetween the original and the cover) then two articles are needed. However, if the song doesn't have a great article and/or works as one, then it can be ok. An example of one which works as one article despite more than five versions is Dragostea Din Tei. However, i'm sure the differences inbetween, say, Michael Jackson and Alien Ant Farm's versions of "Smooth Criminal" are enough to warrant two articles if enough can be said. Also, theres an issue with samples - Would an article on Hall & Oates' "Out Of Touch" have to be in the same article as Uniting Nation's "Out Of Touch", which samples it? Hedley 01:16, 30 May 2005 (UTC)
    • An article on a song couldn't possibly be too long to not be able to diuscuss two versions of a song. The Michael Jackson/Alien Ant Farm versions of "Smooth Criminal" are different...BUT (a) they are the same exact song, note for note and line for line (b) the AAF version is a cover version of Jackson's original, (c) said cover still retains ties to the original (note the video, which has a little kid doing Jackson's dance moves). The three major versions of "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" (Gladys Knight's, Marvin Gaye's, and Creedence Clearwater Revival's) and all three versions of "Hum Along and Dance" are substantially different, but they are just differnet takes on the same song. As far as a song that samples another, they should probably have seperate articles, with a mention of each other in the other article. A notable exception would be Method Man & Mary J. Blige's "You're All I Need/I'll Be There For You", which is both a sample and a cover of Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell's "You're All I Need to Get By".--FuriousFreddy 01:53, 30 May 2005 (UTC)
      • I personally think Wikipedia needs a clear guideline on what songs deserve how many articles and when. Personally, I think if the articles are short they can all be comprised into one, but versions are quite different. There is a lot of debate on whether cover versions deserve a separate article, I think in most cases they do, but if there is an official policy at least we can make people follow some rules and stop these debates. I know it will be difficult to create a rule, because people are obviously bound to have different views, but something must be done. Ultimate Star Wars Freak 08:42, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)
        • The biggest issues I have with it are: (1) Why create two short seperate articles for one song, when it's the same exact song with nothing generally changed but the singers and (sometimes) the arrangement? (1a) Somesongs which have been perpetually covered, like "Something", would have at least five or six articles, as there are at least five or six major cover versions. (2) This was never an issue until you (this is not a personal attack, but stating facts) and the others began that Mariah Carey project, which, in the opinions of some, is spiriling out of control. Carey might be a top-seling artist, but no artist is special enough to deserve unique treatment for their articles, especialy when it comes to her covering songs that have been recorded, as major hits, for other artists. There was no reason her version of "Theme From Mahogany (Do You Know Where You're Going To)" had a article before Diana Ross' original had. That's poor and biased planning and editing (as is identifying singles Carey by other artists Carey has appeared on as a guest artist as her songs; which is both biased and false as well), and heavily violates Wikipedia's policy of NPOV. R&B and soul music, because of Wikipedia's systematic bias, are already poorly covered here, and only a small few editors (me, BrothaTimothy, Volatile, and, when he's available, TUF-KAT) are helping to fix this problem (for reasons which both do and don't make sense at the same time, hip hop music is covered much more in depth). If you really want to hep the needs of the encyclopedia, help fix the discographies for the R&B artisls that do not yet have them, and help us expand article like Boyz II Men past the level of stubs. --FuriousFreddy 14:03, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)
          • Perhaps I should have made my post clearer. I want an official policy and I don't care what it is, I just want to end these debates. If more people on the site would prefer ONE article per song (until it exceeded the size limit of 32Kb of course) then by all means make that the official policy. All I desire is an official policy so we can stop these debates. If more people seem to see it best my way, I suggest you step down and accept an official policy which doesn't agree with you. Id rather there just be a policy so things can be made clear and to prevent these pointless debates. And in reference to me helping, Carey's pretty much the only R&B artist I like, so I can't really help out with any others because I don't have a huge amount of knowledge on them. Ultimate Star Wars Freak 16:08, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)
            • At the very least, if you make an article for a song you know is a cover, why not at least (since you seem to prefer seperate articles) make an article (or even a stub) for the original? And Wikipedia is not just about what you "like". Yes, certainly your interests are going to lead you towards editing articles about things you like, but only editing articles about things you "like" won't help the project much. I've edited articles on things I outright depsise (B2K and 3LW, among others) because the articles were poorly written and needed to be fixed. If an offical policy is made where it's decided that it's okay to have seperate articles for covers of the same song, then I will abide by that. HOwever, there is no need for statemnts such as this: "...I suggest you step down and accept an official policy which doesn't agree with you." THat could very much have been reworded in a more professional way.--FuriousFreddy 16:53, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)
              • One article per song seems like plenty in virtually all cases. I can't imagine any song which would need more than that, but in any case, it should be a strong presumption that one article is ample. Tuf-Kat 16:57, Jun 19, 2005 (UTC)
                • Ok, then how do I (or we, if you want to help) go about trying to get people to agree on an official policy? Ultimate Star Wars Freak 22:52, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)
                  • Put a message on the talk pages of some articles that will be affected. If nobody objects, merge articles at your leisure. If someone does, then we discuss until a consensus emerges. Tuf-Kat 23:56, Jun 19, 2005 (UTC)
                    • I have had trouble with this issue too, though for two versions of a song by the same artist. the songs in question are "Ace of Spades (song)" and "Motörhead (song)" which have corresponding "Ace of Spades (song; live)" and "Motörhead (song; live)" articles.After the articles' creator reverted my merges, I posted both live version articles on VfD and the consensus was to keep (although there were not many votes and those who did vote seemed rather biased). Personally I aggree that there is no point having two articles about the same song unless the article goes over the size limit. --Moochocoogle 00:47, 31 August 2005 (UTC)
      • Had their been a discussion on the talk page before you redirected, Moochocoogle, I might not have reverted so quickly. I left a message on your talk page, to say why I had undone your work, your response was to go to VfD. I strongly recommend following Tuf-Kat suggestion above and test the water first. I thank you for your later note explaining communication is not always as good as as it could be. I have now had a chance to browse through a few 'multiple reference song articles' and I still find them more confusing than not. I can see that it is possible to be encyclopedic AND mergist, but please consider that dedicated articles can be more effective, depending on the circumstances and comparisons in usages. I strongly oppose any policy on this issue, I would like to treat each case on it's own merits. Personally I don't think Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Motörhead (song; live) or Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Ace of Spades (song; live) showed biased views, but then I'm obviously biased. Alf 08:37, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

I think there is a major question that has to be addressed here. While nowadays it is customary to have a songwriter who is also a singer, in bygone days songwriters and singers were two different professions, and a songwriter would put out a song which was normally recorded by more than one artist. Often, quite a few of these would chart -- an extreme example is "Again," which charted in at least 6 different versions in 1949! I have a major objection to using a title format like "Songname (atristname song)" because most of the songs I'm writing articles about were done by multiple artists. I would disambiguate by using the year composed rather than the artist. -- BRG 19:29, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

    ** INDEPENDENT COMMENT** I am very in favor of a standardized song titling. However, the Key to all of this is to form a permanent, comprehensive and usefull archive of this information, right? Therefore, the information, and any method of titling it, should be:

1) Comprehensive: all significant artists and recordings (including significant variations by the same artist, and texual revisions by the author, or others) should be mentioned, as much as feasible
2)Relatively searchable: irregardless of the searcher's initial bias knowledge, or lack thereof (ie: if an individual is not aware that "I will always love you" was originally performed by Dolly Parton in "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, then they should still be able to find the information on this song)
3)Fully cross-referenced: so that the searcher can follow the information 'trail' 4)accurate
This is all obvious, but seemed to have gotten lost in the discussion. The methodology is irrelevant, so long as the need is fulfilled.

[edit] Professional Reviews

First, I'm really impressed with the work this WikiProject has done to standardise song pages. I think that the song infobox could be improved if a section for professional reviews were included. I know that allmusic.com writes reivews for very significant songs, and there are always reviews on the NME or dotmusic sites as well. Moreover, Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums includes a section for professional reviews. What do you think?

Acegikmo1 04:41, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Yes, it could really use it. There are some good single reviews out there, especially on the All Music Guide. Could someone adjust the template so it can include reviews? --Reaper X 22:14, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Infobox template

I've created a template (at Template:Song infobox) based upon the format specified on the project page, and I've incorporated that template at Imagine (song) as an example. If you edit that page, you'll see that it is now a lot easier to use the standardized format you've defined. Cheers. --Arcadian 13:14, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

This is an easier template. I would like to be able to have it read "on the album" instead of "from the album" as early 60s and 70s songs particularly appear later on albums. Any ideas in the meantime? Alf 23:53, 14 July 2005 (UTC)
If you have read the discussion above, there's already a template called Single infobox for the songs. -- WB 02:25, July 24, 2005 (UTC)

FYI: Template:Song infobox has been nominated for deletion at Templates for deletion by WB. BlankVerse ∅ 14:31, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Songs in bold

I feel that the issue of placing songs in bold needs to be discussed as there seems to be some inconsistences. When placing a song in bold, whether it be at the start of an article, in a table or list, etc. should the double quotation marks be bolded as well. That is should it be "Song" or "Song". I feel that we should agree on a format that can be used throughout.

My vote is for "Song" as this looks much neater, it more clearly highlights that fact that it is a song title and as such this is what I have been using. Ianblair23 22:38, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

Hmm... That is a good point, "Song" does look better and it highlights more clearly that songs go in quotes. --Moochocoogle 23:31, 14 July 2005 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Punctuation deals with this and recommends quotation marks not to be bolded in this case. --Bensin 20:34, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Old sheet music

I feel that the "Song" template is too biased towards modern popular recorded music. There are many classic old songs that are no longer in copyright that would be perfect for posting on here but don't really fit in with the proposed template. Take a look at You're a Grand Old Flag for a great example. It has an image of the song sheet, information about the sont, and even the lyrics. And it's not copyrighted!

Are there any thoughts about this and how to set up pages for old sheet music? --Markkawika 09:54, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

  • Thanks for getting involved. I do aggree that this project is biased towards modern pop music. If you know about the way songs were (and, I would assume, still are) published as sheet music then please go ahead and change the project page. Also if you feel that a new infobox needs to be created then by all means create one and show it here. Be bold! ;) --Moochocoogle 00:35, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Additional colorbars for single songs

I noticed a number of 12" MAXI Singles were color-coded in 'lightblue', instead of the standard 'yellow'. I think it was intially done in error, however I believe it makes sense to further categorize singles by color, as they are already noted as such in many of the infoboxes (IE - 45/single vs 12" 'MAXI Single', 'CD Single'.

Either way a decision should be made (add category or not), and either cleanup or promotion of additional song/single categories will be required. Barrettmagic 13:10 August 10, 2005 (UTC)

The single boxes color codes have already been set. If you see a light blue infobox for a single, by all means make it yellow. --FuriousFreddy 07:00, 26 August 2005 (UTC)
Songs are often relesed as singles in more than one format. The colour is yellow for all single releases. --Moochocoogle 14:44, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Deletion list

Hi folks,

I just wanted to let you know about a new list of deletion debates related to articles on songs and albums. You can find it here: Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Songs and albums.

If you find this list useful, please help maintain it by adding new items or archiving old ones. Thanks!

Oh, and please feel free to join the project. We need all the help we can get.

Cheers,

-- Visviva 15:15, 15 August 2005 (UTC)



[edit] Some updates are needed on...

The High and Mighty Color songs list. Im sorry if im just whining though.Gaijin Otaku 01:14, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] MoS issues

The Template as it stands is out of keeping with the Manual of Style in a few respects:

  1. It links the artist name twice.
  2. It capitalises "singles chronology".
  3. The example given uses "[[CD]]" instead of " [[Compact disc|CD]]" (and [[UK]] instead of [[United Kingdom]] on the second occasion, which doesn't need to be linked in any case).

