Talk:List of songs whose title includes geographical names

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You have new messages (last change).

Contents

[edit] The Lebanon

I moved "The Lebanon" by the Human League from the Exact-Names to the Contain-Names section because my intention in separating these two initially was to provide one section whose contents could be dropped on a page as-is to represent a place. If there is a place called "The Lebanon" (as opposed to "Lebanon", "Lebanon River", etc.), it should be moved back. Let me know what you think. -- Jeff Q 18:59, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Lebanon used to have 'the ' prefixed to it a lot, as part of the name. Like the Ukraine. Morwen 19:03, Mar 27, 2004 (UTC)
I was thinking of US news reports and other sources that I've only ever heard refer to the country as "Lebanon". Even the Wikipedia entry follows this usage. But I reviewed the song's lyrics, with which I was unfamiliar. Since the song actually refers to the geographic name (not a requirement for this list) as "The Lebanon", as Morwen describes, it seems to me that my POV was ill-informed. I have restored this title to the Exact-Names section. Thanks for the tip. -- Jeff Q 04:00, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Good move, JQ. My "Dictionary of the Bible" refers to it as both "Lebanon" and "the Lebenon." I glad you didn't make me get up to search out the Good Book. And I find it so very heartening to see someone here in wikipedia saying, "whooops, guess i was wrong" instead of "DAMN the torpedos - full steam ahead." Carptrash 17:09, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Order by title?

The 'contains' section orders the songs by song title. Wouldn't it actually make more sense to order the titles by the geographical name they contain? I could image this page being used by people looking for songs containing a certain name, and then an ordering on title isn't very useful. If you already know the title, you wouldn't be searching here. Abigail 11:43, Apr 2, 2004 (UTC)

I thought that too, for a minute I thought that was how it was supposed to be organised. It does seem more logical. fabiform | talk 12:04, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)
There's certainly a lot of sense to that, but it might not be terribly practical, especially since any modern browser has a Search or Find mechanism to spot whatever name you're looking for. Consider what a name-sorted arrangement might look like:
    • Just rearrange it. If you just rearrange the titles by place name, as is, it'll be MUCH more difficult to keep them correctly sorted. I'd suggest that sorting is more important when adding titles, not necessarily when looking for them. I've found duplicates in the song lists because of sorting mistakes. In fact, I've spent enough time resorting lists, even with the current organization, that I finally added guidelines to the Notes sections of the personal names and geographical names lists to lessen contributors' confusion (I hope).
    • Use places names as section headers. This would make sense if the number of place names were fairly small, like the alphabet, but would quickly get unwieldy. Also, the table of contents would be insanely long.
    • Begin each line with the title, like "San Francisco:". This might be a reasonable compromise, but I think it might look kind of messy.
Another consideration is the hierarchy of geographical names. I was concerned that someone would point out the utility of arranging by country, then state/province, then city. It would get very complicated very quickly.
Ultimately, when I created this list, I decided to follow the format most of the other Lists of songs used — sorted in title order, followed by the artist name, optionally sectioned alphabetically by title — and let people do a Find using their browsers. -- Jeff Q 16:52, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)

(This suggestion was originally in another section, but I moved it at Jeff's suggestion. The remainder is identical to my original comment.) This one would maintain the current separation between "Exact" and "Contains", and might take a good bit of time to implement, but (IMHO) would make the list more understandable. In several of the other song lists, the songs are sorted in alphabetical order not by title, but rather by the highlighted element. For example, applying them to this article, "My Home's in Alabama" would be included under "A" instead of "M". To facilitate this, the key elements are highlighted in bold face, such as "My Home's in Alabama", "Meet Me in Montana", "New York State of Mind", "Vienna Calling", and the like. See List of songs whose title includes dates and times for a good example of this. Dale Arnett 20:08, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Having borrowed the idea from User:68.63.160.204 when I created the dates & times list, I am not surprisingly in agreement with Dale. I'm also masochistic enough to do this in one fell swoop sometime in the near future, if people think this is a good idea. I would make one further suggestion, though — I see no need for the "Exact" and "Contains" separation in such a list. Even though I initiated it in the geo- and personal-names lists, I don't think they serve any purpose in a keyword-oriented sort. In the current version of this list, a geographical name may occur anywhere in the list. Once the names are grouped, they will occur in exactly two places, with all the Exacts together and all the Contains together. So why not just combine them? — Jeff Q 02:32, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Of course, I'm contradicting the points I'd made earlier above. It definitely is harder to sort by keyword, since the keyword (geographical name here) can appear anywhere in the title. User:68.63.160.204's innovation in the personal names list was to embolden the name, as Dale shows above, making it easier to focus on the sort word(s). When I created the dates & times list, I made one additional clarification and two major changes. I explicitly stated that all the titles with the same key name would be sorted by title within that group. To reduce the sorting challenge, I also implemented something Abigail and I had discussed elsewhere a while back — titles would be sorted without ignoring articles like a, an, or the (or, for that matter, their foreign language equivalents), which is different from standard English sorting. Thus, "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" (starting with T, not D) would follow "Georgia (On My Mind)". This makes sorting a bit easier. Finally, I suggested adding multiple entries for a song with multiple names in the title. For this list, "Girl from Ipanema Goes to Greenland" would be listed under I as "Girl from Ipanema Goes to Greenland" and under G as "Girl from Ipanema Goes to Greenland". As Dale points out above, all these new rules are displayed and listed in the dates & times list, so you can get a feel for the pros and cons of such a system. — Jeff Q 02:32, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Strawberry Fields

I added "Strawberry Fields Forever" by The Beatles. This might be debatable - at the time the song was written, it wasn't a geographical place. But nowadays, the entrance to Central Park just opposite where John Lennon was shot is called "Strawberry Fields". Abigail 11:57, Apr 2, 2004 (UTC)

Well, it was the name of a childrens home in Liverpool, so a very small/specific geographical place (if it can count as one at all). fabiform | talk 12:04, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)
I'd say keep it! It is a real place now, and it's a great (although somewhat somber) example of art affecting life. -- Jeff Q 16:07, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Duplicate titles

I just startling looking at List of songs for ideas. I'm not sure what to do about duplicate titles (since I don't know if they're all covers of one song, or different songs) so I'll list them here for other people to add to the list if they know more about them than I do. fabiform | talk 13:54, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)

  1. "America" - The Nice (The Thoughts of Emerlist Davjack, 1967)
  2. "America" - Steppenwolf (Monster, 1970)
  3. "America" - Yes (1972)
  4. "America" - Motörhead (Iron Fist, 1982)
  5. "America" - Heart (Private Audition, 1982)
  6. "America" - Spinal Tap (This Is Spinal Tap, 1984)
  7. "America" - Toto (1988)
  1. "Amsterdam" - David Bowie (1973). B-side of "Sorrow" single
  2. "Amsterdam" - Van Halen (Balance, 1995)
  1. "Arizona" - The Moody Blues (Journey Into Amazing Caves, 2001)
  1. "Babylon" - The Tea Party (Transmission, 1997)
  1. "Back in N.Y.C." - Jeff Buckley (Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk, 1998)


This requires some kind of automation. It would be insane to manual cross-match the list of songs with the list of songs whose title include geographical names. Abigail 14:55, Apr 2, 2004 (UTC)
Well I've skimmed through all the songs beginning with A or B on list of songs, so I could do the rest. It would be over the course of a few days at the least though, because it does put you in a trance after a while. My method has no dount caused some names to be missed since I didn't recognise them as places, or I just didn't see them. I'm not really sure how this could be automated. fabiform | talk 15:10, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)
I wasn't thinking that the actual selection would be automated, but more the merging into the list of songs whose title includes geographical names. And I wouldn't be surprised that that list contains songs not included in the list of songs - feeding back those songs in the list of songs could probably automated. Abigail 15:18, Apr 2, 2004 (UTC)
It'd be nice if folks check first to see whether to add an artist to an existing song or add another line for a different song, but this won't always happen. One source I use to figure out whether two recordings are the same song (if I don't know them already) is All-Music Guide, where you can look up song titles and see who the composers are for the various artists' recordings. I've been sifting through the various song lists doing some of this.
Concerning merging the geographical names and the personal names lists — please, let's not! They're only a week old so far and they're both growing exponentially as it is! Also, although there is some overlap (like "Annie New Orleans"), I still think their respective raisons d'être are sufficiently different to keep them separate. -- Jeff Q 16:23, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I just edited the "America" entry, based on fabiform's posting above, after some AMG-based research. I'll give my reasons for what I did and didn't add as one example of how one might do this.

  • Yes covered the Simon & Garfunkel version.
  • Many artists covered the show tune by Bernstein & Sondheim (often spelled "A-Me-Ri-Ca"), but The Nice had tracks on many albums, so it seemed fairly well-known. (As recommended in other Wikipedia song lists, I usually only add notable covers; i.e., ones that stand out somehow.)
  • Neil Diamond, Motörhead, Gary Numan, and Spinal Tap all had different composers than the above. I recognized all of them except Motörhead as being the artist or a band member. (I'm not Motörhead-savvy.) All but Spinal Tap's were featured on many albums, so they passed my informal "well-known" test. Spinal Tap's is from their famous "This Is Spinal Tap" album, so I included it.
  • Heart's version had no composer listed, and I was not familiar with it, so I left it for someone who knows it to add or not add.
  • I could find no AMG reference for the Steppenwolf or Toto versions. This often happens with AMG, but it usually signals an uncommon title. I left them out.
  • There are many other versions listed in AMG, but none seemed to stand out besides the above.

