Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/R.E.M.

The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted 03:17, 24 January 2008.

[edit] R.E.M.

previous FAC

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Self-nomination This article is one of the Top Importance articles for WikiProject Alternative music, given R.E.M. is not only one of the key bands in the alternative rock genre, but is one of the most important musical groups of the last 25 years period. This article was one of the most successful Collaboration of the Week efforts in the project; it was listed as a Good Article nominee when the collaboration finished and became a GA about a week later. After a number of months of maintenance and a short but helpful Peer Review this month, I've spent the last week or so putting the finishing touches on it to bring it up to FA standards. Not only do I wish to make an article about an importance band Featured quality, but my goal with this particular article is to make it a model for all future musical group articles to take inspiration from. Is it better than The KLF? Well, here's hoping. Thanks for your feedback. WesleyDodds (talk) 11:04, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Comment

• critically-acclaimed is used used twice in a sentence in the lead. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Indopug (talk • contribs) 19:48, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Fixed. WesleyDodds (talk) 01:41, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

• "broad is used twice in the lead in close proximity.

Fixed. WesleyDodds (talk) 01:41, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

• Even considering that it is the lead, aren't citations needed for opinions like "gained early attention due to Buck's "jangly" guitar style and Stipe's unclear vocals." ?

Those aren't opinion. Buck does play in a jangle, and Stipe's vocals are unclear in early recordings. That's about as NPOV as I could get in describing the band's musical traits in the lead. WesleyDodds (talk) 01:04, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

• Bandmembers/bandmates aren't words.

Fixed. WesleyDodds (talk) 01:41, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

• After the lead, link everything once again (the band-members, Athens).

Not necessary. WesleyDodds (talk) 01:41, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

• "Stipe and Buck soon met fellow University of Georgia students Mike Mills and Bill Berry" - So all four of them went to the same university?

Yes. WesleyDodds (talk) 01:04, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

• link single and EP.

Single doesn't need to be linked. WesleyDodds (talk) 12:55, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

• is that inline "radio free" sample needed when there is one at the side? Also, there aren't any other such inline samples

I forget why we added that. WesleyDodds (talk) 01:41, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

• "praised the aura of mystery the songs presented" - put aura of mystery in quotes because that such an aura exists is opinion.

I can't because it's paraphrasing, not a direct quote. WesleyDodds (talk) 12:55, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

• (a very good placing for a college rock band at the time) - is that also backed by the source?

Yes, same source at the end of the sentence. WesleyDodds (talk) 02:21, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

• The Fables paragraph has 2 "miserable"s in adjacent sentences. I'm not sure "poor" is the best adjective to use for food.

The band and the writer of the book cited (who's British, by the way) describe it as poor. WesleyDodds (talk) 02:21, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

• In fact, those 2 sentences could be combined to "The band members found the sessions unexpectedly difficult, and were so miserable due to the cold winter weather and <poor> food that they came close to breaking up"
• "context for the album itself, influencing an album" - rephrase

Fixed. WesleyDodds (talk) 02:25, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

• "critical reception of the album was mixed" - "of the album" is redundant. Maybe "its critical reception..."

Fixed. WesleyDodds (talk) 02:25, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

• ignored at mainstream - ignored by?

I believe this was discussed at the Peer Review. Sticking with phrasing of the source cited. WesleyDodds (talk) 02:25, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

• "The album improved on the sales of Fables of the Reconstruction markedly" to "The album sold much better than Fables..." ?

The current version of the sentence hews closer to what the source actually says. WesleyDodds (talk) 02:25, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

• What is "Top 40 radio"? Link it?

Fixed. WesleyDodds (talk) 06:48, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

• "For its fifth album Document (1987), R.E.M. began a decade-long relationship" - sounds as if for the purpose of recording Document they started a 10 year partnership... Replace "For" with "With".

Rewrote sentence. WesleyDodds (talk) 06:44, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

• "generated rumors that the singer was dying; the band vehemently denied the rumors." - that sentence doesn't flow well, maybe - "generated rumors that the singer was dying, which were vehemently denied by the band."

Fixed. WesleyDodds (talk) 06:44, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

• "After piecing together two slow-paced albums in a row in the studio" sounds weird - maybe "After recording/releasing two slow-paced albums in a row,"

Fixed. WesleyDodds (talk) 06:44, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

• What does "lugubrious" mean? Now I don't know how Reveal, or Up, were paced :)
• "and praised its "ceaselessly astonishing beauty."" - i think "and hailed it as a "ceaselessly astonishing beauty."" is better.

Hailed seems too flowery for me in this instance. WesleyDodds (talk) 06:44, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

• Shouldn't you mention how "Shiny happy" was absent from the best-of cause they hate it?