Most problems in articles actually come from people ignoring the Project guidelines, or copying out-of-date versions of the template from other articles, or editing according to music-journalism norms under the (often very strong) impression that they're set out in the Project. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 08:15, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] "Airplay only" singles

I'm currently trying to bring the Christina Aguilera related articles up to project standards, but I'd like to be clear about whether or not an "airplay only" single, which wasn't released commercially can count as an orange header.

  • Um, that's not something I'd previously thought about. I wouldn't give it a yellow header but modify the album track box to include a chart position section. I would assume this will become more of a problem with music downloads becoming more popular. Album tracks may end up charting on download charts. If this happens a lot we may have to make a different infobox. --Moochocoogle 00:22, 31 August 2005 (UTC)
    • I'm also really interested in a separate {{album track infobox}} template for the Orange songs. Album tracks are listed on List of Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, which I would like to focus on getting proper infoboxes for, if possible. As with the Helter Skelter example, the main change is the track position is used at the bottom instead. If nobody tries this for a little bit, I might give it a shot. --Interiot 06:46, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
      • So it looks like airplay-only are orange? I've been doing some airplay-only Nine Inch Nails singles, and I've been using yellow, so I'd like to know if that's not right. -- Rynne 14:06, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] EM, don't revert (neautrality)

One person's decision does not suddenly make something policy. The person who edited that does not make it policy, nor does my deicision make it policy. To be fair, I've made that section neutral so that neither way is endorsed until we can reach a consensus, so EM, for the sake of being fair, don't revert it, and keep it neutral for now. Is that fair? OmegaWikipedia 00:47, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

Could this be discussed before being changed? If you want to bring in more opinions, you could list this page at RfC. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 10:33, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Resources

Allmusic.com has a complete list of all charting singles on Billboard charts including Hot 100 and other singles charts ie R&b country in its articles for the artist and the album. Top 40 charts has an extensive database of charts from 2000 onwards see [1] but beware of the popups. As an Australian, ARIA has an end-of-year charts from 1989 onwards and a list of certifications at the end of each year for singles and albums (platinum and gold). Australian musical charts aka the estimable Jamie from Monash has a subscription list of the Australian singles and album charts see [2]. There is a Yahoo group on charts where the UK charts are mailed out weekly. I understand that Guinness has a reliable book on UK hit singles.

Oz Music Charts has a list of #1 hits in the US, UK and Australia dating back to the 1950's. Songfacts.com lists US and UK chart positions on their database of songs see this article on Hotel California as an example. [3]

Uncle G asked me to outline how I found chart positions so this is my response. I would be grateful for other people to outline their sources. Capitalistroadster 14:31, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

I've created a resources section for chart listing websites from your information and moved your talk here. Also added my source for UK charts. --Moochocoogle 18:09, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] New single infobox

I've created a new infobox, Template:Single infobox2, with new fields for chart positions, writers and music video director. This is primarily because many single articles don't use the original infobox, but the raw syntax instead, to allow those new fields to be included. Unfortunately, using raw syntax happens to increase article size, decreases the ease of editing the infobox, doesn't keep a consistent appearance of single articles throughout Wikipedia, and does not obey some of the WikiProject Music and Song guidelines (as well as Wikipedia's manual of style). I wanted to remedy these problems, so I've started using it on Mariah Carey single articles, such as We Belong Together, Hero (Mariah Carey song) and Vision of Love. I hope that every many single articles will end up using either the original or new infoboxes, so that everything can be edited easily and from one place. Please tell me what you think. Extraordinary Machine 22:42, 17 September 2005 (UTC) I admit it was a mistake to say "every" single article, but I stand by my other comments. 17:50, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

I'm going to have disagree with the usage of this new single infoxbox. The one currently used in many single articles seems fine. The increase in article size isn't that big of a difference. Using the syntax also limits what a user can or can't add to an article. Like for instances, the Britney Spears articles do not include a line for single certifications unless it has actually recieved one. As most of Britney Spears' singles were never released commercially, it doesn't make much sense to put a blank line of certification for most of the articles.
Another problem with this singlebox is the issue of listing B-sides and music video directors. Like take for instance, the articles on old Soul/R&B songs like "Respect" and "I'll Be There". In the era in which these articles were released, B-sides were very common, and these songs did not have music video directors. If we implement this new singlebox, it will look ridiculous to have a blank space for music video directors as most songs during this era did not have music videos. Also many current songs, do not have B-Sides on a regular basis, but some do. Putting a blank space for each line would also be a bit out of context.
In all, the current box is fine the way it is. It gives a unified look across Wikipedia, but also gives room for each artist to reflect different areas of their field, without putting them out of context (which the new singlebox would)
How does the current singlebox violate the manual of style also? If you're talking about the parentheses, I believe those can easily be put into the articles to help stay within the MoS. But other than that, I don't believe it violates any policy. OmegaWikipedia 23:04, 17 September 2005 (UTC)
I'm not saying that this infobox should be used on every single article on Wikipedia, or that every article has to have an infobox at all. A blank line is no different than having blank lines for the "Recorded" field in the current infobox, and nobody seems to have a problem with those. Likewise, I'd hardly think people would call it "ridiculous" to have one empty field in articles for B-sides. This is the point that I am trying to make (and I have already made to you several times): there is not a unified look across Wikipedia; articles that use the current infobox look different to the ones that use raw syntax, and at times the raw syntax articles look different from each other. That is when I'd expect readers to think it looks "ridiculous", as well as unprofessional. With an infobox, every article that uses it can be altered from one place. As for parentheses, you say that you could easily put the parentheses into articles without problem, but you've already demonstrated in your edits this past week or so that conforming to WikiProject Music guidelines is of little importance to you. To everybody else, keep in mind that OmegaWikipedia has voiced his displeasure at almost all of the edits I have made to Mariah Carey single articles recently, and has now engaged me in an edit war, following me around and undoing my contributions to them. Extraordinary Machine 23:21, 17 September 2005 (UTC)
Actually many of the single articles have phased out the "Recorded" portion, so thats not really an issue. And how about music video directors? You seem to have avoided that question, we shouldnt think its ridiculous when an article on a song by Aretha Franklin from the 60s has a blank in its music video director spot? I agree that there should be a unified look, and that look can already be seen in the current single box used in most singles. For the most part, they do have a very unified look. Which articles do you have issues with? If you point them out to me, I will make it my personal responsibility to fix them all unified. And I will also make them conform to the MoS too.
As for the Wikiproject Music guidelines, I've explained to you already why I disagree with their edits. When the original change was put into place with the article, there was no discussion or consensus. If there had been one, I would not mind accepting the policy, but there was nothing on that matter. Just the same, when I tried to change the article, you disagreed and asked for a discussion. The same thing applies here. Policies to Wikipedia cant be changed by one person (not me, not you, nor anyone else)
To everybody else, keep in mind that Extraordinary Machine is actually the one who started an edit war. He made an edit, I disagreed with it, and tried to talk it over on the talk pages, but he refused to discuss the matter and acting aggressive and insulting me. I have repeatedly tried to reason with him and discuss things rationally, but he always refuses to listen and constantly threathens me. I accidently changed a screen caption by mistake, and he's trying to file an Rfc against me now, because I did that, even though I already apoligized, and didnt mean to do that. I am definitely not following him around like he claims, but I do have many of the Mariah Carey articles on my watchlist, and I disagree with his edits. I have tried to talk to him rationally, but he never listens. OmegaWikipedia 23:41, 17 September 2005 (UTC)
I've already said that I don't expect the infobox to be used on every single article. It could easily be integrated into articles for more recent singles than Aretha Franklin's; for example (from your edit history) Hollaback Girl, Cool (song), Low (song) and many others. I'd convert them now, in fact, except that I know you'd just undo my edits as swiftly and aggressively as if they constituted vandalism. I refused to discuss my edits? Talk:We Belong Together would disagree with you. Extraordinary Machine 12:49, 18 September 2005 (UTC)
And who are you to decide what singles your new box would fit under? Stalking my edits, eh? I see how it is. Besides the box, which I disagee with, among other matters, I disagree with your edits because the lead is written very poorly. "Someday is a single by Mariah Carey, the third from her debut album, Mariah Carey." What? Since when has that beeen good English? Look at articles like Bill Clinton or other aspects involving entries that were of a series. It's better English to go "Someday is the third single from Mariah Carey's debut album...". Just the same way the Bill Clinton article goes, "Bill Clinton was the 42nd President of the United States" not "Bill Clinton was a president of the United States, the 42nd". Yes, overall you didn't really discuss. You were actually pretty civil at first like that page you mentioned, and I thought we could avoid an edit war. Then on the "Shake It Off" talk page you began to act up OmegaWikipedia 03:44, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Charting position order

The section states that "chart positions included should probably be for the artist's home chart, charts in English speaking countries and charts in which the single reached the Top 40.", but it also asks users to list positions in order of highest to lowest, regardless of the national chart.

Isn't the first condition sufficient enough, where we list an artist's home charts followed by any relevant English-speaking charts, and finally any additional Top 40 positions? Because when you view artist pages, their singles discography have always been listed in a similar order, with home charts followed by other relevant international positions. This leads to a kind of discrepancy in the formatting between the artist and singles pages.... --Madchester 14:24, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] ONE article per composition.

This needs to be established as set policy, because the seperations of articles covered by different people is ridiculous. It makes the encyclopedia cumbersome to read if a user has to click multiple articles to read about one song. Many of the splits border on the arbitrary, and without consistency, the Wikipedia is going to continue to look lobsioded and non-credible in the eyes of much of the public.

Articles on songs should not even be that big of a deal, or large to the point where a split is neccessitated. Or shall we simply sit and wait for someone to make articles for every major version of "The Star-Spangled Banner" before this issue is handled? --FuriousFreddy 05:00, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

(note that when I posted this, I had no idea a real The Star Spangled Banner (Whitney Houston song) article actually existed. Yikes.) --FuriousFreddy 01:33, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
Is there anybody opposed? I don't think I've seen anyone defend the practice. If no one pipes up soon, I'll put it on this project page. Tuf-Kat 06:56, 24 September 2005 (UTC)
Sorry, I do oppose. I think there are circumstances that warrant it. Yesterday (song) - would I like to see all the versions covered? Well no I wouldn't, but the article's coverage of them is woefully inadequate;
"Yesterday" has achieved recognition as being the most recorded song in the history of popular music; its entry in the Guinness Book of Records suggests over 3000 different cover versions to date, by an eclectic mix of artists including Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles, Wet Wet Wet, Plácido Domingo, and Boyz II Men. Astonishingly, "Yesterday" laid claim to this record only two years after its release in 1965."
I think that songs released as a single by a major artist, forming part of their own discography do no harm to have their own article: the article I Heard It Through the Grapevine is, in my view, too much on one song and is confusing, or at least very attention reliant. I can't see a happy medium otherwise I'd suggest it, I have no objection to guidance being issued, but stand by my earlier comments about judging each on their own merits when the circumstances demand. Alf melmac 09:05, 24 September 2005 (UTC)
That would create a problem with people creating an article for every supposedly notable version of any given song, resulting in 10 different articles on "Jingle Bells" and such floating around. How do you propose to make the "Grapevine" article less confusing? The two major versions of the song cannot have seperated articles, since one cannot be discussed without the other. Is it the number of infoboxes? In that case, we can limit them to the three major versions. Either way, seperate articles are not the way to go here: there's no way the result would be anything but redundant and possibly amatuerish, reguardless of who did it. One article on all major covers of songs like "Yesterday" would be a good idea (especially considering how long that article is). In any case, there should not be a plethora of articles each seperately covering someone's cover of a song floating around. --FuriousFreddy 01:32, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
Major ditto to Fred's proposal. I think of no logical reason to have two, three, five, ten articles for the same song by different artists. And, honestly, the only versions that should be included are the original and noteworthy (i.e. singles or well-respected album tracks) covers. Alf's example of Yesterday isn't very applicable here. The only genuinely notable (well-known) cover is Boyz II Men's, and there simply isn't enough information about that cover (besides chart info) to necessitate a separate article. While Sinatra, Charles, and Domingo may be well-known artists, their covers are simply not notable. The three of them have covered any number of songs, and it would be impertinent for an encyclopedia to have articles about every song they covered.
The “IHITTGV” thing is just a matter of personal taste. Personally, I think that article works well as a conglomerate of the versions, three of which were the product of the same label, and are similar in sound and production. Many of the other versions (with exception to CCR) aren’t notable enough to be separated either. Again, this is an encyclopedia, not a data dump. Most people aren’t looking for articles about the Kaiser Chief’s cover of IHITTGV. Volatile 17:44, 24 September 2005 (UTC)
In reference to "Grapevine", seperations of the Gladys Knight and Marvin Gaye versions would lead to two articles which will essentially duplicate the same information, because you can't mention one in detail without mentioning the other in detail. --FuriousFreddy 01:32, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Notability Criteria for Songs