The final entry I came up with, sorted by primary artist, was:

Different strokes for different folks, of course, but this is one approach to choosing what to add and how to add it. -- Jeff Q 17:40, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Bouncing back and forth between the various song lists, I just realized the above discussion makes more sense for List of sets of unrelated songs with identical titles. I'm really beginning to appreciate Abigail's database suggestion below! -- Jeff Q 17:52, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)

By the way, several weeks ago I reverted "America" to the usual one-entry-per-different-song scheme because the method above was just too cluttered. See Variations discussion below. -- Jeff Q 10:41, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)

you won't find "America" by Steppenwolf on AMG because it's not the correct title. The song's actually called "Monster". [[User:Grutness|Grutness hello? ]] 06:46, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Database

Would there be a way to create a "master list" of songs, with flags to say the title contains a geographical name/personal name/whatever? Given that, it's easy to create various lists of songs, and you wouldn't have to add a song more than once if it fits in more than one category. Abigail 16:40, Apr 2, 2004 (UTC)

I like the idea, but what would that look like, using the Wikipedia article paradigm? It might be trying to do too much with an application that isn't designed to handle it. It certainly would cut down on the effort, though. Perhaps the taxonomy entries could provide some ideas. -- Jeff Q 17:04, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Locations

Must locations be real? For example, what about Heaven by Warrant? Also, where do we put Kansas, Berlin, and Asia? --Dante Alighieri | Talk 21:30, Apr 2, 2004 (UTC)


Lets be honest - there are going to be thousands of these at least. I know nothing about music at all, and I can add twenty or so without even thinking about it. DJ Clayworth 21:49, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)

With any Wikipedia list, there is a temptation to expand its scope. It's akin to software development's "feature creep" problem, where related ideas creep into the specification. Sometimes the Wiki list takes on a new and interesting direction because of this; sometimes it just gets cluttered with irrelevancies. It's up to the user (and contributor) community.
For what it's worth, I created this list as an interesting source for people who wonder what songs include the name of a particular place, like their home town, state, country, etc. From that POV, "Heaven" wouldn't be terribly useful. (I'm sure its residents have better things to do than read Wikipedia articles. ;-)
The geographical band names are very interesting, but they aren't songs. I considered creating that list myself, but I'm spending all my allowable time just on song lists. I would suggest that, if someone does this, they do some Wikipedia research first to see what other musical group name lists there might be, both to avoid duplicate effort and to provide a similar structure to make life easier for readers. -- Jeff Q 07:17, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Voodoo Chile

I was a bit surprised to see "Voodoo Chile" in the list. I always thought it was just a different spelling of "Voodoo Child", not about the country Chile. Does anyone know for sure? Deb 17:01, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I added that from scanning the list of songs... but I know nothing about the song so, er, I can't confirm or deny whether it's relevant. ;) I think as far as this page goes the song doesn't have to be about the place... but if this entry is pushing it too far feel free to remove it.  :) fabiform | talk 18:12, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Deb is correct — it should be removed — so I'll do it now. No need to be embarrassed for not knowing this though, Fab — I used to think the song referred to edible plants of the genus Capsicum. --Lancevortex 19:19, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)
It gave me a good laugh, anyway! Deb 21:57, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)
You might want to consider sticking in a comment at where the entry used to be on why the song doesn't belong. Otherwise, next week someone else will put it back. Abigail 23:03, Apr 5, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Hotel Yorba

Not sure if this belongs in the list. Firstly, I don't think an hotel is a geographical location. Secondly, I can't find any reference to a place called Yorba, just Yorba Linda in California. Of course, it's highly likely that people refer to it as Yorba for short. But it certainly shouldn't be in the 'exact' section (c.f. Hotel California) --Lancevortex 10:14, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I don't know, it's a real hotel in Detroit, but if it doesn't count as geography I guess it should be removed. :) Adam Bishop 15:47, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)
I just removed "Hotel Yorba" from the "Exact" section, but quickly re-added it to "Contain" because I managed to find a "Yorba, CA" in Yahoo! Maps (about 1&frac12 miles south of Yorba Linda). (I found no trace of an actual place called "Hotel Yorba" through Google, Y! Maps, or Expedia.) Hopefully that closes this question. -- Jeff Q 10:34, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Nice one, Jeff Q! That's definitely sorted it out from my point of view. I wonder though, how many other obscure places there are with names that are common words? Looking at List of interesting or unusual place names, How and Hell are both places with vast numbers of songs that contain their names. I guess a tune should only go in this list if the composer/performer intended it to refer to a place name — otherwise we'll have to put "Voodoo Chile" back in! --Lancevortex 10:47, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Urg. Borderline I guess. I presume the argument goes that Hotel Yorba is named after the town of Yorba? (I guess the same argument goes for Hotel California). Otherwise we might have a problem as soon as someone finds a geographical entity named 'A', 'The' or 'I'. Abigail 11:48, Apr 20, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Sorting

How should "La Isla Bonita" be sorted relative to "L.A. Jinx"? Guidelines say that punctuation should be ignored, but spaces sort before letters. Is "L.A." to be taken as two words (with a space between "L" and "A"), which would sort "L.A. Jinx" before "La Isla Bonita", or is "L.A" one word, which would sort "L.A. Jinx" after "La Isla Bonita". Abigail 11:16, Apr 18, 2004 (UTC)

Good point. The guidelines suggest that the "L.A." entries should be split, but it offends one's sense of order, since we can see that "L.A." songs "belong" together. However, fixing this qualm opens other cans or worms — should titles with initials be normalized to include/exclude spaces, should titles be sorted by what the initials stand for (assuming it's obvious), etc. Prevailing practice seems to be to leave out spaces between initials and use strict sorting by the text in the title, ignoring punctuation and implied meaning. Therefore, I'd recommend splitting them as shown in your second case. (By the way, thanks for fixing my egregious sorting error in moving the "L.A." songs to the top of the wrong subsection!) -- Jeff Q 11:59, 18 Apr 2004 (UTC)

When there are songs by different artists, but with the same, guidelines they should be sorted according to artist name. Now, there are various ways of doing so, but what I've done is to sort them on their last name - and if there are multiple performers (as in for instance Simon & Garfunkel), used the first name. If a performer is only known by one name, that name is taken of course. Abigail 16:26, Apr 19, 2004 (UTC)

I agree with sorting by artist for identical titles, which is why I added the sixth sorting guideline to Notes last week. The only difference I have with your approach is that I prefer to treat only the actual text of the artist name — e.g, "Simon & Garfunkel" — as opposed to your implied "Simon, Paul, & Art Garfunkel", which is more in keeping with library practice (at least, in America; I can't speak for elsewhere). My method doesn't require additional work to find out and keep in mind the artist's unused full name (though that shouldn't difficult for someone knowledgeable enough to think of the song in the first place!). In my method, "Simon & Garfunkel" would be treated as Simon Garfunkel (two spaces, since punctuation (&) is ignored), therefore preceding all other Simon entries. Even I think this is a bit kludgy. Should "&" be treated as the word "and"? (I standardize on the "&" symbol, but that's punctuation, which these lists ignore for sorting.) Should "Knack, The" come between "Knack, Cheryl" and "Knack, Veronica"? It's rather confusing. Add it to the issues discussed in Leading Articles below, and it would seem we need a major discussion on sorting. -- Jeff Q 11:03, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Oh, no, you misunderstand me (I could have expressed myself more clearly). What I mean with the example of Simon & Garfunkel is that I (first) look at the name of the first artist to decide how to sort it. I wouldn't put an implied Paul in the name. So, I would put Simon & Garfunkel before Carly Simon, who goes before Paul Simon. I wouldn't take the & into consideration when sorting - it's just a record separator (and I would treat an 'and' so as well). The Garfunkel part would only play a role if there were other duos (trios, quartets, etc) where the first artist is named Simon. So, given some imaginary names, I'd sort:

  1. Simon
  2. Simon & John Adams (for sorting purposes: Simon & Adams, John)
  3. Simon and Adam Douglas (for sorting purposes: Simon & Douglas, Adam)
  4. Simon & Garfunkel
  5. Simon & Art Garfunkel (for sorting purposes: Simon & Garfunkel, Art)
  6. Carly Simon (for sorting purposes: Simon, Carly)
  7. Paul Simon (for sorting purposes: Simon, Paul)
  8. Paul Simon & Art Garfunkel (for sorting purposes: Simon, Paul & Garfunkel, Art)

Abigail 11:28, Apr 20, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Fictional locations