Not here. There's only one track from Monster on the compilation as well. WesleyDodds (talk) 06:44, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

• "Instant Karma: The Amnesty International Campaign to Save Darfur," - why quotes not italics?

Fixed. I missed that one. WesleyDodds (talk) 02:31, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

• "The band was one of five nominees accepted into the Hall" - remove (seems awkward and unnecessary) or include "that year" to avoid possible misunderstanding.

Fixed. WesleyDodds (talk) 02:31, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

• "The group was inducted by Pearl Jam lead singer Eddie Vedder and performed four songs with Bill Berry." - "The group, which was inducted by Pearl Jam lead singer Eddie Vedder, performed four songs with Bill Berry."

Fixed. WesleyDodds (talk) 06:44, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

• one of "the two most important alt-rock bands of the day." - just curious, who was the other?

The Smiths. WesleyDodds (talk) 01:04, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

• "not sellout-in other words" - i think there's a MoS error/ punctuation mistake there.

That's how it's written in the original souce (Spin thought it'd be cute to print the piece as a article written on a typewriter directly scanned into the book.). WesleyDodds (talk) 01:04, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

• "Pavement and Live." - why not other, bigger, more popular, bands? Like Radiohead?

Plan to expand that a little bit soon, but Pavement and Live have been more vocal about their debt to R.E.M. WesleyDodds (talk) 01:04, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

• A citation is to Rock's Backpages - why not directly cite the source?

Yeah, I forgot to fix that. WesleyDodds (talk) 01:04, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

I checked it. That's the original source. WesleyDodds (talk) 11:10, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

• Why are Scott McCaughey · Bill Rieflin · Ken Stringfellow in bold in the band template?

Not sure (but that doesn't really have anything to do with the article). WesleyDodds (talk) 01:04, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Indopug (talk) 18:31, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Oh, and I suggest everybody read the previous FAC; its awesome. Indopug (talk) 18:59, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, it's kinda embarrassing having to acknowledge a previous FAC that not only I had no part in, but was obviously misguided. WesleyDodds (talk) 01:04, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Just lurking the boards here.... I must concur that the previous FAC is indeed awesome. :-) Deatonjr (talk) 16:29, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

'tis awesome, we are agreed.--Kiyarrllston 21:13, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Support. Clearly, a lot of great research has gone into this article. The band's history and their impact on music is very well explained, and I have to congratulate the editors. Atlantik (talk) 01:52, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Query does the "top 25 alternative groups" allegation have a source? shouldn't the grave importance of this group have center stage in the lead of the article?--Kiyarrllston 05:10, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

I have no idea what you're referring to. WesleyDodds (talk) 05:20, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Ooops - I was referring to the glorious stuff you said in the nominators blurb:"given R.E.M. is not only one of the key bands in the alternative rock genre, but is one of the most important musical groups of the last 25 years period." which I believe should have a place in the lead of the article as a really importance fact relating to the importance of R.E.M. ... I figure it was kindof hard to know what I was referring to, I'm sorry for that.--Kiyarrllston 03:22, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

• Support, but with some caveats. This is a a good article which seems to meet the FA criteria. Some of the wording could be improved though - for instance: "After the Green tour ended the band members unofficially decided to take the following year off" - how does a rock band "unofficially" take a year off? - is there a form they didn't fill in? "R.E.M. has continued to influence many subsequent alternative bands, such as Pavement and Live" also seems a bit odd given that both these bands were formed well over a decade ago. --Nick Dowling (talk) 10:41, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Regarding the first sentence: the band ended up taking a long break without intending to. I'll try to fix the second sentence; it made more sense before I rearranged the section. WesleyDodds (talk) 10:44, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

The page cited says "After the Green tour, the band had unofficially decided to take a year off, an extended sabbatical and the first in their decade-long career so far." WesleyDodds (talk) 10:54, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

• Comments. Overall the article is OK and meets the FA criteria, but Wesley has produced better (Joy Division and The Smashing Pumpkins come to mind). I have just a few relatively minor issues:
  • You might want to link "Jangly" to an appropriate article as some readers may not know what it is.
  • "Multi-million-selling" is pretty colloquial. You may want to change it to simply "successful" or something along the lines of "it sold several million copies..."

Removed. It was a remanent of from before I started working on the article. WesleyDodds (talk) 05:10, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

• • "In 1997, R.E.M. re-signed with Warner Bros. for a then-record US$ 80 million" several problems with the sentence: The $ sign is the only thing that should link to United States dollar and the "US" should be removed. It should also be "$80 million" without separations. "Then-record" should probably be reworked, too. There's a lot of hyphenations throughout the article that need to be either removed or reworked because they tend to be colloquial.