  • I have written an extensive comment on notability criteria for songs on the WP:music talk page. Please feel free to add any thoughts that you might have. Capitalistroadster 09:34, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Color classification for soundtrack songs

can we lighten that purple up some, for readibility's sake (and maybe the b-sides' green as well)? --FuriousFreddy 00:44, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

I was trying to find colours that weren't used for other things. I understand they are a little dull but I'm going to suggest a new infobox style anyway. --Moochocoogle 21:36, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Folk tunes, older songs

Is there an infobox for folk tunes and older music? The one currently used for singles assumes a modern song that has been recorded by a single artist or group. But what about songs like "O Holy Night", "Dixie", or "Ode to Joy"? Has something for these been created? BrianSmithson 15:48, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

I know this is a problem. I'm starting to think that the current infobox is not focused on the right things. It is very much biased towards singles and the commercial aspects of songs. I'm going to rethink the infobox and suggest a new one. I know this is going to be rather drastic due to the amount of articles that implement the current one but I really think it needs doing sooner rather than later. --Moochocoogle 21:34, 24 October 2005 (UTC)
I expect you might have something in mind for what you think should be included in a more genericized infobox. But another option might be to create a new one for songs not particularly associated with a particular artist, such as a Christmas carol or a drinking song. Information like "First published" and "Written by" becomes more important, as does perhaps "First performed by". Can't wait to see what you come up with. BrianSmithson 11:36, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
"Country House"
Lyrics by: Damon Albarn
Music by: Damon Albarn / Graham Coxon / Alex James / Dave Rowntree
Published: 1995

OK, here's an idea. It's very simple. Just a small, basic infobox for all songs with "Lyrics by", "Music by" and "Published". Singles can still use a single infobox as well. --Moochocoogle 14:38, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

Humm. Then there are folksongs for which the answers would be Anonymous, Anonymous and -- does the Percy folio count? Goldfritha 23:29, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Song title in infobox

To align it with the existing conventions in WP:ALBUMS, I bolded the title of the song in the chronology section of the infobox. It's a practice that has already been used for quite some time for editors working on song articles. --Madchester 19:29, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Um, I'd like to point out that this "convention" of bolding the album's name in the infobox happened a couple of days ago without any discussion. I don't particularly care one way or another, but one shouldn't make an argument from its antiquity or from its consensus. Jkelly 22:19, 24 October 2005 (UTC) Update: Here is the diff, from October 22nd. Jkelly 22:21, 24 October 2005 (UTC)
Actually there's been a gradual progression towards such changes within the infobox: bolding the title, adding album ordinals, catalogue numbers, etc. For example
For some reason, those improvements haven't been discussed in the Project Talk page or changed within the WikiProject Songs template, yet they've been gradually evolving in Template:Album infobox. Go figure.
Regardless, the project states that it is not yet fully defined. Feel free to add stuff to make things clearer. I think some of these changes to the infobox template need to be addressed on the actual WikiProject Songs page. Editors just need to inform everyone of these changes on the actual template page and the project page, so that song articles remain "relatively" consistent across the board.--Madchester 22:03, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Bolding of song title & wikilinking years, etc.

I'd like to register opposition to the idea that the song title in the chronology section of the infobox be bolded. There's no obvious reason to do this; all I can think of is aeshetics, but it looks slightly uglier to me.

On the subject of Wikilinks in the infobox, could it be made clear that multiple occurrences of years, names, etc., shouldn't be linked? I've had a number of run-ins with editors who insist on linking the same year up to four times in the same infobox, their justification being that it's in the template. The template, of course, can't distinguish between a new year and a duplicated one; the editor using it can. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 09:00, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Guidelines for covers?

Are there any guidelines for what constitutes a cover version for mentioning in song articles, or even better, what consititutes a notable cover worthy of mention? Some questions came up regarding "Hurt" (Nine Inch Nails / Johnny Cash) that I'm looking for guidance on.

  1. What are the instances in which a song can be termed a cover? Obviously, new studio recordings of other musiciansl songs count. I'd assume that regularly-performed live covers count, too, because they're mentioned in the cover version article. But what about an artist dueting live with the primary songwriter (e.g., did David Bowie cover "Hurt" when he sang it live with Nine Inch Nails)?
  2. What about including some, but not all, of a song? If musicians ad-lib part of another artists' song (e.g., a line or two, maybe a whole chorus) is that considered a cover? Perhaps a "partial cover"?
  3. What makes a cover notable enough for mention in a song article? Again, obvious cases are when the cover becomes more popular than the original (e.g., Soft Cell's "Tainted Love") or when a cover version becomes a notable hit for the covering band (e.g., Devo's "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction). But there are also numerous other covers of popular songs that aren't particularly notable on their own. So what should the inclusion criteria be?

I appreciate any insight you have. -- Rynne 14:32, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

The only other choice besides "cover" is "remake." If it's radically different, it can be called a remake, though "cover" is often still used. The main question is whether the cover/remake was a notable version. That might answer some of your questions. Notability of covers is by the usual notability standards. If people remember it, or might be wondering and searching, feel free to mention it in the article. If it was released a single, definitely mention it. I forget what they call that when they just put in a little bit of a song. Quoting, maybe? -Freekee 05:17, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Several inappropriate Coldplay article reverts

This is a copy of the message left on Madchester's Talk page by me, on account of (IMHO) improper reverts of my edits that only preserve outdated Album/Song project style guidelines and superfluous internal linking. While my language was strong, this is not meant as any type of smear or harrassment, but rather to bring to attention to instances where reverts to proper edits are being done to the detriment of the project. The opinions of anyone very familiar with the MoS guidelines on internal linking as well as the subtlely changing style guidelines of WP:Albums would be appreciated. - Liontamer 20:06, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

I just saw you (Madchester) rollback all of the Manual of Style and WP:Album style fixes I did for Coldplay's singles, EPs and albums, thanks to the Song infobox template not being updated both properly and in conjuction with the edits to the Album infobox. It seems obvious to me that you selectively endorse the revisions to the Manual of Style or the WP:Albums style guide (e.g. bolding article titles in artists' chronologies), as your reverts (intentionally misrepresented in your edit summaries as "copyedits") to various article edits go against the current WikiProject Albums style and the MoS guidelines in terms of undoing En dashes, mm:ss album lengths, and proper track listing style, as well as propogating piping years to "XXXX in music", low added-value links to years and dates as well as duplicate Wikilinks in articles and templates for years, dates, bandnames, release titles, etc.. I'm being BOLD and editing the Song infobox template soon to be more like the Album infobox, as it should be. You should be reasonable enough to understand that the WP:Album standard is meant to be consistantly applied to WP:Songs, regardless of whether anyone has actually updated the Songs infobox template in due course. It's improper that you feel it necessary to revert completely legitimate edits (generally without properly stating the reasons for revert no less) because you feel territorial about various Coldplay articles, which is against guidelines when people are making edits that are both in good faith, and legitimate alongside the style guides. While I don't take it personally, don't intend on getting into an edit war and I'm sure you can rebutt for yourself, I will be stating these issues in the Songs & Albums projects Talk pages in order to clarify that your reverts are misguided and impeding these projects. Please adapt to currently-in-use style guidelines for WP:Albums like most other users have in order for these projects to continue moving forward. - Liontamer 19:55, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
Once again, please note that WP:ALBUMS, "is only a guide and you should feel free to personalize an article as you see fit." Likewise, the Manual of Style indicates that ""Rules and regulations such as these, in the nature of the case, cannot be endowed with the fixity of rock-ribbed law. They are meant for the average case, and must be applied with a certain degree of elasticity."
The great thing about Wikipedia is that its guidelines give users the range and flexibility to improve articles as they see fit. If you look around at song articles like "Lyla" or "Paranoid Android" or album articles like Don't Believe the Truth, Think Tank, they're great examples of articles that use the existing guidelines as the base template, but expanding on it in ways that editors see to be useful.
Remember according to the MoS, "Clear, informative, and unbiased writing is always more important than presentation and formatting. Writers are not required to follow all or any of these rules: the joy of wiki editing is that perfection is not required." --Madchester 21:12, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Consensus on category conventions

If Category:Fooband albums and Category:Fooband singles exist (as per current guidelines), should they be parented by Category: Fooband or not? Please add to discussion at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Music#Any_consensus_on_categories?. --pfctdayelise 02:05, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Single chronology for Tori Amos

Hi. I'm writing because I have worked on some single articles for Tori Amos ("Me and a Gun," "Crucify," "Silent All These Years" and "Professional Widow" so far), and I've run across a problem. The singles released in the UK and the US do not match up -- i.e., "Silent All These Years" was released earlier in the US and the UK; in the UK, other singles came first.

At this time, Amos, an American-born artist who I believe was living in America, was being handled by the Atlantic UK divison East/West Records. So whose chronology do I honor? That of the United States or the UK? (Not to mention that there were more released in Europe, but I haven't found enough info on those.)

I have not added infoboxes to some of these articles because I am not sure what to do. Jacqui★ 16:32, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

My advice would be just to pick one chronology for the main article and stick to it. You can then make a note of the other release dates. For the infoboxes, you can edit the box so that there are two chronology sections or include the info in one section like "It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)". --Moochocoogle 15:02, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Singles not from albums

Some songs are singles that did not appear on any original album by the artiste, such as Hey Jude or She Loves You. Don't we need a different infobox for these songs? The She Loves You article is quite cluttered now. Johnleemk | Talk 11:14, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

"From Album" is an optional field. You can just disinclude it and you should be fine. --FuriousFreddy 23:38, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Dixie (song) peer review

I've placed Dixie (song) on peer review. Feedback most appreciated. --BrianSmithson 14:49, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Infobox color

Why are the infoboxes for singles of such a gaudy yellow color? In most cases, this color doesn't match the colors of the CD cover. imho a less shiny color would be more appropriate. --MRB 16:40, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

The color isn't there for decoration. It's for organizational and informative purposes. --FuriousFreddy 21:23, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
OK, but why can't the infobox be both informative and pretty? MRB 10:53, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
Yellow looks fine to me. --FuriousFreddy 23:32, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] List of notable songs

Think all the interesting songs have been covered? Think that they all have infoboxes? You might be surprised what songs are missing. I have created a list of notable songs (critically acclaimed or high chart position) that may not be covered in wikipedia as part of the Missing Encyclopedic Article wikiproject. The goal was to help identify songs of importance that "should be covered" by creating articles or redirects for redlinked songs and removing valid blue links (song is covered, has an infobox). For a comparison, you may want to see the companion list, list of notable albums. Any area where you can help would be awesome. Thanks!!! --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 05:52, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Exhaustive lists and Almanac objects

  • List_of_reference_tables#Art_and_culture

[edit] Promo singles

Should promotional single infoboxes have their own colour? Underneath-it-All 01:14, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