Just to bring up this issue again, I see "Strawberry Fields Forever" in the list. We really probably ought to decide on those sort of things. I added a bit to the guidelines last night about no fictional / non-physical locations, but clearly the bulk of the entries were submitted prior to that note. --Dante Alighieri | Talk 17:40, Apr 18, 2004 (UTC)

Hmm, but it's not fictional... there's a note about it further up this page. It was a children's home in Liverpool (now closed) and is now also the name of an entrance to Central Park. It's (too?) small/specific, but not imaginary. fabiform | talk 19:23, 18 Apr 2004 (UTC)
I think Dante Alighieri's guideline is a good one, though I also think "Strawberry Fields" now passes the reality test, however oddly it arrived. I should have started this discussion page off with a description of intent for this list that made these kinds of boundaries clear, like I did (however imperfectly) with List of songs whose title includes personal names. Is it bad Wikipedia practice to add such a description to the top at this late date? I could alternatively add a brief discussion to the top of the article itself, though I'm disinclined to delay the viewing by a lot of introductory text. -- Jeff Q 09:37, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Leading Articles

The guidelines for sorting say leading articles should be ignored, and lists "A", "An" and "The". I've been ignoring leading articles for non-English song titles as well ("L'", "La", "Le", "Les", "Un" for French; "De", "Een", "Het" for Dutch; "Das", "Der", "Die", "Ein" for German). Since no-one sofar has objected or resorted, I presume this is what we want. Abigail 10:34, Apr 19, 2004 (UTC)

I've been dreading this issue since the first non-English title appeared in the list. It strikes me as a conflict between conforming to the expectations of a largely English-only audience (who expect a song like "La Isla Bonita" to appear in the "L" section, rather than the "I"), and the international aspirations of the Wikipedia project. I would argue for the latter, but I find it challenging enough to sort English-only titles, especially since existing practice lists the titles as-is instead of rearranging them index-style (e.g., "Devil Went Down to Georgia, The"). Other Wikipedia music lists have avoided this issue by limiting their songs and artists to those from the US, UK, Canada, and Ireland (e.g., List of popular music performers), but this is rather parochial and doesn't fit the non-location-specific titles of the Wikipedia articles.
As always, I return to consider the reason for the list's existence. From my point of view, it's for people who want to know if their town, region, or country is mentioned in a song title. If there are non-English speakers using this list, shouldn't they be able to find songs in their language? Should we have two lists, one for the likely majority of English speakers and another more international in flavor? If we keep the international orientation, must we consider sorting rules for each country? How would they mesh in a multilingual list? Should we just toss out the archaic and language-specific rules and sort completely by consecutive characters? If so, how does one treat accented characters? I'm completely at a loss on this whole issue.
Since it's easy enough to find a song (or a name) using a Find or Search function in a browser, the main requirement for sorting is to avoid duplicate titles. We can't hope to keep duplicates out of the list if we can't sort it, and I no longer feel competent to sort this list. I'm hoping everyone has some good ideas to offer on this issue. -- Jeff Q 09:59, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)
I'll toss in a radical idea and see what people think about it. What about sorting titles exactly as they're listed? This would solve two major problems:
  1. No one need learn multiple languages to know how to sort each section. (Let's face it — the only reason the problem isn't currently worse is because nearly all entries so far are either English or Abigail's Dutch songs. One or two more enthusiastic multilingual contributors will put sorting beyond any single person's ability. And we should encourage, not discourage, such contributions.)
  2. People will make fewer of the incredibly easy mistakes, even within single, native language lists, of momentarily confusing common letter sequences because they won't also have to simultaneously imagine the words rearranged to ignore articles.
Let me say that this offends my own librarian background, but it is a valid alternative. Any (printable) thoughts? :-) ☺ -- Jeff Q 01:46, 24 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Sorting "as is" will make my life easier when doing bulk submits. I can just put my new entries in a file, cut-and-paste the existing entries in the file, sort the file, and cut-and-paste the entire, sorted, list back. Abigail 12:30, Apr 25, 2004 (UTC)
Ah, yes, but notice how I happened to leave out discussion of punctuation and non-ASCII characters! I've noticed that different applications and utilities have different philosophies (often configurable, too) on how to handle these issues. "As-is" may not be a complete solution because of this, but it would certain make informal sorting easier. (Don't you hate how I like to bring up problems with my own suggestions? :-) -- Jeff Q 19:20, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Ignoring punctuation is a piece of cake. "sort -d" will do exactly that. Or rather, using "sort -bdf" will ignore punctuation, leading blanks, and case. But even if you invent a rather strange sorting order, say ignore dots, but consider commas, that's not a problem - an appropriate Perl filter just takes a minute or so to write. Leading articles are only a problem because it requires interpretation of the title - and knowledge of the language in which the title is written. And titles are too short to accurately guess the language automatically. Abigail 20:13, Apr 25, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Variations

What to do with songs that have been recorded by multiple artists, but which are not quite identical? Separate entries, or one entry with more than one artist mentioned? Abigail 14:48, Apr 19, 2004 (UTC)

I've been following the practice from other song lists (except for List of sets of unrelated songs with identical titles, for obvious reasons) of having a separate entry for each truly different song, based on who wrote it. (I tried the alternative for "America", as I discussed in the Duplicate titles section above, and found it to be rather confusing. Take a look at its entry on the old page to see how horrible that can look.) I consider different arrangements of the same song (e.g., a Manhattan Transfer a cappella version of a big-band number) to be the same. Most of these song lists seem to favor listing the artist who originally made the song famous, with a "covered by" comment added only for "significant" covers. I recommend All Music Guide's song lookup as a way to see who composed which versions, then listing only those artists whose versions were so popular that either they appeared on many albums or they are known to have placed highly on the pop charts. -- Jeff Q 10:13, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Unfortunally, All Music Guide's seems to be biased towards English music. I'm currently wading through a list of 18,000+ Dutch songs (uploading them to the list of songs will be fun) - for most of them I can get the lyrics, composer, and author of the lyrics, but I've no information on which (if any) album the songs appeared, and who covered from whom. And my musical knowledge is limited. For now, if the lyrics seem to be identical, or nearly identical, I list them as '"Song" by artist1; by artist2; by artist3 (Language lyrics)' (the latter remark only if I know the language, and that language isn't English). I've briefly considered '"Song" by artist1, artist2, and artist3', but then it isn't clear whether it was performed by a trio, or by three independent artists. Abigail 12:13, Apr 20, 2004 (UTC)
From my own efforts, I tend to avoid adding songs if I can't figure some of this stuff out. (Admittedly, it's easier for me to say this, since, as Abigail suggests, AMG is indeed robust for English but not other languages.) I don't add 95% of what I find on AMG. I don't feel compelled to add "Sydney Ladies" by Jimmy Barnes, or any of the other 40 "Sydney" songs listed in AMG, because I've never heard of either the songs or indeed of most of the artists. Likewise, unless I've heard of a band, I don't include their version of a common title. Technically, all these should go into the list, but I don't see that it adds much to the value of this list. My philosophy focuses more on inclusion of more geo-names than of specific song titles or artists, partly to keep the list managable and partly to promote songs that people are likely to be able to find in a music store. But that's just my approach. -- Jeff Q 02:09, 24 Apr 2004 (UTC)

[edit] "Home at last"

Would it be too much of a stretch to put in STeely Dan's "Home at last"? - [[User:Calmypal|Woodrow XXIIIII, Emperor of the United States, Minister of Ministry]] 01:51, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I would suggest that that is too much of a stretch. I always consider why the list exists when I think about pushing its boundaries. From my point of view, at least, it's a way of seeing if a particular place name can be found in a song title. "Home" is not a name, and it would contribute literally hundreds of entries with no particular value to this philosophy of inclusion. Others may disagree, of course. (See discussion under "Locations" above.) -- Jeff Q
Definitely too much of a stretch in my opinion. As the comment above notes, it would add vast numbers of entries. I would suggest that only places with proper names that could be found in an atlas or gazetteer or similar publication, or perhaps be part of a postal address, should be in the list. Titles that merely contain some kind of "geographical" feature or imply a location, e.g. "Home at Last", "Take Me to the River", "Over the Hills and Far Away", "Street Fighting Man", "Our House", "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" etc., etc., should not be in the list — but there's always scope for new list that does cover these! --Lancevortex 10:38, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Splitting up the page?