All articles I've seen clarify dollars amounts as "US$0000". I assume because there are other dollar currencies besides the American dollar. WesleyDodds (talk) 05:07, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

• • "Southern United States" doesn't need to be wikilinked

I linked it for context. There's a lot of non-Americans who don't know what the constitutes the American South. WesleyDodds (talk) 05:07, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

• • "R.E.M. had recorded its debut EP, Chronic Town, with Easter for Hib-Tone when the band's demo tape found its way to I.R.S. Records." Poorly worded. "Found its way to I.R.S." isn't a great way to mention the event. You may want to mention how the demo tape "found its way" to the record label.

Rewritten. WesleyDodds (talk) 12:21, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

• • "The album was warmly received by college radio, and its success there pushed the album to number 36 on the Billboard album chart." warmly should be changed to just "well". Also, the article could benefit from adding how well it did in the mainstream, considering College Radio is an underground establishment.

That was another remanent of the earlier version of the article; I was trying to find a reference that detailed the importance of college radio in R.E.M.'s early career (there's a reference later on in the article, but that just says "While the R.E.M's core support remained college radio . . .") Cut it all out except for the Billboard chart position. WesleyDodds (talk) 05:46, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

• • "was more accessible to listeners outside the college realm, with Stipe's vocals coming closer to the forefront." Forefront of what? I'm guessing it means the forefront of the sound but some may find it ambiguous.

I didn't cite that line, but my guess given my research is that it's referring to the increased emphasis on Stipe's lyrics (see the "Musical Style and influences" section regarding the increasing clarity of Stipe's vocals and lyrics). I'll rephrase. WesleyDodds (talk) 05:46, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

• • "Over the course of Lifes Rich Pageant, Stipe's lyrics touched on a wide variety of themes, with a greater emphasis on politics and the environment." How so?

I just removed the sentence. Another remanent of an earlier version of the page. It made sense when the paragraph used to describe individual songs in-depth. WesleyDodds (talk) 09:55, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

• • "For the group's fifth album Document (1987), Don Gehman suggested R.E.M. work with Scott Litt, because he was too busy to produce the record." Change "R.E.M." to just "the band" and "too busy to" to "unable to".

I like to be begin each paragraph by naming the band directly. WesleyDodds (talk) 05:07, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Rewrote the entire sentence. WesleyDodds (talk) 05:46, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

• • "In truth, many early R.E.M. songs had definite lyrics that Stipe wrote with care." Remove "in truth". The sentence is rather colloquial. "With care" doesn't strike me as very well written. Possibly rephrase to say "with emotion and compassion"?

"With care" is meant to mean that Stipe put a lot of effort into writing his lyrics; that they weren't just thrown together as many in the music press speculated. The page cited has Mills and Buck talking about how Stipe would type out the lyrics on an old typewriter and then stare at them for hours. I'll try to rephrase. WesleyDodds (talk) 05:07, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

• • "Buck's "economical, arpeggiated, poetic" style reminded British music journalists during the 1980s of 1960s American folk rock band The Byrds" the sentence should be clarified to state which publication stated that; I'm guessing only one review has stated this and the sentence should reflect such.

The article cited does say that Buck's style reminded British journalists of the Byrds so it's accurate. WesleyDodds (talk) 05:07, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

• • In the final section, a liberal should be wikilinked.

Fixed. WesleyDodds (talk) 05:07, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

• • The quote "Michael always says think local and act local—we have been doing a lot of stuff in our town to try and make it a better place" implies that Buck is quoting Stripe and should be fixed as: "Michael always says 'think local and act local'—we have been doing a lot of stuff in our town to try and make it a better place." I'm not sure where the quote ends. NSR77 ^T_C 23:19, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

That's how it's written in the original source. WesleyDodds (talk) 05:07, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

• Support another great band article, deserves the FA (and for better reasons than the hilarious and pointless previous FAC). igordebraga ≠ 19:26, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
• Support. Good stuff. My comments have been addressed. NSR77 ^T_C 01:15, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
• Support Ditto. indopug (talk) 15:57, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
• Support. True story: I just stumbled onto the article (I rarely "browse" WP nowadays—my watchlist matters too much :), thought to myself, "How on earth is this not featured?", went to the Talk page, saw it was at FAC. It's evident that a lot of work has gone into this, and the article immediately struck me as, well, one of our finest, if you will. I hope you don't mind if I do a little copyediting; feel free to let me know if I go overboard :) Fvasconcellos (t·c) 00:54, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.