I don't think promotional singles should have their own articles. Extraordinary Machine 01:50, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
No, I don't thinks singles should have articles at all. Songs should have articles and there should not be more than one article per song. --Moochocoogle 14:56, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] State of Maine Song

A user created the page State_of_Maine_Song, and I'm not sure what to make of it. I thought I'd check over here to see if anyone here could take care of this and verify it. Cheers! Semiconscious · talk 00:11, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

I just removed the lyrics as a potential copyright violation. Jkelly 23:35, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Articles for the Wikipedia 1.0 project

Hi, I'm a member of the Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team, which is looking to identify quality articles in Wikipedia for future publication on CD or paper. We recently began assessing using these criteria, and we are looking for A-Class and good B-Class articles, with no POV or copyright problems. You featured article candidates are probably A or B-class. Can you recommend any suitable song articles? We are also interested in your model (FA) articles. Please post your suggestions here.--Shanel 21:03, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] I Predict a Riot

Hi - can someone please explain why my redirect from I Predict A Riot to I Predict a Riot is not working? It is just pretending I hadn't made the edit, but it's there in the history!. I'm confused! DJR (Talk) 22:38, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

Try clearing the bowser cache and refreshing - press ctrl while you refresh -- getcrunkjuicecontribs 22:53, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

Nice one - problem solved. Cheers, DJR (Talk) 22:57, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Category talk:English language songs

I just created this cat and well... you have two competing things... will this category be useful? Maybe not... but, if we have "Arabic language songs" should we exclude English just because there are a lot more songs on Wikipedia in English? In any case... please come to the talk page since we need to decide this for all "English language foo". Thhanks. gren グレン 01:12, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "The Supremes songs" or "Songs by The Supremes"

Hi! I came across Category:Songs by the Supremes, which is named differently the all the other songs by artist. Apparently, there was a CfR vote in (here) in September 2005, with half the votes saying "rename for constistency" and the other half saying "rename all the others; 'Songs by X' is better than 'X songs'". As far as I can see, no such umbrella nomination has been made. Thoughts on this? /skagedal... 18:16, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Background color?

It doesn't look like the current version of the infobox actually provides support for background color at all. In fact, the articles being used as examples for album tracks and B-sides are clearly using an outdated version of the infobox.

Maybe what needs to be done is to delete all references to background color and direct people to Template:Song infobox instead, and make a new infobox for B-sides? –Unint 19:54, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Which WikiProject Songs Infobox Template a/k/a WikiSingleFormat

Okay, I've seen two formats - which appear to result in the same thing - for WikiProject Songs Infoboxes. One starts like this:

{{Infobox Single 
| Name = <SINGLE NAME>
| [ Cover = <PIC>]
| Artist = <ARTIST>
| from Album = <ALBUM>
| etc.

The other starts like this:

{| id="toc" style="width:20em; margin:0 0 0.5em 1em; float:right;"
!align="center" bgcolor="yellow" colspan="3"|"<SINGLE NAME>"
|-
|align="center" colspan="3"|[[Image:<PIC>|225px|Single cover]]
|-
!align="center" bgcolor="yellow" colspan="3"|Single by <ARTIST>
|-
!align="center" colspan="3"|From the album <br>''[[<ALBUM>]]''
|-

Which is correct? – Fantailfan 12:34, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

The second is presumably a substed version of the first. It's not usually necessary to subst infoboxes, and it's obviously much easier to edit the first - so use the first I'd say. Flowerparty■ 22:08, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Infoboxes

What if an article has several cover versions, with at least one being a single? Should the article have as many infoboxes as necessary, or should it just have an infobox for the main song? (For an example of the former, see (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction.) I personally find it ugly, and so does at least one other person (who will probably nominate Satisfaction on FARC if the Satisfaction article isn't fixed up -- one of his complaints is that the infobox shouldn't be there). I'm not exactly eager to remove the infobox without input from other editors, however. Johnleemk | Talk 15:40, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I think the infobox is a real problem for this project, and it's one that hasn't really been addressed, as far as I'm aware. The problem is that the template, Template:Infobox Single, isn't geared towards songs, but towards singles - which are specific instances of songs (Template:Song infobox has the same problems, despite its name). The infobox was apparently heavily influenced by the album template, which assumes the information that applies to an LP also applies to a song. In reality, an LP is recorded once, usually by a single artist, is released once, and generally doesn't go out of print thereafter. It is a complete work in itself. A song, by contrast, is an abstract work which may be recorded by any number of artists, perhaps in different styles (genres) or in different eras, and can be released many, many times. Consequently, articles where there is more than one notable recording of the song, such as "Satisfaction" or "American Pie", feature some very unusual collections of infoboxes indeed. (A prize for anyone who can identify a more fragmented set of boxes than the ones at "I Heard It through the Grapevine", by the way :-)
"(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction"

This image has nothing to do with the song.
Written by Mick Jagger,
Keith Richards
Published 1965
Language English
Original artist The Rolling Stones, 1965
Recorded by Otis Redding, 1965
The Residents, 1976
Devo, 1978
Cat Power, 2000
Britney Spears, 2000
What we need, IMO, is a much simpler infobox that can incorporate all the primary details for the song, and can accommodate the names of all the artists who have recorded notable versions of it. This would be more versatile, and could be used for songs that weren't written to be released as a single, such as traditional folk songs or national anthems. I'd suggest the necessary fields might include:
  • Song title (naturally)
  • Image (not necessarily of an original record sleeve)
  • Image caption
  • Composer
  • Lyricist
  • Year published
  • Original artist
  • Cover artists
  • ...anything else?
Before someone tells me to {{sofixit}}, I'll have a go at making a test version. Flowerparty? 23:37, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
Ok, I've created User:Flowerparty/Test; you can see some examples of it in use at User talk:Flowerparty/Test. Because I'm incredibly lazy, I basically copied the code from the film infobox, so aesthetically it's rather unimaginative (though I quite like it). It's the concept that's more important, anyway. Anybody have any thoughts? Feel free to modify the page if you have any other ideas. Flowerparty? 01:02, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
I notice that Moochocoogle hints at a similar idea further up this page at #Folk tunes, older songs. Surely then, it's now time for decisive action! Apologies for answering your original question with a much more complicated question, by the way, John :) Flowerparty? 01:42, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
I've added an example for "Satisfaction" on the right. There's also some discsussion at User talk:Flowerparty/Test. Comments? Flowerparty☀ 07:21, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
I like it very much. I'm not sure about "covered by" though? Is that term commonly used for things like national anthems? Maybe change it to "performed by"? Or "recorded by"? Tuf-Kat 07:28, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
And the "Original artist" line needs to be optional, if this box is to be used for folk songs and national anthems. I suppose "covered by" should be optional too, for songs that have not been covered. And actually folk songs can't be said to have a "publishing" date (or, well, they may have been published, but not in the sense this implies). Should we have a separate line for "Lyrics by" and "Music by"? Tuf-Kat 07:30, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
"Dixie"

Sheet music cover, c. 1900
Written by Daniel Decatur Emmett (disputed)
Written 1997 (earliest attested)
Language English
I just added a recorded_by parameter as an alternative, actually, but yeah, you're probably right that that should be used instead. All of the parameters are optional in fact - have a look at the examples towards the bottom of the template's talk page. And there's already a separate 'lyrics by' and 'music by', but they're hidden in this example. I'm not sure about 'Published', maybe 'Written' could be an alternative for songs that weren't really published? Flowerparty☀ 07:44, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
"Written" would be good to have, but many folk songs will need an "Earliest attested". Some might want a space for top chart positions too, but I'm not sure that's necessary. Tuf-Kat 07:51, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
Ok, here's one for "Dixie" that displays the kind of information you suggest - I made up the 'earliest attrested' date ;-). I think if it's presented like this there's maybe no need for a separate earliest_attested parameter. Flowerparty☀ 08:25, 16 April 2006 (UTC)


"Actually, I think the infobox is a real problem for this project, and it's one that hasn't really been addressed, as far as I'm aware..."
I have just been asking about this in the related notability discussion.
This project still seems to have an identity crisis between singles and songs (note e.g. that the now-defunct Category:Singles by artist is still referenced on this project's main page, despite the purging of all such categories), and I feel contributors (including me) are getting mixed signals as a result.
My main point (at the above linked discussion page) was that the Infobox's Chronology is pointless unless by a lucky fluke all of an artist's singles turn out to be "notable" (i.e., if you happen to be The Beatles), but that its presence on the main page Infobox default view nevertheless encourages people to grab the default Infobox and stub away at every single all their favourite bands ever released, no matter how trivial, just to fulfill the magic Chronology.
I must just ask, as an aside: Is every song ever released as a single notable? More importantly, is that the policy of this project? It may seem a dumb question, but you might be surprised at how hard it is to find a definitive answer on these pages (i.e., here and at Notability).
If (as I assume) some (if not most) singles are unnotable, then the "song's Chronology" part of the Infobox needs some clear commentary to that effect on the project page, and ideally "moving" away from the default box, so that it doesn't give the default visual indication that "Chronology = good, therefore all singles need an article". This also maybe needs to be made a bit more explicit over at Notability, although that's a whole other discussion.
Speaking of which, there seems complete polarisation of views over there re: "notability" - from "make articles for everything, however trivial, almost everything is notable" to "these proposed guidelines are not tight enough, this will not solve the stub problem, very few songs are truly notable", and with surprisingly little in between. The current guidelines, judging by the discussions, seem to have a "pleases no one" status at the moment. FWIW, I personally find them pretty arbitrary, and am in the "not tight enough" camp.
Hope it all gets sorted out, seems potentially a very worthwhile project, but it needs its policies defining ASAP. Will keep an eye on developments, and will help if I can. :-) But current uncertainty over policy simply puts me off right now. --DaveG12345 01:54, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The outdated information

I suppose I should archive what I deleted here. Everything was under the Infobox header. None of this is applicable to the current iteration of the infobox. (The colour scheme might be useful to some future project; plus some of those example articles need re-formatting.)

| [ Reviews = ] *
  • If no reviews are available, use NoReviews = yes to hide the coloumn.
<ul><li>''[[All Music Guide]]'' [http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&token=ADFEAEE4781DD848A47120C5913A43C0BF7EFD58FE42F58250234558C0B73E4A8F0274FD0ABADBCDAEF875B47CE3FE24A45805D6C3FE2781&sql=33:znev9jq0kr0t link]
</li></ul>

Infoboxes for album tracks and B-sides can be found in the example articles below.

[edit] Colors

The background colours will vary by the type of song and the way it has been released. "Singles" are any songs released commercially as a music video or the A-side of a single (or one half of a double A-side). "Album tracks" are those songs that have been released on an artist's studio album but not as a single. "B-sides" are songs that have been included as the B-side to a single but have NOT appeared on a studio album. Soundtrack songs are songs that appear in films or musicals but have not been released commercially on their own or as part of an artist's studio album.

Singles #FFFF00 (yellow)
Album tracks #FFA500 (orange)
B-sides #2E8B57 (seagreen)
Soundtrack songs #800080 (purple)

[edit] Infobox examples

Here are some examples of articles using the infoboxes:

–Unint 02:19, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Single Sales?

dose anyone know where to get them? diff subject now i have some info on crazy gnarls barkley song has sold 420.710 in the UK alone.

[edit] Clarify: Singles or Songs?

Can someone clarify something for me? Should an article on (song) be about the song itself (history of writing, how it's performed, talk about the lyrics), or is the article on (song) about the actual single release of the song? (the tracks and b-sides on the single, the format of the single, the length of the tracks, the publisher of the disc, etc.)

Because the infobox:Single that usually goes on these songs talks about the disc format and such. I'm looking at the page for Shoe Box E.P. (Barenaked Ladies) which is a 4-song EP and basically the 'single' release for the song Shoe Box which has no article right now. Currently the E.P. article has the infobox for the song (the single) and in the body, a tracklist of the E.P. I was going to start a seperate article for the song than from the EP, but the Single Infobox I was going to move to the song's article has things like cover and format (CD) which seem to fit the E.P. article better.