We now have over 700 songs listed, and the page is quickly becoming unwieldy. I think it's time we consider splitting up the page in several subpages. Abigail 11:20, Apr 22, 2004 (UTC)

Any suggestions on how to do this? My argument for retaining the song title sorting (Order by title above) becomes irrelevant if the songs are split between several pages, making it impossible to use a browser's "Find" function. Sorting by the included geographical name, as Abigail originally suggested, would still be problematic, for the same reasons I gave above (sorting titles without rearranging their text, extreme subsectioning, or messy prefixing). A scope orientation — i.e., countries, cities, streets, etc. — might be useful, but there could be a lot of duplication (think of "Georgia"). Whatever method we come up with, I suggest we consider how people would use this list. From my admittedly limited POV, I would visit this list looking for a specific name, so it should be unamibiguous which page I should jump to (favoring Abigail's suggested approach, despite the challenges). Is this how people typically use this list? Any other likely uses? Any other organization suggestions? -- Jeff Q 00:23, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Another point — any way we split the pages, the origin benefit for dividing the list into Exact and Contain sections is seriously reduced, again because of the difficulty in doing a browser "Find". Depending on the split strategy, this may be a good thing! In any case, it should be considered when planning the split. -- Jeff Q 02:24, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)
I have to confess I visit this list (and the other song title lists created by Jeff Q) mainly to add to it, edit it or stick my oar in as to what belongs on them — haven't actually used it for any practical purpose yet! That's not to say it hasn't been both fun and educational :). But I digress; I agree with Jeff Q that splitting the list will make it more hassle to find songs, and I can't think of way to avoid this. Is the list that difficult to use at the moment? Is there a pressing reason why it needs to be split? If not, will it become necessary in the future? --Lancevortex 00:46, 24 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Thanks for the compliment, Lancevortex, but I have to clarify — I am not opposed to splitting up the list per se. I just think we need to think carefully of the advantages and disadvantages of doing so and of the various ways of doing it. I've been visting the movie lists and don't particularly like having to jump between multiple pages to browse. On the other hand, here we're up to 28+ screen pages (in my browser window), the first two of which are the table of contents. Such long pages violate usual Web-browsing practice. But since it's a 39KB page with conveniently editable subsections, I think we have time for a good discussion. -- Jeff Q 01:23, 24 Apr 2004 (UTC)
I have been wondering, what is the benefit of splitting up things in Exact and Contain anyway? If people are going to use their the find function of their browser anyway, than does it matter? Abigail 11:36, Apr 24, 2004 (UTC)
Well, my thinking was that, in coming up with a song to honor or amuse oneself or others connected to a place, a title that was completely the name of the location was more desirable than one that simply included it in the title. Having the Exact group first would allow someone looking for such songs to find them more quickly, whether by browsing or Finding. Obviously, this is a subjective evaluation. It now strikes me as probably only a minor consideration (if any) in any reorganization of this list. -- Jeff Q 03:37, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC)

One useful way of splitting the list might be by location of placename - put all the songs relating to US places in one list, European places in another, etc. That's the way most geographical list pages seem to be done and, music or not, that's basically what this list is.Grutness 01:31, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)

That's a very logical idea, but as I pointed out above, there are complications to this arrangement. Just to reiterate two:
  • If we add a "Georgia", do we add it to both North America and Asia, or do we go by what the songwriter intended (assuming we know and assuming they weren't being clever by implying both)?
  • If you think "Georgia" may be easy to place, what about "Main Street"?
I am about to propose what I think will be a more useful reorganization: divide the list into language groups, then sort each alphabetically by the geographical name in the title. Please review the details and let me know what you think. — Jeff Q 09:26, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] "Dutch" links

I've found that lately it's hard (if not impossible) to do a "diff" on this page, presumably because of its size and/or complexity. I'd like to try making one simplification by removing all but the first Dutch link in the "(Dutch lyrics)" expressions. This is more in keeping with Wiki practice, which discourages linking every occurrence of a phrase. (I would also suggest that, while quite reasonable in a general Wiki article, a link to "Dutch language" is not all that useful in this one. In fact, I'm rather doubtful about the utility of even distiguishing the Dutch songs from other songs.) I don't know if this will help substantially, but it should be done anyway. Any objections? — Jeff Q 15:35, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I removed all the links for "([language] lyrics)", except the first, for each language with multiple occurrences, per typical Wiki practice. (At the moment, that's just Dutch [many] and Welsh [2], with French and German having only one entry each.) We'll see if it has any performance effect. — Jeff Q 00:47, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I copied & translated the long Dutch part into the nl:wiki (see link to nl:-page in the article). Additionaly, I changed the titel there to something like: "Songs in Dutch with geographical names in the title" (geonames could be worldwide). This reduces the scope, and it's growing steadily there :-). For here I'd suggest a splice: songs in English would be useful, other laguages are referenced via e.g. 'see also'.-DePiep 12:45, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Drowning in Dumped Dutch Dead-end Ditties

I think all those Dutch songs are distracting and serve no useful purpose. I propose they be deleted, or at least placed in a list of their own. Consider:

  1. It seems the contributor who put them there, User:Abigail-II, has left Wikipedia.
  2. Many of the place names themselves are in Dutch, making them meaningless to English-language readers
  3. Most of them have no further articles for the artist or song.
  4. The contributor apparently dumped them en masse from All Music Guide, probably without knowing anything about them. That's a lousy way to compile a list.
  5. If non-English songs are included, this list will get unmanageably huge. Believe me, you don't want to let me start adding a hundred Brazilian songs with "Brasil" in their title...

-- Paul Richter 04:46, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Although I'm Dutch, I agree. Perhaps a comparable page in the Dutch Wikipedia might be a better place for these songs. ziggy 11:51, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)
  • I've copied the Dutch title into a new nl.wiipedia-article like "List of Dutch songs with geonames" four days ago.(see [1] is this the way to link it?). In four days it grew from 160 to 210 titles (+25%). First idea now is to recopy the longer list to this one, but section-names are elaborate to excahange (==Dutch A== vs ==A==). This supports my plea: Dutch lyrics in diferent article. For the moment I'll wait. -DePiep 10:42, 28 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Personal dilemma re Wiki rules

I have a slight problem - Wikipedia rules bar people from self-promotion... and two songs on an album I released in 1996 have place-name titles! Should I add "St. Leonards" and "Outram no. 1" by James Dignan to the list or not? Grutness 01:29, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Finchley Central moved to exact

I've moved The New Vaudeville Band's "Finchley Central" from 'contains' to 'exact' - it's the exact name of a British railway station (London Underground). Grutness

[edit] Major article reorganization

I'm seriously contemplating a major reorganization of this article, based on questions and statements made recently, as well as old issues that have been discussed but never decided upon. Given that such discussions frequently don't lead to action, especially considering the effort in making big changes (there are currently about 1,000 songs listed), I am going to propose several changes and ask for yes/no votes from interested readers. I will give everyone two weeks (i.e., through 10 December) to think about it, then examine whether any or all should be made. NOTE: This is not a formal Wiki vote, but merely an attempt to gauge the current mood of this article's readers. I'm really trying to decide whether to invest the massive effort in executing such a change.

Here are my suggestions. Please signify your vote with a "Yes" or "No", followed with four tildes (~~~~) to stamp your username and time on the vote. I've put my votes in to start off each vote.


  • Separate songs into language groups, with English songs at the top, given that this is an en:Wikipedia article. This would also allow creation of subordinate articles for long sublists, per common Wiki practice. (Currently this would only be an issue for English and Dutch songs. NOTE: I am not suggesting subordinate articles be created at this time.)
  • Within each language group, reorganize by alphabetical order of geographical name, with each name's titles sorted alphanumerically within the collection. (E.g., group everything with Georgia in the G section, with "The Devil Went Down To Georgia" preceding "The Night The Lights Went Out In Georgia".) The actual geo names would be in bold, as shown here, to make this easier and clearer.
  • Eliminate separate Exact and Contains sections, which would be of little use if the previous change is adopted.
  • Sort by exact title, regardless of articles. This would mean that the two Georgia songs above, because they start with "The", would follow "Georgia (On My Mind)" and "Rainy Night In Georgia". This is highly advisable if the geo-sort change is made to reduce the extra effort in sorting. (I want this list to be sortable by mere mortals, not requiring sort programs to maintain!)
  • Fully capitalize all English song entries (i.e., uppercase for all initial letters), per common music industry practice. (Apparently, most foreign languages — even German! — have much less capitalization in titles, so non-English songs would continue to follow their rules.) See Talk:List of songs whose title includes personal names#Capitalization for my justification for this.
    • Yes. Jeff Q 09:34, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)
    • No. This isn't song industry practice - at least not in publishing. I'd favour APA style (as is supposed to be used for references in Wikipedia), i.e., capitalising only the first letter and any proper nouns. [[User:Grutness|Grutness talk ]] 10:54, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)


Most of these practices can be seen in effect in List of songs whose title includes personal names (the Contains section if it still exists; otherwise the whole list) and List of songs whose title includes dates and times. Please review the effects in considering how you feel about these changes. It's also a good idea to review the following sections above for the ongoing discussions on some of these points:

If people seem to be for any or all of these changes (or at least, not against them), I would plan to make the change one night in a single mass edit, so list participants won't be unduly inconvenienced. Let me know what you think. — Jeff Q 09:34, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I'm basically off the 'Net until I get some hardware fixed, so I won't be taking any actions until at least Monday evening (Eastern Standard Time), possibly later. — Jeff Q 01:47, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Well, after nearly three weeks, I see that there is some support for the first four of the five changes, and no opposition to any but the last one. Based on that, I plan to make the first four changes shortly. The list will be split into language groups, then organized alphanumerically by exact geographical name, with the title in a group sorted alphanumerically themselves, with all words in the title considered significant for sorting purposes, and with none of the exact/contains distinction. I will not change capitalization for anything (except possibly in those rare cases where I know the title follows none of the many official policies and is not done for artistic effect). I anticipate a few problems determining what is the exact geo name, especially in some of the non-English titles, but I hope that folks will help resolve any questions that come up after the main edit. — Jeff Q 05:56, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I've restructured the list as promised. In the process, as I expected, many interesting issues arose. Among them are:

  • Just how much of a place name should one make bold (e.g., Mersey or The Mersey)? I didn't bold the articles (as long as the place name was clear without them), so that the titles could be sorted in the place one might expect to find them ("M" in the example, rather than "T").
  • The following types of current taboos have crept into the list:
    • Instrumental tunes. Wikipedia song lists have typically excluded these.
    • Adjective forms of place names (e.g., "Egyptian").
    • Fictional ("Xanadu"), non-terrestrial ("Mars"), non-physical places ("Heaven").
    • Non-specific places (e.g., "West" rather than "West Something").
    • Landmarks which are not in and of themselves geographic or street names (e.g., "Big Ben").
These have typically been excluded after various discussions, but there has been controversy over these exclusions.
  • Some songs have place names that aren't used as such in the song (e.g., "Goin' Back to Cali"). That has been reason for exclusion in other song lists (like the "songs with personal names" list), but that hasn't become a rule here yet.

I removed many of these songs because they didn't conform to the general practice, but I've listed them below because people may want to revisit the reasons they were originally excluded. (I also expanded the explanation under Notes based on these Talk page discussions, something I should have done a while ago to avoid confusion.) I can't be sure I've excluded all that should be, nor left in all that should, because I'm not familiar with all the songs. I have tried to do some research when not sure (e.g., checking AMG samples, searching for lyrics). Here are the songs I removed, arranged by reason:

  • Not "songs" (i.e., no singing)
  • Non-geographic name
    • "Across the Alley from the Alamo" by The Mills Brothers
    • "Anna Paulowna" by Rob de Nijs (Dutch lyrics)
    • "Big Ben" by Frank en Mirella
    • "Copacabana (At the Copa)" by Barry Manilow
  • Only a vague or non-proper place name
    • "Als de mensheid straks naar de maan gaat" by Marjolijne Rommerts (Dutch lyrics)
    • "Aon de waterkant (Geraos aon de Maos)" by Ziesjoem! (Dutch lyrics)
    • "Bij de halte van lijn 9" by The Ramblers (Dutch lyrics)
    • "La Isla Bonita" by Madonna
    • "The Whole World" by Outkast
    • "Westy Girls" by Jan Hellriegel ("Westy" means west in Auckland, New Zealand)
  • A non-physical, non-terrestrial, and/or fictional place name
  • An adjective form of place name
  • I cannot identify the specific place name
    • "Lage landen aan de zee" by The Amazing Stroopwafels (Dutch lyrics)
    • "Het land van Maas en Waal" by Boudewijn de Groot (Dutch lyrics)
  • Spelling errors
    • "Salisbury Hill" by Peter Gabriel (it's "Solsbury Hill", which is already in the list)

If anyone wants to argue for their reinclusion, please either reopen the earlier discussions above that cover the appropriate reasons, or start a new discussion below under a new heading (not under this one, which may get much too cumbersome with many arguments for different rules). Of course, if I've made any outright errors (and what is the chance of that, with only 1,000+ titles rearranged and reformatted? ☺), I hope everyone will help me make corrections. Thank you very much for your patience and assistance. — Jeff Q 10:42, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

you mention on my talk page that I've reincluded New Orlean's Instrumental No. 1 more than once. This isn't a concerted effort to rebel against the no instrumental policy, but forgetfulness on my part (both that such a policy exists, and that I've added the song previously). Sorry. -Thryduulf 01:27, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Perhaps the real problem is that "no instrumentals" is not an explicit policy, but just one that has been informally adopted (and argued for in Talk pages) by the various Wikipedia song lists. It should probably be added, but I hate adding even more rules to the already cumbersome Notes section when it hasn't been a frequent issue. — Jeff Q 16:38, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Let battle commence!

First comment - well done for an excellent and presumably tedious job! Now... let battle commence! A couple o' notes about some of the above (although you're probably right about exclusion):

  • "Dunedin" by Laughin' Gas isn't completely instrumental, in that the one word "Dunedin!" is yelled during it several times. "Sweet Pie Opotiki" is instrumental though.
  • "Westy" (your comment "Westy Girls" by Jan Hellriegel ("Westy" means west in Auckland, New Zealand)) - not quite. "Westy" means "West Auckland" in Auckland. (Still qualifies as a vague/improper name, though).
  • "Sword of Orion"? I didn't realise that non-earth places were included (no reason why not, though), so I've added "Orion" by Jethro Tull.

And now onto the battle, round 1.

  • I'm a little bemused by the inclusion of "God defend New Zealand" by Thomas Bracken. It's the country's national anthem, and if we include that there's probably 50 or more other national anthems with country names in them!
  • I'm intrigued to see Billy Bragg's "A new England" (so written in the lyrics) listed under N and not E. Any reason why you thought he was talking about Boston, Massachusetts rather than Boston, Lincolnshire? The same may (or may not) apply to the Roy Harper song "New England" and Elvis Costello's "New Amsterdam" (perhaps there was a reason for making the songs alphabetical by song after all!)
  • "O Stockholm" by Marty Willson-Piper is bilingual, alternating verses in English and Swedish. So where...?

[[User:Grutness|Grutness hello? ]] 11:09, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the compliment. It was rather tedious, especially that last proofreading, when I knew everything was right — except for about a dozen sorting errors. ☺ I don't have much of a battle to offer, though. To answer your points, based on what you've said above:
  • Restore "Dunedin" by Laughin' Gas.
  • Remove "Sweet Pie Opotiki".
  • The original "Westy" line said:
"Westy Girls" by Jan Hellriegel ("Westy" = west Auckland, New Zealand)
I misinterpreted the explanation when trying to expand the shorthand, but the lowercase "west" and the link encouraged that misinterpretation. This is a good reason to avoid shorthand in explanatory comments. If "Westy" does indeed mean "West Auckland", it should be restored (with the improved explanation).
  • I could have sworn we covered the non-terrestrial issue somewhere, but looking over the discussions above, I don't see anything explicit. (You can't use an ordinary atlas to look up Orion, but it's in any astronomical "atlas".) However, only 2 of 1,200 songs appear to violate this unwritten rule. Therefore, the new Notes text just changed it from a de facto to a de jure rule, which I would further argue is based on the "geographical" definition. I invite everyone to discuss if they want this restriction or not, and why, and policy will go the way of consensus.
  • National anthems (with lyrics and qualifying titles) are fair game. (There can't be more than 200 of them, eh? ☺)
  • "A New England" was my bad. It should be "A New England" and should be moved to the England group.
  • If "O Stockholm" has more than a passing bit of English, it should be listed in both English and Swedish (see Notes). I wouldn't add "Tonight's the Night" by Rod Stewart (assuming it qualified for this list) to the French section just because Britt Ekland murmured a few French words, but there are certainly songs that split their lyrics fairly well between two (or more) languages. There are already a few examples in the new list.
That said, I think I'll wait for some comments on my table of contents suggestion below and get some sleep. ☺ Jeff Q 12:23, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)
OK. "Westy"'s back in, "Orion" is out, and "O Stockholm" is there twice. My memory was a little off, BTW - the same song appears twice on the album with slightly different lyrics, as "O Stockholm" in English, then as "Åh Stockholm" in Swedish. [[User:Grutness|Grutness hello? ]]

[edit] Compact table of contents

These songs lists suffer from very long tables of contents, especially when one must break down individual letters into subgroups in order to keep each section one-page-sized. I've been experimenting with custom tables of contents, and I think I have a system that will work for song lists. For this newly-reorganized list, it would provide the following:

  • One line each for English and Dutch, with single-letter indexes to jump to a section (much like the Wikipedia custom TOC templates). This will be an extreme improvement on the current 3-page TOC!
         English:  0-9 A B C D E F G H  I   J  K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
  • Other languages grouped on a single line unless and until they are sufficiently populated for their own individual lines, plus one line for miscellaneous links, like so:
         French German Russian Swedish Welsh
  Notes See also References
  • For sections with multiple letters (e.g., X-Z), all links would jump to the combined section.
  • For subdivided letters, there is a one-line mini-TOC that shows the subdivisions at the top of that letter's section. For example, the English A section would start with the following line with links to each subsection:
           A-Ak     Al     Am-Ame     Amf-Az  

This sounds a lot more complicated than it is to use, and the end result actually looks better than my kludgy examples here. You can see a working version of this article with this special TOC in my sandbox. Take a look and let me know what you think.