What would be the best way to deal with this (the problem is that it's called 'E.P.' even though it's more like a single, and the only physical single release for this song) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by TheHYPO (talk • contribs) .

Ideally the article should include both: information on the song itself and its release. The example you pointed out (Shoe Box E.P.) should be moved to "Shoe Box", because that is the song's actual title. The release info (that it was an EP) should be mentioned in the article.
Note: Songs are almsot always not notable enough to have their own articles, unless they were singles (thus confusion on titles) -- getcrunkjuicecontribs 20:12, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
The issue is simply that some songs have more than one single release, either for multiple song versions, or for the same version even. If if an artist releases a cover of a song as a single that was already a single. Is that one page for both artists' versions? one for each version? IE: Is it per-single or per-song (as a written entity) TheHYPO 06:06, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
This has been coming up quite a bit lately. I think the more widespread practice right now is to keep all information about the same song on the same page, though that's certainly up for discussion given what has to be done sometimes to make this possible. See Template talk:Infobox Single#Massive update for some recent developments, actually. And regarding EPs; sometimes EP release itself is not named after the song considered to be the "single", FWIW.
The song/single distinction is problematic, certainly. There are instances where an article is moved to a disambiguation title like "Foo (song)" as dictated by convention, even though the article itself heavily leans towards information solely on the single release. (In these cases, though, it does seem like the best solution would be to simply add material related to the song itself until it balances out...) –Unint 15:05, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] a proposal which some folks here might not like

I recently proposed a deletion recommendation for a category called "Weezer singles" on the grounds that it almost completely overlapped category:Weezer songs, and the recommendation passed. I find the overlap of "songs" and "singles" categories to be problematic, as nearly all noteworthy popular songs are singles (take a look at category:U2 singles and category:U2 songs, for example). So I'm inclined to recommmend on CfD that ALL categories named "(Artist) singles" be merged into their corresponding "(Artist) songs" category, if there is one. Please note that I'm not opposing the chronological heirarchy of "(Year) singles" categories or the lovely singles infobox, just the double categorization scheme (so a song might be in "U2 songs" and "1998 singles," but not "U2 singles"). I'd like to hear from people whether they oppose or support such a recommendation.--Mike Selinker 05:34, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

I support the proposed merger. It's ridiculous for the flavor-of-the-month pop artist to have a song article as both a single and a song. And it's equally ridiculous for songs by, say, the Beatles to have all of their songs in a songs category and some of them in a separate singles category (especially since it seems that every single Beatles song ever has its own article). I'd support the elimination of the Singles by artist category altogether, and all subsequent subcats as well. Anthony Hit me up... 12:16, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
Um, I certainly don't want there to be articles about singles and then a different article about each single's a-side, but has that ever happened? Surely that is not what Mike Selinker was talking about above. But I think that this proposal eliminates useful information. One should be able to go to Category:The Beatles singles and get a list of all the singles that the Beatles released, as opposed to Category:The Beatles songs, which would be a list of some, but not all, Beatles songs from albums, singles, etc. An article that is in "U2 songs" and "1998 singles" but not in "U2 singles" needs to have its cats tidied; I don't think that is an argument for deleting a cat scheme. Jkelly 16:00, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
I think Mike's main point is that for the preponderance of artists out there, the only songs that have their own articles are singles, due to notability issues. So for the most part, the two categories overlap completely or almost completely. It would have to be determined what to do about the exceptions, as there are plenty. Aguerriero (talk) 16:16, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, I don't doubt there are exceptions. We can find them and see what makes sense.--Mike Selinker 16:39, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
I don't think anyone is suggesting that there are or will be separate articles for a song and its single. I'm also not certain I agree with Mike's claim that "nearly all noteworthy popular songs are singles". Nevertheless, I support the idea of unifying the two cat hierarchies into one called songs. Having them separate divides the focus of editors and will require perpetual maintenance (which I'm assuming will not be done). I personally don't think the ideal of having a browsable singles categories is worth it. ×Meegs 08:59, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
Another complication of separate schemes: as things are now, many songs categories contain their artist's singles category, as category:U2 songs does. Some will certainly argue that following general convention for subcategorization, U2 songs that were singles should not be included in both cats, leaving category:U2 songs for non-singles only. ×Meegs 09:04, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
Now listed at Wikipedia:Categories for deletion.--Mike Selinker 02:58, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] A single with the same name as a song, italicize or quotes?

Could anybody here provide some feedback on the recent discussion at WikiProject Albums? Perhaps that discussion should be moved here. Jogers (talk) 11:19, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Four simple questions..

  1. Let's say the song "Aidepikiw" is released as a live single. But the studio version of "Aidepikiw" is not released as a single. If I want to create an article on the single released and there's already an article on the studio version of the song, do I make a new article or just edit the studio version?
  2. Where's the best source to get song chart information? For example getting information on a song's chartings.
  3. If in a song single article I include information on who plays the guitar solos, do I need to place a header for that? Or do I just put it in there. I did the latter but someone edited it and put a header. So I'm just a bit confused.
  4. In the length section of the infobox, do we put the length of the whole single or the length of the main song on the single?

Thanks in advance. — Zee 11:25, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

  1. These days, it's generally one song, one article (in fact, some effort has gone towards consolidation in that respect). Put Infobox Single halfway down the page, if you want.
  2. That's a good question, and one many of us would like a better answer to than this. Some discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Music#Music charts, but information is scattered. Actual, physical books, if you can find them, also exist. Charts other than the US Billboard and U.K. Singles Chart have proven difficult to track down online; try fan pages, if all else fails, and hope for well-kept discographies.
  3. You mean the "Personnel" section? If there's something interesting to write about regarding the credit, I'd say it could go in both places (since the personnel listing is generally recommended, so anything else would be in addition to that).
  4. Length of the main song is the standard. If different from the album version, I tend to note which version applies.
That's the way I do things, anyway... –Unint 04:34, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
  1. So that means one article for both the song and the single?
  2. I see, thanks.
  3. No, the other user added a header titled "Distribution of guitar solos". Is that really needed?
  4. Alright, thanks a lot. — Zee 09:17, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
  1. Right.
  2. I notice that discussion didn't link to the UK Singles Charts. This should cover some of the articles you've been working on.
  3. I had a look at that. Certainly nonstandard, and it wouldn't be covered by a "personnel" section. Headers like that are pretty much subjective among people, so there's no "right" answer here. However, something like the distribution of guitar solos can probably be made a subheader in a larger section about the song overall; here, that expansion could certainly be useful. –Unint 02:41, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Which comes first?

Information about the song (song story etc.) or the musical analysis? — Prodigenous Zee - 01:33, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] J-pop songs

I'm attempting to bring the many J-pop songs into line with current category and article naming styles. Some editors have put the names of the songs (and albums and band) in all-caps, a Japanese music affectation for songs like ALL FOR YOU. This seems like shouting, and in clear violation of the guideline, "Do not replicate stylized typography in logos and album art." But it's just my opinion, and at least one editor doesn't share it. Does anyone else have any opinions on this?--Mike Selinker 07:32, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree. The guideline quoted above, Wikipedia:Naming conventions#Music, is quite clear, and is very sensible. ×Meegs 19:27, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
I agree as well, based on a discussion in the WikiProject Album. No point in having two different guidelines for very similar items. I am slowly moving pages, fixing templates and such. I must point out two things:
  • The capitalization is made because, when translating japanese into Romaji, "foreign" words and katakana words are capitalized. So, I would blame half to "replicating stylized typography" and half to "japanese translation custom".
  • What will make this difficult to maintain: Following the previous point, most discographies about japanese bands have been written in that way. In other words, there must be thousands of red links in different japanese bands that have been written following the previous comment, thus whenever an editor creates an article, it is likely to have the capitalization (in example, here
Just wanted to point this out in case you keep finding new articles created with the disputed capitalization. -- ReyBrujo 15:47, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
I'm the editor that disagrees, mainly because I wanted to maintain some consistency between the article and the song/single/album that is being written about, as ReyBrujo points out. I have nothing against the basic policy in general, but I am looking to remain faithful to how the songs are spelled/capitalized on the recordings themselves. wiki.theppn.org also retains any capitalized titles when they post (or in the case of some Tommy February6 songs, titles that have letters randomly capitalized or lower-cased.) The standardized titles could always be made as redirects. --CJ Marsicano 04:40, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
Rey's point about foreign words and katakana is very interesting. For English, I think I have a clear preference: If the title is in English, it should be lower-cased, since it's coming into an English encyclopedia which doesn't share this necessity. If it needs to be separated from a main title, the "~title~" convention seems good. But what should I think for two different styles of Japanese (not speaking Japanese)?--Mike Selinker 14:47, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

It also depends on what form you choose to use. I've seen just as many katakana and foreign words using normal capitalization as I have seen that use ALL CAPS. I think we should go with normal capitalization because it's already part of WP:MOS and it's easier to read in general. ···日本穣? · Talk to Nihonjoe 17:03, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

I favor making the capitalization natural: in song titles, capitalize the first letter of each important word. Japanese authors generally (not just in music) tend to write foreign words in all caps when mixing romaji within Japanese script. When translating this, one translates the Japanese script into natural English, and it makes good sense to naturalize the all caps at the same time. Fg2 20:56, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
So far everyone but CJ thinks we should make them English style (first letter caps only). I'm inclined to start doing this. As a matter of course, all original article titles will become redirects, so someone typing ALL FOR YOU will get to that Japanese single. Where there are two languages present, the tilde can be used to differentiate.--Mike Selinker 06:46, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
I completely agree. If some Japanese singer or band (or his, her or their graphic designer) wants to put titles in capitals, fine for them. But to expect an encyclopedia to ape such typographic whims seems potty or arrogant, and the results (e.g. in Namie Amuro) look ludicrous to me. See also this discussion, which I kicked off while unaware of the existence of this one. -- Hoary 10:28, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
Okay, I think it's now open season on changing J-pop and J-rock songs, bands, and albums (whether in article titles or in body copy) to standard capitalization. Definitely respect the distinction between multiple languages in an article title by using the "~title~" convention when necessary. But let's convert all of them so people don't think the nonstandard capitalization is what should be done.--Mike Selinker 05:36, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

What is this "~title~"-convention some of you are referring to? -- chsf 14:57, 2006-10-09

[edit] Key articles for Wikipedia 1.0

Hello! We at the Work via WikiProjects team previously contacted you to identify the quality articles in your WikiProject, and now we need a few more favors. We would like you to identify the "key articles" from your project that should be included in a small CD release due to their importance, regardless of quality. We will use that information to assess which articles should be nominated for Version 0.5 and later versions. Hopefully it will help you identify which articles are the most important for the project to work on. As well, please keep updating your Arts WikiProject article table for articles of high quality. If you are interested in developing a worklist such as this one for your WikiProject, or having a bot generate a worklist automatically for you, please contact us. Please feel free to post your suggestions right here. Thanks! Walkerma 17:41, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

So, anyone want to tackle this? I'm sure we could come up with at least a few articles. (^_^) ···日本穣? · Talk to Nihonjoe 08:48, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
Good to see that you're trying out the bot! Contact us if you need any help. Thanks, Walkerma 03:37, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Titles for articles of songs recorded by more than one act

This is related to a discussion at Talk:Invisible (Jaded Era song) that I'm in the middle of. If an article covers a song that has been recorded by more than one act, then if/when it has to be disambiguated should it be done using the name of the act who recorded the most notable version of the song, or the name of the act who recorded the song first? I think the latter makes more logical sense (as well as avoiding POV issues), but I was wondering what other people thought about this. Extraordinary Machine 20:38, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