It does require a bit more maintenance, but the main- and sub-TOCs can be tweaked and replicated as the list expands or even if it's reformatted again. The main advantage is that it's a lot quicker to get to a specific place in the list, and I firmly believe that ease of using should come before ease of editing. Even so, this formatting doesn't change how you add songs to the list sections, so it won't get in the way of regular contributions. — Jeff Q 11:31, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Aw, come on, everyone! Nobody's commented on my proposed table of contents yet. I know, I'm being impatient, but I worked hard to come up with something compact, useful, obvious, and elegant, and I'm anxious to give it a try. ☺ Please take a look at the sample page and let me know what you think. — Jeff Q 12:06, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)
That feels much easier to use to me. You have my vote. — Thryduulf 10:05, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Looks good to me - nice work Jeffq! One extension I can imagine of it is grouping together songs about one place under a subheading )for instance if there are 1ö songs with (New York) in the title - but that might be a project for later! Grutness|hello? 07:03, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Thus far, we have two supporters for this TOC (besides myself) and no dissenters. Unless this trend is reversed, sometime after January 17, 2005, I'll make the change and we'll see what folks think. — Jeff Q 21:57, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I've implemented the custom TOC with the languages currently represented in the list, plus an extra "Other languages" for any not here yet (which can be made into new sections as needed). Let me know in this section if you have any questions or comments. — Jeff Q 02:17, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] too exact/general

Should "Airport" by The Motors be included? What about "Downtown" and "Don't Sleep In The Subway" by Petula Clark? Thryduulf 09:49, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Much as I love the Petula Clark songs, I'd recommend against including such general location terms as these. One reason for requiring specific locations is to keep this list from exploding in size. (It's already twice the recommended size for reasonable loading, and can be expected to get much larger even with the current restrictions.) Take a look at my comments under Locations above. — Jeff Q 07:08, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I forgot another, more important point. "Airport", "downtown", and "subway" aren't proper names, which was the original intent here (although I don't recall ever explicitly using the term). — Jeff Q 07:21, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] implied

"Walking Down Madison" by Kirsty MacColl implies Madison Avenue (and the song does as well), but it isn't explicitly stated. Should it be included? Thryduulf 09:49, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The title alone makes it useful for someone who wants a reference to "Madison Avenue", or, for that matter, "Madison Street", "Madison Boulevard", etc. This is the guideline I use for including a name. Just my 2¢. — Jeff Q 07:18, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Let me clarify. I would add the title as "Walking Down Madison" because the title does not include "Avenue". It would therefore be in a Madison group, preceding the Madison Avenue group. (They currently would only have 1 member each.) As I mention in Geo-name group sorting below, it's very complicated trying to sort based on implicit information about the meaning of names. (Heck, it's challenging enough just to sort by explicit title information!) As I recall, MacColl never mentions "Avenue" in the song, even if it's known that that what she meant (which I certainly don't know). Unless and until people express a solid desire to change this approach, I suggest grouping and sorting by the explicit name. — Jeff Q 07:37, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Links to places?

I suggested this offlist to JeffQ a while back (nice ToC, BTW!), and the time might now be ripe to bring it up here...

I've got a suggestion about the List of songs whose title includes geographical names. Would it be worthwhile linking not only the name of the group, but also the place? For instance, the song "Abergavenny" by Marty Wilde is currently linked to Marty Wilde, but could also be linked to the article on Abergavenny. Worth doing? Or is it just too messy considering multiple place names needing disambiguation? Grutness|hello? 13:02, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The current linking policy for this article is only the artist(s), unless there is an article about the song, e.g. "Hotel California" by The Eagles.
For most entries linking to the place will be fine, but those songs with articles will be problematic. A way to get around this would be to link all places afterwards. e.g perhaps: Hotel California" by The Eagles (-> California).
Just (->) or (...) at the end may even suffice.
It wouldn't be too dificult to do, one person could do one section in half an hour or so (when the wikipedia isn't on a go-slow), checking for each place's article in parallel. Many places have more than one song linking to them anyway, e.g. London has ~19, and the Lo-Lz section only contains another 5 places: Lodi; Los Angeles; Louisiana; Luckenbach, Texas; Luxembourg. Note I haven't checked these links
So the only question remaining is "do we want to do this"?
imho we might as well, but I'll not start adding any until others have commented.
Chris -Thryduulf 17:35, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I would suggest waiting at least two weeks before making any changes, to ensure people have time to comment. I have quite a few comments, pro and con, on this topic, but I'll wait until that time to add any that haven't been mentioned, so other people have a chance to add their opinions. — Jeff Q 07:01, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

It's been more than two weeks since I last posted on this issue, but I've been a bit distracted. Since there hasn't been any additional input since then, here are some of the considerations I've thought about in whether to add links to place names within song titles:

  • PRO
    • Having a link to the place mentioned in the song title has obvious utility. The absence of place-name links is a serious issue for this hypertext article.
  • CONS
    • Problems placing the link
      • If a link is placed within the title, a song link can't be.
      • If the place-name link is elsewhere, it looks a little messy. I applaud Thryduulf's attempt to create a reasonable link beside the main "song title by artist" text, but I'm not sure newer readers will notice and understand it easily (not being the usual hyperlink on the meaningful citation words, but a side note).
    • Problems with the number of links
      • Adding a place name link to each song looks messy. (Obviously just my opinion, but I suspect it would be shared with many.)
      • Adding a link to the first occurrence raises several problems with maintenance:
        • Anytime someone needs to re-sort a section because of accumulated errors, this is another potential problem they'll have to fix.
        • If the first title has its own song article, should the single occurrence be bumped to the second occurrence? Even if this is acceptable, if a song-article link is added later to the first song in the group which has the place-name link, the editor will have to remember to move the place-name link. (Not a problem if the song article and place-name article links are separate.)
        • Grouping and sorting based on the bolded place names is already challenging enough without making at least one place-name in the title in each of the 600+ groups look different from the others in the group by adding a link. (Again, not a problem if the link is tacked onto the end instead of within the title.)
    • How does one decide which version of a place name to link to?
      • As Grutness hints above, there are many ambiguities in place names. For instance, I recently added "Don't Go Back To Rockville". The lyrics don't reveal which of the 24 currently listed Rockvilles is meant (assuming it's not about one not even listed).
      • This recalls the "songwriter intent vs. general use" argument already made in the personal-name song list. I was in favor of ignoring songwriter intent, as I imagined that list as an interesting way to find songs that can be imagined to be about someone you know. (For this list, finding "Don't Go Back to Rockville" could be amusing for someone in Rockville, Maryland, even if the songwriter had been thinking about Rockville, Georgia.)
      • Of course, this ambiguity can be addressed if necessary by linking to a disambiguation page, like the one for Rockville in the example.
  • ALTERNATIVES
    • Replace (or add to) alpha sections with place-name sections, adding the link to the section header.
      • Major problem: I estimate there are currently over 600 unique place names! 600+ section headers would be extremely unwieldy. (We currently have about one-tenth that number of sections, and I felt it necessary to add sub-TOCs just to make this reasonably navigable.)
    • Use one-bullet markup for place names, two-bullet markup for songs.
      • This would probably double the imaged length of this list, but it wouldn't create a massive section-header problem.
      • The imaged length may not be so much of a problem if the current TOC scheme is kept, but that scheme may need to be expanded, increasing the complexity for meta-editors like myself who are focused on useful page organization without interfering with song contribution.
      • The storage length would be another issue, but is probably about the same as adding Thryduulf's suggested side notes, and might be clearer.
      • This would also probably eliminate the current confusion over the two-step sorting process (first grouping by bolded name, then sorting alphanumerically) by making the name group obvious by the use of outline form.
NOTE: Either of these two could be used to group intended place names together (like the various New York City variants and the New Orleans example below in Geo-name group sorting), which would probably be an improvement over the current sort-by-bolded name policy.

Ultimately, the one Pro is so important, it can outweigh a number of Cons, but at what point do the problems make it too awkward to implement the place-name links? For those who are anxious to add these clearly useful links, I would ask that they come up with some way to reduce or eliminate the problems mentioned, or experiment with alternatives, especially the bulleting one I described. However, please always remember an important Wiki paradigm: the page should be first easy to read and second not too hard to edit. (Personally, I feel we've already hit some serious problems with the latter just because of the grouping by place-name, considering how many sorting and formatting problems I've had to fix in the past month.) — Jeff Q 21:27, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

my perferred option is the one/two bulleted list format, over my sidenote suggestion. This would (imho) reduce the complexity of editing by making the sort order clearer. An example would be:
The bolding wouldn't terefore be strictly necessary, but it would be MUCH less editing to keep it than remove it. If we go with this, I can probably find time to do some of the conversion.
Thryduulf 21:53, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Thryduulf, might I suggest that you create a sandbox for yourself and experiment with a copy of the list to see what other issues might come up when formatting the list this way? I found this an essential strategy when making the significant change of the compact TOC, as I had to resolve several problems I hadn't thought of until I actually saw the results. If you get a decent version working, you can post a notice pointing to a saved version of the sandbox and ask for comments, like I did. (Let me know if you'd like details or help.) — Jeff Q 03:38, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] prototype

As suggested I have created a mock up of the proposed new sorting with links to places. I've only done the English A so far. You can view it at User:Thryduulf/Geonamesongs. I would appreciate comments on it (I know there are some typos in there. I will fix them at some point!). The issues I've come accross so far are:

Thryduulf, I have some detailed responses to your many excellent questions and points. After thinking about the problem I just mentioned above with interspersed dialog, however, and considering how incredibly long this dicussion already is, I think we should adjourn the discussion to User talk:Thryduulf/Geonamesongs to avoid cluttering up this page. Everyone who's interested in the process can follow us there. (As it is, I feel this Talk page will need to be pruned and archived as soon as possible, although I wouldn't plan to do it until after some of these major changes are complete.) If you and Grutness agree, I recommend taking all of the issues above and creating individual sections for each to be properly discussed at length. — Jeff Q 16:22, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I was going to suggest it as well, I'll start moving content over info now. Thryduulf 16:56, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)

note: most content from this section is now at User talk:Thryduulf/Geonamesongs Thryduulf 17:54, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Geo-name group sorting

We're having some problems with sorting by "exact geographical name", so let me be a bit clearer on this and provide some examples. The main reason for bolding the exact geographical is to make it easier to spot each geo-name group, so that sorting can be done correctly. Therefore, it's important to ensure that different sets of bolded names don't get mixed together (e.g., the Hollywood group will always precede the Hollywood Blvd. group). One of the challenges with this system is when a geo-name has several forms that "everyone knows" mean the same thing, like New York (when referring to the city) vs. New York City vs. New York, New York vs. N.Y.C. The current policy is to keep these separate, just as one keeps separate New Orleans (in the N section) from City of New Orleans (in the C section). I realize this may seem counterintuitive, but trust me, not doing it this way leads to even more complications. Whenever I edit a section, I try to ensure that this sorting practice is followed. However, as with any other content and format policy, this is open to discussion. I invite folks to chime in on the pros and cons of keeping the status quo or changing it. — Jeff Q 05:52, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Another note: one of the complications is that the phrase "New York, New York", in the ordinary world, is actually an explicit reference to New York city in New York state, rather than being repetitive, as is obvious in the title "Canada (O Canada)". A further complication is whether any particular song with "New York, New York" in the title actually means to disambiguate the city from the state, or is doing the repetitive thing. Even the lyrics may not make this clear. So the question becomes, does one bold both New Yorks or only the first? Does the "most specific geo name" rule trump the "bold only first occurrence" rule? I'm following the guideline that, as long as the entire bolded name is, by itself, a valid geo name, it goes into a group of exactly the same bolded names, even when there's only one such name in the group. They are sorted before sorting the individual titles within each group, per stated policy. (There are several more complications that arise from this, but that's all part of the "fun" of organizing by geo name that I alluded to early last year, which is why I was originally against it. I hope, though, that people find these practices useful in actually reading this list, which should always be more important that editing it.) — Jeff Q 06:24, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

  • The subject here is exact geographical name, I understand. My next thoughts are:
1. Once the geoname is clear from the songtitle, this and only this should be bolded.
2. First sorting then is on this bolded words (grouping all the same geonames=what we want); secondly on the full literal songtitle.
1.+2. Effect so far: all geonames New York are grouped in one serie. Which geoname it refers to (here: state or city) we may not know (not even after listening), and we should not do with. If the clarifiaction is added in the title, the reader sees (unbolded). If not: listen or ask the songwriter.
3. On spelling. We cannot alter the spelling of 'N.Y.C.' in a title. Add the full name New York (bolded, and no bolds in the title) would solve the problem, wouldn't it? Otherwise, there even remains the un-grouping effect of periods: N.Y.C. sorts different from NYC.
4. Next: derived names. A song could be called 'Californian dreaming' or 'Paulistan dreaming' (from São Paulo, Brazil). Do we bold half a word? And the second, spelling-changed name? First thought here is: 1. indeed, halfbold the word; 2. bold the geoname after the title. And sorting will group where I expect to find it.
5. But author Jeff Q here warned for 'bigger troubles' - which I do not see yet.

-DePiep 12:28, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Landmark place names

I hate getting caught being inconsistent, even when I'm the one who catches me. In Major article reorganization above, I said that landmark place names (e.g., Big Ben) shouldn't be included. But I finally recalled that I argued last year that Strawberry Fields being an actual place now (instead of only fictional) should allow "Strawberry Fields Forever" to be included in the list. Of course, it should be one way or the other, so people know what to expect. I have listed arguments for and against inclusion of landmark names below and have followed this with a request for "Yes" or "No" votes. I ask all readers of this article to consider this issue and register their vote in the appropriate section by 23:59 UTC on February 12, 2005 (inclusive). If there is a clear consensus for inclusion of landmark names, I will re-add the ones I removed earlier. If there is a clear consensus against, I will remove "Strawberry Fields Forever" and any others I find. — Jeff Q 16:25, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Landmark name arguments

If you think of any brief "for" or "against" arguments missing below, please add them. (Lengthy discussions can be posted under Landmark name discussion below.)

  • FOR
    • As long as they're proper nouns, they're specific places and can be found on a map.
    • Street names aren't exactly "geographical", either, but they've been accepted.
    • If people want to find songs about favorite places (the list creator's original intent), they'd probably want to see landmarks, too.
    • Shouldn't we include famous places like "Big Ben" and places with famous songs like "Strawberry Fields"?
  • AGAINST
    • They're not "geographical". We may need to change the article title.
    • This list is already too big! Landmark names may double its size or worse.
    • Wouldn't we wind up adding things like Springfield Mall or Alice's Restaurant, just because they exist somewhere and are mentioned in a title?