First of all, I think there should be only one article. If that isn't possible, the name of the act that recorded it first should be used. Notability is way too relative, as you can see by taking a look at the proposed song notability guidelines (Wikipedia:WikiProject Music/Notability and Songs). --Kristbg 12:35, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
There is rarely, if ever, a good reason for two versions of the same song to have separate articles. I am totally against that. As to how the article about the song should be named, notability is simply too subjective to be a good criterium. Take the case of a song like "Everlasting Love." How do you pick which version is the most notable? If you were in the UK, you would probably argue for the one done by Love Affair. If you were in the US, you might be split between Robert Knight's or Carl Carlton's. If you were younger and didn't really know much about the popular music of a few decades ago, you might be more inclinded to go with Gloria Estefan's or Jamie Cullum's. All of these choices could be given decent arguments, and, in the end, they're all correct, because they're all possible. You could argue and be sure of your answer, but someone else can feel equally strongly about his, and where are you left? That whole thing is flogging a dead horse, I imagine, but, my point is, it's better to have a more objective criterium, like original performer. GassyGuy 07:31, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Songs recorded by more than one artist. (reprise)

Please give these discussions your attention. Uncle G 00:33, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] WikiProject Songs template

{{Template:WikiProjectSongs}}

This needs to be fixed, redirected from films to songs. --Fantailfan 01:16, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

-- I've only done one template, but this snip

[[Category:WikiProject Films|{{PAGENAME}}]]
[[Category:WikiProject banners|{{PAGENAME}}]]
[[Category:Templates using ParserFunctions|{{PAGENAME}}]]
</noinclude><includeonly>{{#switch:{{{class}}}
 |FA=[[Category:FA-Class film articles|{{PAGENAME}}]]
 |A=[[Category:A-Class film articles|{{PAGENAME}}]]
 |GA=[[Category:GA-Class film articles|{{PAGENAME}}]]
 |B=[[Category:B-Class film articles|{{PAGENAME}}]]
 |Start=[[Category:Start-Class film articles|{{PAGENAME}}]]
 |Stub=[[Category:Stub-Class film articles|{{PAGENAME}}]]
 |Dab=[[Category:Disambig-Class film articles|{{PAGENAME}}]]
 |Template=[[Category:Template-Class film articles|{{PAGENAME}}]]
 |Cat=[[Category:Category-Class film articles|{{PAGENAME}}]]
 |=[[Category:No-Class film articles|{{PAGENAME}}]]
 |#default=[[Category:Unassessed film articles|{{PAGENAME}}]]
 }}</includeonly>

still points to Films.--Fantailfan 11:11, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] A few questions

(1) How does one determine level of importance since WP:NOR and WP:NPOV apply? Should there also be "This article has been rated as X-importance on the importance scale importance scale"?

(2) Should WikiProject Songs have its own article importance grading scheme and assessment pages?

[edit] "Only 10 songs tagged"

The notice on the main page is outdated now as I just tagged at least 50 articles in the last hour. 23skidoo 16:25, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

There must be many thousands of song articles. Perhaps a bot should be used to tag the talk pages? --kingboyk 09:59, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
In progress. I'm tagging all songs stubs as class=Stub. Of course some of the articles will be past stub now, but a few false positives is a small price to pay for automating this task. --kingboyk 09:07, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The Beatles

The Beatles is up for a featured article review. Detailed concerns may be found here. Please leave your comments and help us address and maintain this article's featured quality. Sandy 15:14, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Folk songs

I've seen a number of songs tagged for this that do not fit the format: they are by that most prolific of songwriters Anonymous and do not have a release year.

A stub for "folksong" and "ballad" would probably help sort them out. Goldfritha 18:22, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

What kind of tag are you referring to? An infobox, stub template, or WikiProject tag? --kingboyk 09:06, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
stub template. Goldfritha 17:18, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

I think this project is an excellent idea! Several of the articles I've contributed have been tagged for this project but I don't believe that they fit any of the stubs (for reasons outlined above). I'm interested in traditional songs from Wales, England, Ireland, Brittany, etc. They will all contain lyrics (as they are not subject to copyright) in the original language and a translation into English, as well as some information about the song. But many of the template fields do not apply. -- Maelor 17:30, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Templates for folk songs might be wise. Perhaps featuring notable collections they are in. Perhaps giving you the option to go to the next. . . Goldfritha 01:28, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
Ideally it would be -
{folk-song-stub}}
{english-folk-song-stub}
{welsh-folk-song-stub}
{irish-folk-song-stub}
{breton-folk-song-stub}
because of the language and cultural differences?
-- Maelor 11:19, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] yallah ya nasrallah

I think it is about time this makes wikipedia. It has made many night talks and has over 18,500 direct references on the web. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 210.84.58.231 (talk • contribs) .


Anyone? 210.84.48.68 05:22, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Is it an actual song by an actual musician or band released on actual media (CD) in any English-speaking countries? Please. "Sit on My Face Stevie Nicks" is about as notable. --Fantailfan 12:07, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

None of those questions are relevant to whether it should have an article about it. -Freekee 21:01, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Lijepa naša domovino

I saw this template added to the talk page of this article about the Croatian anthem. I am just wondering if "national anthems" are going to be tagged with this for now on, so I do not revert by chance. Thanks. User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) 01:47, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

I guess it is a yes, since Special:Contributions/SirPoor is adding the templates to the NA talk pages. Well, can someone give me some insight of what happens here so I could help yall with the anthem articles? I got 3 to FA, so I just want to know. Thanks. User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) 04:05, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
I know some of the members of the project had doubts about certain articles about anthems (Kimigayo was one of them), so come see me if you have any questions. User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) 01:17, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] What to do when...

... a single has been released three times but they are all essentially the same song? I guess I'm not making much sense. Here's what I am talking about :

In my opinion three articles is somewhat too much, but at the same time I may be wrong and this may be right. So what is the best thing to do here? Merge? — Prodigenous Zee - 01:08, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Absolutely merge. This excessive splitting is a trend we need to reverse. –Unint 22:32, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
I see. But how about the infobox? — Prodigenous Zee - 00:45, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
Ah, there's the rub. There hasn't really been any consensus-reaching discussion yet. Two ways to go about it, I think:
If I were to do multiple infoboxes, then there would be too much blank space on the left (infoboxes on the right, info on the left). Second choice isn't possible because of the different covers. So how? — Prodigenous Zee - 01:33, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
{{Extra album cover}} at the bottom. For usage, see the "Misc" section of WP:ALBUM. –Unint 02:31, 16 August 2006 (UTC)


Something like this? — Prodigenous Zee - 12:16, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
Ah, sorry about the delay. Yes, that's exactly what I had in mind. I've never talked to the Iron Maiden editors, but hopefully they'll find it suitable as well. –Unint 03:17, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ratings: Cowboys Are Frequently, Secretly Fond of Each Other

Anyone willing and able to help me or find ratings information about Cowboys Are Frequently, Secretly Fond of Each Other "such as sales figures...and which record charts the song has appeared on"? I would appreciate it much and it would be a quick and easy way to turn an article into a Featured article, per Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Cowboys Are Frequently, Secretly Fond of Each Other. Hyacinth 22:09, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Total Request Live trajectories

I've noticed that several song articles contain trajectories for a music video's day-to-day positions on the MTV Total Request Live countdown. I personally believe such trajectories are completely unnecessary and better suited to a fansite than a general purpose encyclopedia, and they violate the "Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information" rule. What does everybody else think? Extraordinary Machine 17:03, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Well, first of all, if we did that all the time then I might as well start tabulating CHUM Chart statistics and...
Ah. They already do that.
I am at odds with this, frankly. The tidal wave of chart figures is getting very high, but it's better than the dark days when they appear for one week and then disappear into the past forever. And I look at some current single articles and Total Request is just one figure among dozens, from all over the world!
Of course, due to the above phenomenon citeable sources also disappear into the past for some of these charts... Maybe a better solution is to get these figures onto a site that can serve as a primary source. –Unint 04:26, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
I agree. Many editors seem to be adding huge amounts of (mostly) chart information to pop music articles as if they are meant to be dedicated reference works rather than encyclopedic overviews. Extraordinary Machine 00:35, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Fuck the Millennium

The lack of (sensible) responses on the above FA is getting quite depressing. Would any editors interested in songs please have a look at the article and leave a comment at the FAC? It would be appreciated, thank you. --kingboyk 23:04, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Peer review/Whitney Joins The JAMs

Whitney Joins The JAMs, a minor KLF song, is on Peer Review. Your comments would be appreciated. --kingboyk 14:31, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Stub-class tag

I just found this notice tag on a song talk page: This article has been automatically assessed as Stub-Class by WikiProject Songs because it uses a stub template. Then it asks whether I agree or not. What does it mean? -Freekee 14:47, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Peer review/All You Need Is Love (The JAMs song)

Sorry for the double post, I decided at the last minute to post this one for review too. --kingboyk 14:52, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Oh My Goddess! Soundtracks

I dont know what wikiproject this will belong to. So, I'll let you decide. --Cat out 18:55, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Hymns

The (my) article Dear Lord and Father of Mankind has been tagged as part of WP:Songs. In my opinion, while Hymns and Christian Songs could be part of this project, until the aims of the project are clear, it is a topic left out for the time being. They are not things like singles that need infoboxes so I am not sure what good the project can do. As a result, I have removed the tag, but am not saying that it should not be there in the future.

Good luck,

Mdcollins1984 21:03, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

I disagree. Articles about Hymns and other older/traditional songs of any religion, published or not, could at least receive the simple infobox "Lyrics by:, Music by:, Published:". robertjohnsonrj 16:29, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Categories of songs

Several articles on my watchlist, including Marian antiphon, Celtic chant, and Ambrosian chant have just been tagged by this WikiProject. These articles do not discuss an individual song, but genres or repertories of songs. In some cases, like Celtic chant and Gallican chant, there are virtually no extent melodies. Do these articles fall under the scope of the project? Peirigill 18:17, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Early music

Just out of curiosity, how does this project handle songs that were composed prior to the advent of sales charts? Let's say that I write an article on Guillaume Dufay's historically notable motet Nuper rosarum flores. Does a choral work fall under the purview of this Wikiproject? Would I leave the chart listings blank? Would I put some notice like "not applicable" instead? Or would I use the rankings of the most popular commercially released recording? This will definitely matter in the case of Gregorian chants that were recorded on the album Chant. My apologies if these issues have been addressed before. Peirigill 18:17, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Hmm, same issue as "Hymns" two sections up. Definitely don't use this infobox for non-singles. In fact, I would venture to say that most of the music WikiProjects are not very well equipped to deal with topics outside of contemporary, popular music.
However, I have a thought. If it's an infobox you need, get in touch with User:Flowerparty; he was last seen around here proposing a more general-purpose infobox for songs. Input from more diverse fields of music such as yours was not forthcoming at the time; take a look, though. –Unint 21:59, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] She Loves You

She Loves You is up for a featured article review. Detailed concerns may be found here. Please leave your comments and help us address and maintain this article's featured quality. Sandy 17:24, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Daddy song

Would someone interested in Korn please review the Daddy (song) article and help provide sources for some of the material I removed this evening? The lyrics I believe are a copyright violation so those need not be restored. Can't sleep, clown will eat me 05:40, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Mach 6

Is this project actually proposing an article on every song ever released, regardless of whether or not it's even been released as a single? We have User:Andman8 creating an article on every cut on the album Mach 6 by an artist who is arguably not that well known, surely we don't need an article on every single song? I can bow to the idea of an article on songs that actually make important charts, but Andman8 is posting a Wikipedia:WikiProject Songs link on the Talk page of every single one of the album cut articles as if this is the goal of the project. User:Zoe|(talk) 02:53, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

All articles should meet Wikipedia's notability requirements. In other words, no. -Freekee 03:23, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Old Dan Tucker"

I could use some help at Talk:Old Dan Tucker. I'm working on an expansion of that article, but I need a little help with interpreting some of the musicologese of my sources. Thanks, — BrianSmithson 07:31, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

I have now expanded the article and requested peer review. Please see Wikipedia:Peer review/Old Dan Tucker. Thanks! — BrianSmithson 08:45, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Links to Music Videos

I'm starting to notice some of the song articles linking to YouTube and other video hosting services for the song's music video. Some of the links are being removed because of copyright violation, but others are being kept. I can understand both sides of the issue. For those keeping, there are comparisons to linking to sites for the song's copyrighted lyrics. For those removing, there are arguments of linking to copyrighted information. I think some policy for links to music videos should be established on the project's main page to determine if these links are okay to not. Otherwise, the project may be divided between people who want to link to the music and those who do not. Quop 23:18, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

I asked about that at the External Links page some time ago (see here. I have removed some links because a user claimed it was copyright and that TokyoTV was asking YouTube to take them down.[4] I am not sure if this is the correct place to discuss the matter, though, External links seems a better place. So far, I only change the YouTube links with a {{YouTube}} template if they are not broken already, to keep them classified in case we need to take them massively down. -- ReyBrujo 23:27, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

I was bold and made the edit. It would seem okay. Also, I added in the condition about the copyright holder. Cha 00:03, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] AWB plugin

I've just added support for this WikiProject to my AWB plugin for adding templates to talk pages and assessing articles. Please see User:Kingbotk/Plugin for more information. --kingboyk 16:03, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] A Hard Day's Night (song)

A Hard Day's Night (song) is up for a featured article review. Detailed concerns may be found here. Please leave your comments and help us address and maintain this article's featured quality. Sandy 20:27, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Musical structure

I see no reason for not having a "musical structure" section, in which the music itself is described (i.e. in an academic sort of way). Seeing as the music itself can be cited, this would not conflict with Wikipedia's original research policy. Also, if a user notates the music himself (as I did for "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction,") there is no reason for a segment of each song to not be notated. -- Cielomobile talk / contribs 22:28, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Child Ballads

I found a reference to this project on Talk:Child_Ballads, but no other cross references. Now I do not want to interfer with conscious decision tacen after due discussions, I've not followed. However, if the lack of links are due to oversights, I'd like to add Child Ballads to the category Lists of Songs (since the list of the 305 types of Child ballads indeed is the bulk of that article); and I'd like to make the category Child Ballads to a subcategory of the category Songs. Is this OK? JoergenB 18:20, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Seems like there ought to be a subcategory of Category:Songs named Category:Songs by author. This would be distinct from Category:Songs by artist, and would be useful in capturing songs written by non-performers, as well as performers who didn't have the biggest hits with their own songs. -Freekee 21:42, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

I have nothing to say against your suggestion, Freekee. However, just in order to ensure that we speak the same language, let me remind you that Francis James Child did not write the 'popular English and Scottish ballads' he collected and edited. ('Popular' here is used in an older meaning 'related to the people'; i.e., concerning folklore.) A few of the texts he used were actually half a millenium old. Moreover, there is already a Category:Child Ballads (which I propose to put as a subcategory of Category:Songs). JoergenB 15:43, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Ah, I didn't read the article carefully enough. I thought that was an awful lot of songs for one person to write. :-D To start with, I think the current categorization is appropriate. As for whether the category or article for Child ballads should be added to Category:Songs, I'll offer only a weak "no" vote. In any case, I still thing "songs by author" would be a splendid category -Freekee 01:43, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
Is Ballads not a subcategory of Songs? (Since Child Ballads is -- surprise, surprise -- a subcat of Ballads) Goldfritha 01:52, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
Child Ballads > Ballads > Song forms > Songs
Child Ballads > Folk songs > Songs by genre > Songs
-Freekee 03:46, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
Well... right. Perhaps its POV, but I think it should be a little easier to find them in the category Songs than first clicking either Song forms or Songs by genre. Perhaps putting Ballads as a direct subcategory to Songs could be acceptable? Being a subcategory of a category doesn't provide you subcategory status in the 'upper' category, seemingly. I won't insist, though.
As for the other question, to categorise the article itself as a list of songs: I saw no protest. On the other hand, Goldfritha and I more or less agreed that there should be a number of 'Child-like' lists bye and bye; so perhaps it is better to make a new category for Enumerations of traditional songs or something similar, add the article Child ballads as the first item, and put this' category as a subcategory to Lists of songs? JoergenB 18:47, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
Do what you think is right. We're getting a bit beyond where I have an opinion. :-) -Freekee 02:22, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] No good infoboxes for standards

I've noticed that pop, jazz, and blues standards never seem to have infoboxes ... see Over the Rainbow, Fly Me to the Moon, My Funny Valentine, Take the A Train, Statesboro Blues, and many others of this ilk. The Single infobox is inappropriate for these, since most of them weren't singles in the modern sense, and the current Song infobox is oriented towards non-singles from a particular album and thus also inappropriate. Is there another kind of Song infobox out there that I'm not finding? Wasted Time R 21:02, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't think that there is any sort of infobox for standards. If you look at any jazz standard, for example The Girl from Ipanema, they don't seem to have one, so it'd be safe to assume that none exist. I don't really know much about making infoboxes, but it can't be hard to adapt the songs infobox to make a new "standards" infobox. Do you want to take a try at it, or shall I? -- Cielomobile minor7♭5 21:11, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
Not me ... I already spend too much time on Wikipedia, to dive into infobox writing! Take a look at the Song infobox source at [5], if you have experience writing computer macros you can do it, otherwise it may get a bit heavy. The box might be called Standard, and contain things like song title, music writer(s), lyricist(s) [on standards these two are often different and thus need to be broken out], genre, year written, and artist who most made the song famous (not always the first artist to record it). Should there be a line that contains all the other artists that recorded the song? That number can easily run into the dozens or more for the most popular standards. Wasted Time R 23:10, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
I don't have any experience with writing macros or the like, but I'll give it a go. Name will be Music Standards, then there will be title, composer, lyricist, genre, year written, first artist to record the piece, artist to most popularize the piece, and then I'm thinking chart standings. I think I'd be able to do this by looking at other infoboxes. -- Cielomobile minor7♭5 23:47, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
Nevermind, I looked at the infobox source code, and it is a completely different language to me :(. There must be somebody out there who could do this? -- Cielomobile minor7♭5 00:00, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
What info would you put in it, besides lyricist and composer? -Freekee 03:50, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
I actually found an infobox for this purpose (User:Flowerparty/Test). It fits our need quite well (you can see it in action at Call It Stormy Monday (But Tuesday Is Just As Bad)). -- Cielomobile minor7♭5 03:52, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
Cool. Interesting picture on that article. :-) -Freekee 04:03, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Week by week chart performance?

I was under the impression that song articles should not include tables showing a single's chart position week by week, although I can't find a specific guideline about that. Nevertheless, I don't think week-by-week tables are needed. This question arose because Don't Forget to Remember Me does include such tables. --Metropolitan90 04:06, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

I can't imagine what circumstances such a tracking would show notable information. Maybe to show that a single was on the charts, then fell off, then returned? But then it could better be described with text than a table. -Freekee 16:01, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
There was a discussion (now archived at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Music/Tables for charts/Archive) last year in which consensus arose that chart trajectories shouldn't be included in song and album articles. Now, this discussion was a while ago, but the reasoning behind it still stands. I myself believe the presence of week-by-week chart trajectories contradicts the "Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information" policy; we're supposed to provide general summaries, not fansite-like detail. Much of these statistics and numbers will mean nothing to the casual reader, and too much information is a great way of hiding what's actually relevant. Also, such trajectories can be difficult to verify. Extraordinary Machine 17:13, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] A question about categories and cover versions

I understand that there should be one article per song, and cover versions shouldn't have their own articles. I've done quite a lot of work changing articles about Will Young singles into articles about the songs, and have done some merging of cover versions and splitting of double A-sides. A couple of his covers ("The Long and Winding Road" and "Light My Fire") are now included in Category:Will Young songs. He also did covers of the songs "Hey Ya!", "I Get the Sweetest Feeling", "Beyond the Sea (song)", etc, but were released as B-sides (or in some cases, album tracks), so my question is, should these articles be included in Category:Will Young songs? — AnemoneProjectors (talk) 11:52, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Sure. If another artist had a notable version of the song, it could go in that artist's category too. -Freekee 14:57, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Get Back

Get Back is up for a featured article review. Detailed concerns may be found here. Please leave your comments and help us address and maintain this article's featured quality. Sandy 19:36, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Layla

Layla is up for a featured article review. Detailed concerns may be found here. Please leave your comments and help us address and maintain this article's featured quality. Sandy 19:36, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Offering my services to notate excerpts of songs

I've posted this on the WikiProject Music page too, but I'd like to offer my services in notating musical examples for any pages that may need them. You can see my work on Homophony and other pages; I think it really adds to the article. So, if anyone has any requests, fire away. -- Cielomobile talk / contribs 22:18, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Spoiler warnings in music videos

I noticed that the Take on Me article has spoiler warnings inserted in the music video section and found it rather ridiculous. But I don't want to step on any toes and remove it, or warnings in any other song-articles I might stumble across, if this is in fact something that you, the fine people working on articles like that, believe belong there and might even have agreed upon. I can't see any discussions about it here, but I'm not familiar with this project or its history, so I thought I should ask. Thanks. Shanes 05:13, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't know if there's any discussion or history of this, but I personally think it's a bit ridiculous. GassyGuy 05:28, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
I've personally done this once, in the case of a recent video with a "reveal" at the end. It does look a bit ridiculous on the page, though, especially given that there's not much to summarize in the first place. For comparison, one of the better-known "reveal" videos, "Just", has no spoiler tag. –Unint 06:28, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] I'd Like To Join

I don't know if there is any formal process, but I'd like to work on this WikiProject. I enjoy music a (who doesn't).-- ¢² Connor K. 19:05, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

There's no formal process in joining, so welcome to the team! If you have any questions you can of course go ahead and ask here, and I'm always willing to help if you ask me. -- Cielomobile talk / contribs 02:57, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Black-Throated Wind

The original page had a single line of text [6], so I redirect to the album it first appeared on Ace (album). Recently, the redirect was undone by an IP to [7]. I reinstated the redirect, but two IPs have now called it vandalism and called me a "page black-outer". Finally, I placed a {{mergeto}} on the page and am willing to discuss this proposal on the talk page. I believe that, unlike Truckin' or Dark Star (song), the song wasn't really notable to the band, being that they stopped playing it after 1974. The information provided on the page could easily be moved to the album page as a section after the track listing. Can someone comment? Am I in the wrong in my thinking? -- moe.RON talk | done | doing 23:57, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Original Research

Hello, all: I am visiting this project as a result of my own campaign to wipe out all Unreferenced tags from the Z section of this page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Category:Articles_with_unsourced_statements&from=Z

Just finished editing the Ænema page. (Yes that ligature puts it back with the Z's.) Just about everything in it was Original Research. The only link was to the lyrics of the song. I have noticed the same thing with other aspects of Pop Culture. Everybody fancies himself an Expert.