[edit] Landmark name votes

Vote by adding the following to the appropriate section:

* ~~~~

This will add your user name and a timestamp on a bulleted line. Feel free to add a brief comment with your vote, but if you have a lot to say, please post it under Landmark name discussion instead. You can change your vote anytime before the closing date.

FOR INCLUSION

  • Thryduulf 17:31, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC) (but see my comments below)

AGAINST INCLUSION

  • Jeff Q 16:25, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)
  • Grutness 11:33, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC). Sounds good for a separate list, though List... includes landmarks
  • DePiep 11:01, 28 May 2005 (UTC). Separate list. Geonames is oversee-able; landmarks will double list, halve the use.

[edit] Landmark name discussion

Use this space to make detailed and/or impassioned pleas for one or the other policy. — Jeff Q 16:25, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

  • I have voted to include them, but I think the following criteria should apply:
    • The landmark should be real - i.e. not fictional. (This does not preclude songs about landmarks that no longer exist, e.g. The World Trade Centre)
    • The landmark must be famous and/or notable, defined as having one or more of the following:
    1. Its own article in Wikipedia
    2. A prominent mention in a Wikiepdia article about the place it is located (e.g. in an article about the city it is in)
    3. A prominent mention in a Wikipedia article about the type of thing it is (e.g. in a list of famous bridges, or tallest buildings)
    4. Included in the title of a song that merits its own Wikipedia article.
    5. Being the principle subject in a song that merits its own Wikipedia article.
    6. Being named on a map at 1:25,000 scale (or bigger) available at an online mapping site (e.g. multimap, streetmap, mapquest).
    • The song must be about a landmark that qualifies above (i.e. A song about Moe's Tavern in the Simpsons doesn't merit the inclusion of a real place called Moe's Tavern)
This would allow Strawberry Fields (4) and Big Ben (1). If the list gets too big we could split them into List of songs whose title includes famous landmarks.
--Thryduulf 18:19, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I've been rather behind on time-sensitive updates due to meatspace events; sorry 'bout the delay. I'd say that, based on the total vote count of 3, with just less than the recommended 70% for achieving consensus (as if 3 editors could be considered a consensus anyway), we've essentially decided not to do anything at this time; i.e., not to purge the list of nor infuse it with landmark-name titles.
Since all three of the voters think that landmark names have a place in the "List of songs…" world (although disagreeing on where to put them), I'd suggest that, for now, someone create the separate list Thryduulf mentioned above, and see if it attracts attention. It can always be merged later if people desire. If it does get some business, we might instead transfer appropriate titles from this list. If not, this list will go on in its current grey state until others gain enough interest to do something about it. — Jeff Q (talk) 00:19, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I will set it up when I next get chance (I'm currently online via an internet cafe in Newcastle Airport). Before then does anyone want to comment on my proposed criteria for inclusion? I am not so sure about #6 in retrospect. Thryduulf 17:31, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I haven't commented on the criteria before because I hate having to be so specific about inclusion/exclusion. This list's rather verbose criteria came about after lengthy discussions over a long period of time. It may not be a good guideline, but I've favored being as unspecific as practical to begin with, and see where people take the list. If problems arise, they can be argued on the Talk page. That's my 2¢. — Jeff Q (talk) 03:44, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Article started

  • After reading this discussion and others, I have started the article List of English songs whose title includes the name of a landmark. I have written very simple criteria, so as to invite contributions. My experience is, that this gives good wikipedia-effects (I saw almost all of you on the nonsense-words-list!). Problems solved: English lyrics (foreign lyrics could grow elsewhere); all names accepted (Alice's restaurant - no problem). Famousness or scale: not relevant at the entrance. The decision: is name X geographical or a landmark? can be dificult, but there is a place for either outcome. Unsolved: descriptive names are not 'allowed' now. This misses promised lands, lands of hope and glory, lands of milk and honey (wich, I feel somehow, do belong on the list), but also excludes every and any place to enter: "Somewhere".'We'll see the Talk.
  • On the other end of the Places-universum I have started a list for fictuous places. You're invited to visit them: List of English songs whose title includes the name of a fictional place. Some dropped titles of 'this' list, can end up there. I'll take a look.
  • The subject of this talk-page is untouched, I think. -DePiep 13:12, 28 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] At the risk of being a pedant...

At the risk of being a pedant, I can't help wondering if this article has the correct title. Shouldn't it be List of songs whose titles include geographical names? Grutness|hello? 11:38, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I think you're right, but I'm not inclined to move it at the moment, especially with all the other activity that's going on here. ☺ Jeff Q 15:36, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed reorganisation - comments needed

For some time now I have been working on an example for a reorganised version of this article at - user:Thrydullf/Geonamesongs. I now have an example of every type there and the comments seem favourable. I will implement it in one week unless people object. To keep any discussion in one place, and make it easy to gain a consensus, please address all comments to user talk:Thryduulf/Geonamesongs rather than here. Thryduulf 20:35, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

OK. Could someone fix the first link here? user:Thrydullf/Geonamesongs. Bye, -DePiep 11:51, 24 May 2005 (UTC)
Its User:Thryduulf/Geonamesongs works. (Sp duulf/dulff). -DePiep 12:08, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
Well, I for one like the look of it! The main problem, theough , is where a song title could refer to one of several places with the same name (like...um... "Chelsea morning", for instance, which IIRC is about the New York hotel, not the suburb of London) Grutness...wha? 12:35, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
You mean the current look or the proposed new look (see the link)?. And do you feel invited adding? As for Chelsea-thing: I prefer the grouping of all Chelsea-references. Within such a group, details could be added in text. I wouldn't like a sub-section (in the TOC) on different Chelsea's. See also Talk-pages, some people have been trying & thinking al lot on this. -DePiep 14:23, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
I meant the new look on Thryduulf's page. As to "trying and thinking a lot on this", I know - you'll see my name on several messages about page organisation further up the page here and on various user talk pages. My fault for not replying on Thryduulf's page though (I missed that line!) Grutness...wha? 21:16, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
I'm not sure what your question is referring to. In the proposed version, there are sections for each place with the same name. e.g America is split into
  • Central America
  • North America
  • South America
  • USA
  • Generic or unknown
For the Chelsea Morning example, thats a difficult one. The hotel isn't really a geographical place, and would be more suited to the proposed landmarks list (see earlier on this page), the article on the hotel (Hotel Chelsea) implies that it is named for Chelsea, New York; if this is correct, then the song would best fit in a Chelsea, New York section. Thryduulf 15:09, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
I also hadn't spotted that (I checked the first couple of sections, to see what they were like, and there was no split needed in either of them). Thanks for clearing that up. Grutness...<fontcolor=green>wha? 21:16, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
(On my typing "trying and thinking a lot on this" to Grutness): I'm sorry, this was rude phrasing. With of without knowing your contributions. What I meant to do was point to other places where the same subject was dicussed. You already knew, appearently. Bye, -DePiep 10:51, 28 May 2005 (UTC)
On grouping by name. The proposed list has:

====English Al-Ameq====

"English Al-Ameq"? So this is Alabama in England? Throw out these Dutch first (well, these Dutch lyrics, not me personally please
;-) ). Four-level becomes tree-level: ===Al-Ameq===
Two levels of bullets? Against. Ugly & not clearing the point. The Alabama-link is on first level by no-indent, so that's clear by itself. The bullet is for the title. I've seen other lists brighten up by such a change:

===Al-Ameq===
Alabama

In general: why not be bold here? If you don't throw away any title, it won't be any harm, will it? Of course, it should be bold my way ;-). Bye, -DePiep 11:26, 28 May 2005 (UTC)

The lack of bullets might cause some line breaks to be skipped if there isn't a bullet on the following line (i.e. empty sections), if this happens you should be able to force it with a <br&gr; at the end of the line. I'd be interested to see how it looks on the long list, so if you want to take a copy and implement it and link to it here go ahead. If we agree it does look better then we can implement it on the live version - but I feel we should only change the live list to one bullet once if we are going to do it (not do some to see how it looks, then do the rest; or do it and decide against it and revert). This isn't very clearly phrased, but I'm too tired to do any better. If you don't understand any of it say so and I'll have another go later. Thryduulf 18:24, 28 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] English songs implemented

The English songs on the live version (this page) are now in the new format. The other languages should follow soon. Thryduulf 18:24, 28 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Eden?

At the risk of starting a religious debate, this page is supposed to be for real places. So does "Eden (was just like this)" belong here? Grutness...wha? 01:27, 29 May 2005 (UTC)

It depends on whether it is about the mythical place or about a real place named eden (see Eden). Thryduulf 08:53, 29 May 2005 (UTC)

ISTR it's listed on the list as "Garden of Eden", and the lyrics of the song suggest that this is also what is being referred to. Grutness...wha? 09:39, 29 May 2005 (UTC)

Eden is fictuous. I suggest we put it in List of English songs whose title includes the name of a fictional place (together with Avalon, Atlantis, ...). -DePiep 10:47, 31 May 2005 (UTC)
That sounds good. Thryduulf 12:34, 31 May 2005 (UTC)
Moved to List ... fictuous places. -DePiep 19:36, 31 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Dutch reconstruction

  • Dutch lyrics are reconstructed: grouped bij geo-name; as in section English lyrics.
  • Updates up&until 10:39, 31 May 2005 (UTC) fromm Dutch list.

Notes:

  • Deleted: "Aan de voet van de ouwe Wester" by Willy Alberti; by Frans van Schaik; by Zijlstra (Westertoren = Churchtower, =landmark)
  • Deleted: "Aan de voet van die mooie Wester" by Johnny Jordaan (Churchtower =landmark)
  • Deleted: "As ik boven op de Dom kom" by Rijk de Gooyer (Churchtower =landmark)
  • Deleted: "Blue bayou" door John Spencer (singer) (Fictuous)
  • Deleted: "Avalon" by Lenny Kuhr fictuous
  • Deleted: "Bar Tropical" by Johan Verminnen fictuous
  • Deleted: "De Bijenkorf" by Arno van der Heijden landmark (shop)
  • 'Almaria' = Almería (spain); changed Presumption
  • 'Amelisweerd' near river 'Kromme Rijn' (it is an estate next to this river; no article in nl: either. Yet.)
  • Antwarpe = Antwerps.
  • Deleted: ** "Alle apies in de Artis" by Rika Jansen (Amsterdam zoo = landmark)
  • Deleted: ** "Atlantis-verdronken in jou" by Elly en Rikkert (fictuous)
  • Deleted: "Breng terug (Haverkamp's greepe)" by Normaal; persons name; not a place.
  • to K: "Een zwoele nacht in Krimpen aan den IJssel" by Wim Sonneveld
  • New sections: (split) Dutch J-K, L, U-V, W-Z (also in toc)
  • Done: A-Z. Updated from nl up&until:-DePiep 10:39, 31 May 2005 (UTC)

--

Still waiting for the Dutch, etc. material to be removed from the page.
Why? There has been no consensus that this should happen, are you proposing that the list should be split? Thryduulf 11:02, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Barrytown

thinking about adding:

but, is this a fictional community, or a pseudonym used to describe a real town? Anybody here familiar with the song? — FREAK OF NURxTURE (TALK) 08:53, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] AfD result

Articles for deletion This article was nominated for deletion on October 1, 2005. The result of the discussion was no consensus.

— JIP | Talk 08:06, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Meaning of "by"

The majority of the songs currently listed appear to be late 20th-century compositions, and in that context "by" seems to mean "performed by". For much of history, however, even for "songs whose title include geographical names", "by" has meant "composed by", and for even more of history that means "compsed by Anon." (i.e. traditional songs). Does anyone else think this should be clarified in the introduction to the article? -- Picapica 01:57, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Groningen disambiguation

Since I don't know Dutch, I don't know whether the links should go to the city or the province.

Appearently you do know about the Netherlands: there is bothn a city and and a province Groningen;-) -DePiep 19:30, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Gilly, Gilly..

I have moved the entry for Gilly, Gilly Ossenfeffer Katzenellen Bogen by the Sea to List of English songs whose title includes the name of a fictional place Tony Corsini 15:29, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] New England

I have shifted Billy Bragg's "A New England" from New England to England as it's clear from the lyrics that he's "not looking for a new England", not New England, the region of the United States.Tony Corsini 00:36, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Definitely. I'm surprise it was under New England in the first place. BTW, I've added a song about the River Thames under Th, but I'm not sure whether it should have gone under R for river... anyone? Grutness...wha? 00:53, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
I think rivers should (and this seems to be the case by precident) should go under its name so it would be Thames, River - Thames, RiverTony Corsini 13:56, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../l/i/s/Talk%7EList_of_songs_whose_title_includes_geographical_names_9ac0.html"