I am no Expert myself, but it is my belief that ALL the articles in WikiP must be sourced and there must be no Original Research. Is that not the same case with the Songs project? Sincerely, GeorgeLouis 07:34, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] An alternate approach to non-single infoboxes

I've been going around replacing outdated and subst'ed album and song infoboxes, and I came across something interesting at the Metallica song pages. There is one template for each album that shows up on each song page. (example here: For Whom the Bell Tolls (song)). I think this might be a more appropriate approach than using the song infobox in some cases, especially for songs off albums where each song has its own page, for example the Led Zeppelin song pages, since the info in each infobox is nearly identical. Any thoughts? --Alcuin 04:38, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Project Directory

Hello. The WikiProject Council is currently in the process of developing a master directory of the existing WikiProjects to replace and update the existing Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory. These WikiProjects are of vital importance in helping wikipedia achieve its goal of becoming truly encyclopedic. Please review the following pages:

  • User:Badbilltucker/Culture Directory,
  • User:Badbilltucker/Culture Directory 2,
  • User:Badbilltucker/Philosophy and religion Directory,
  • User:Badbilltucker/Sports Directory,
  • User:Badbilltucker/Geographical Directory,
  • User:Badbilltucker/Geographical Directory/United States, (note: This page will be retitled to more accurately reflect its contents)
  • User:Badbilltucker/History and society directory, and
  • User:Badbilltucker/Science directory

and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope to have the existing directory replaced by the updated and corrected version of the directory above by November 1. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. B2T2 21:45, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Sorry if you tried to update it before, and the corrections were gone. I have now put the new draft in the old directory pages, so the links should work better. My apologies for any confusion this may have caused you. B2T2 00:31, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] De Brevitate Vitae

Hi, could anybody tell me who this mysterious "Strada, bishop of Bologna" is, who is mentioned in the article? Strada is Italian and means "street". And that's what google says to me. No bishop of Bologna. No list of bishops of Bologna list any "Strada". Is this a fake? we are currently discussing this in the German Wikipedia because de:Gaudeamus igitur is candidating for the label "Lesenswert" (a kind of "featured article", second class). --Rabe! 15:24, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] I Want to Hold Your Hand

I Want to Hold Your Hand is up for a featured article review. Detailed concerns may be found here. Please leave your comments and help us address and maintain this article's featured quality. Sandy (Talk) 23:09, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Lyrics

I believe that Wikipedia song articles should include the songs lyrics. Thank you. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 64.253.101.40 (talk • contribs).

You're welcome. But they shouldn't, unless they're in the public domain. Most lyrics are copyrighted so we cannot legally put them in an article. It may be acceptable to use small portions of a song's lyrics or music video in the main body to illustrate a point. — AnemoneProjectors (talk) 20:51, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
Yes, but then where is the line drawn as to how much of the lyrics is too much for inclusion? robertjohnsonrj 17:04, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
Just make sure you have something specific to say about each section of included lyric. And try not toinclude the entire song, unless it's very short. -Freekee 04:26, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Adding to Song List by Artist

Hi, I am BRAND NEW to Wikipedia as a registered user. I just did my first bit of editing - I found a biography of an author whose birth year but not full birth date was shown, and I put in the actual date.

I have found a page called "Category:Neil Diamond songs" at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Neil_Diamond_songs

So far, there are four songs listed. I hope I can write articles for a few of his songs that don't have them yet. In the meantime, a song of his called "Red Red Wine" that is not listed on "Category:Neil Diamond songs" does have a Wikipedia entry at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Red_Wine

I would like to add this to the "Category:Neil Diamond songs" page. I tried to use the "edit this page" tab on this page, but when I clicked on it, all I got was a box containing the words "Category:Songs by artist|Diamond, Neil" contained within a couple of levels of brackets.

Can someone please point me in the direction of how to fill in this box so that I enter "Red Red Wine" without disturbing the other songs already in the list?

While "Red Red Wine" is most famous as done by UB40, Neil Diamond wrote and originally recorded this song. Also, "I'm a Believer", another song written by Neil that's more famous as done by other acts (the Monkees and Smash Mouth) than by Neil himself, appears on the "Category:Neil Diamond songs" page. Thus I feel that the inclusion of "Red Red Wine" is justified here.

Figured it out, huh? -Freekee 05:11, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
Yes, I figured it out. Came back here to let people know. I guess I will be doing some trial and error here. I ended up adding two songs to the page. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by RSLitman (talk • contribs) .

[edit] Article assessment class=List

Should WikiProjectSongs have an article assessment class entitled "List"? There is one for the "albums" project. I've come across at least 1 song-list article in my current songs class assessment project so far. robertjohnsonrj 23:30, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Things to do

Hi! Over at the album project, we have a list of tasks to be done, and one of them is infobox conversion. Articles with an old style of infobox, or even tables instead of templates get tagged with {{needsinfoboxconv}}. Then they get added to Category:Needs album infobox conversion. Notice how it says "album infobox"? Right now the category has over 100 articles, and most of them are songs. The reason I bring this up is I think it would be really cool of some of you guys could go through some and convert them. I'll probably do a few myself, but I thought maybe some of you might be willing to take on the task. Thanks! -Freekee 05:04, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Merge and redirect songs into their albums to save article total #, maintainence and observation

I’ve been tagging a lot of articles for this project lately, and here’s an idea that occurs to me. There are currently around 22,000 separate articles in the scope of this project, which will require continuous maintainance and observation by this project, and, in many cases, only this project. That seems to me to be possibly too many, particularly considering that many are songs which have only appeared on one album, or are only known through one version. The naturally occurring continued expansion of the song project’s total article number coupled with the expansion of a given song’s article into multiple articles of it (for whatever reason), may increase the total number of song articles, maintainence and observation covered by the song project to an alarming rate. What would the rest of you think of the following proposal: For cases when the song is only known through only one context (i.e., one album and/or one version), use the current song page as a redirect to that song’s section on it’s album page, and cut and paste all the text from the song page into that song’s section on it’s album page? This idea would not necessarily apply to songs or song versions which are very notable on their own, such as songs included in the top 100 rock songs of all time or the song Yesterday (3000 versions). I imagine that there would be more than enough reason to keep them separate. Doing so would both reduce the number of pages to be observed for vandalism and maintained to a much more manageable number, and increase the possibility of the content of the article reaching featured article status, if only as a part of the Album article. Also, if the length of the content regarding a particular song were to be expanded to such length that it would make sense for it to have its own article, or if the album page just got too long, then it could be moved back into the old slot with the redirect removed. But collecting them like this could very easily make it easier and more likely for the content to expand more quickly. robertjohnsonrj 18:25, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

I think what you're talking about is notability. You want to raise the notability requirements of songs. I like the requirements they way they are, but maybe we should be a little more ruthles in sticking to them in the first place. I don't see a problem with the expansion of the number of song articles, because the number of users should increase along with the number of articles. The worst problem is that all articles won't stay caught up with the most recent changes mandated by this Project. As long as we keep spreading the song project templates around, to keep advertising to new editors, there should be much of a problem.
My recommendation is to be ruthless with notablility requirements for songs - oops, there are no notability requirements for songs! Merge non-notable album tracks and non-charting singles. Second, don't create too much work for the project. Keep expanding current changes into new articles, but don't mandate more changes, or only high-value changes. -Freekee 02:37, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Notable cover songs

"It's My Life (Talk Talk song)" needs an infobox, and I'm not sure how to go about it. The cover version by No Doubt is more notable (by which I mean it charted higher); should it have its own article? Do I just put an infobox for Talk Talk's single? Do I put an infobox for both? — ShadowHalo 01:58, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Dallas paper disses Kumbaya article

See [8]. This is not my field of expertise. Anyone else care to take it on? Zora 17:28, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Uncategorised songs

I notice that the Cat:song stubs have become very large, and what's more, categorisation of those seems to be very low. Would there by support for an Cat:uncategorised songs maintenance category, on the same pattern as the existing Cat:uncategorised albums? This could be periodically be populated by bot from the database dumps. Alai 18:41, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

  • No support, and no opposition either... Should I take that as complete apathy, or go ahead and do it anyway, and see if anyone pays it any mind? Alai 13:46, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Real Love (The Beatles song)

Real Love (The Beatles song) is up for a featured article review. Detailed concerns may be found here. Please leave your comments and help us address and maintain this article's featured quality. Sandy (Talk) 18:53, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Formatting Charts

How should I format the US charts for No Doubt's "Don't Speak"? It didn't chart on the Billboard Hot 100 because it wasn't released as a single for quite awhile. But it did chart #2 on the Modern Rock Tracks and #6 on Adult Contemporary. Should I include these in the infobox; if so, how should I format them? — ShadowHalo 07:32, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

  • It seems unnecessary to put it in the infobox since the chart info on various U.S. charts is already hosted elsewhere in the article. GassyGuy 16:35, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Chart trajectories

I've been removing chart trajectories based on WP:MUSIC's decision here, but it seems odd that one has to link to an archive for something like this. Is it alright if I add the decision about chart trajectories to the WP:SONG page? — ShadowHalo 00:47, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Categories

Rather large assumptions in the categories section: "Song articles should be placed into two categories, a subcategory of Category:Songs by artist ("Category:<Artist name> songs") and a subcategory of Category:Songs by year"

In the discussion for the article Willie's Lady, someone asked the necessary questions: "It was written in olde English- what year? by who?" Then I provided the same answer to both questions: No one knows.

Even songs by known authors may not have years. Goldfritha 03:26, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

It seems like adding a simple "When the information is available and applicable" to the end of that would fix it. Any objections? — ShadowHalo 09:03, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
Sounds good to me. Goldfritha 00:28, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
Where the information is unknown to the author, or indeed unknown to the-sum-of-human-knowledge, why not place it in a Cat:year of composition unknown category, or a broader "era" cat? Alai 13:52, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
Creating an category for unknown years is just creating a category so the songs will be in a category. Since the category itself wouldn't be serving much of a purpose, it seems excessive. But doing one for eras is a possibility. How many songs are there that could go in the "era" categories? — ShadowHalo 17:20, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
If it's unknown in the weak sense, or indeed present in the article, but just not categorised that way, then a "category missing" maintenance category would serve as a useful cleanup resource (if anyone is interested in 'cleaning up' on the basis). If the year is unknown in the strong sense, then that's itself a notable fact, and it avoids confusion with the first case (and mistaken repeated addition to such a category). Alai 17:44, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Multiple song names

Is there a precedent for songs that switched names between albums? Snakes on a Plane (Bring It) was renamed to Bring It (Snakes on a Plane) sometime between its release on Snakes on a Plane: The Album and Cobra Starship's newest album. There is some discussion on the talk page about the name, and the question was asked whether this had any precedent, so I figured the wikiproject would be best able to answer that.--Miguel Cervantes 22:44, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Pick one and make it a redirect to the other. Which one is which probably doens't matter all that much, but use the "bigger" version. -Freekee 05:21, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Copyvio?

Just thought I should query whether this article (Star (Bryan Adams song)) should have a substantial proportion made up of lyrics, that are presumably copyrighted? 149.155.96.5 16:36, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Betcha by golly, wow

Thanks!

[edit] "Song information" headers

I've seen many, many song articles containing a section titled "Song information" (or "About the song" or something similar), and I really don't see the sense in this. The entire article will contain information about the song, and readers know this, so how can information about the song be restricted to one section? (The presence of such headers in rather short articles violates Wikipedia:Guide_to_layout#Structure_of_the_article, but that's another matter.) Extraordinary Machine 18:08, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

This sounds like something I've been doing, in fact (just "Song" in my case). And you're right, it doesn't make much sense.
Looking at the song FAs so far, "Background" or "Context" could be good general-purpose replacements. –Unint 04:32, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Guantanamera

I note that Guantanamera is inCategory:Joan Baez songs - surely that is wrong ? Otherwise Guantanemera has to go in the categories for everyone who has covered it. -- Beardo 19:03, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Only if it was a notable version. I notice she's not mentioned in the song article, so I'd say no. Generally, if anyone had a hit with it, it's probably worth categorizing. There are quite a few songs in multiple artist categories. -Freekee 05:34, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Infobox help?

What do you do with the infobox when you have a song that has two different artists, each with a significant (top 40) version of it? Can you do two infoboxes stacked up? Is there a way to nest two infoboxes? -Freekee 04:07, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

I once tried to combine four different artists' versions of one song in one infobox, but the results of that seemed to have been deemed unsightly.
Since then, I've only ever seen examples of one infobox per different artist in practice, though that only really looks good if you have enough text to fill up the left-hand side of the article after stacking up the right side to the heavens. –Unint 04:29, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
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