Talk:Mother's Little Helper/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: ErnestKrause (talk · contribs) 17:41, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

Assessment being prepared and may take a few days. Here are some things to start off:

(1) The title yellow pill is almost certainly referring to Valium. The article seems not to make this explicit. Could it be made more prominent, or give some explanation why it is not center stage.

Agreed. I've fleshed this out a bit more in the Writing and recording section, and included a note explaining the context of the Valium boom in the early 1960s.

(2) "Lyrical interpretation" might look better as "Interpretation of lyrics". Seems like noun form works better here.

Changed.

(3) The Wikipedia article for Valium does have sections for 'Tolerance' and "Dependency" which might have some useful information to be covered in this article. The article touches on abouse of the drug, and issues of the drug culture inherited during the 1960s, though this seems only related through individual comments on specific reliable sources and the separate views expressed. Can these be better outlined; some on drug abuse, some about domestic depression, some about marital inadequacy, some about parental inadequacy, etc.

As mentioned under (1), I added some more into a note regarding the boom of Valium in the early 1960s. Now that both the note in Writing and recording and parts under Interpretation of lyrics discuss pharmaceutical drug reliance, I'm hesitant to extend beyond the scope of this page except where needed. Those topics are best restricted to those other articles.

(4) There seems to be an explicit contrast of reception upon release criticism and retrospective critical reception. It might be nice to make explicit the contrast between the two separate time frames; do they support each other, do they contradict each other, are the more recent ones better informed than the original criticisms, etc.

I reworked the lead a bit to elucidate this difference.

(5) "Folk rock" or "blues rock", there seem to be more for the blues influence. Folk rock like Dillon or Peter, Paul and Mary does not seem to work here. See here: [1].

I have not found a single source that describes the song as blue rocks (Discogs is user generated and is therefore not a reliable source; WP:RSDISCOGS). By contrast, most sources describe the song as folk rock, so it is described and sourced as such in both the infobox and throughout the body. (WP:STICKTOTHESOURCE).

(6) There seems to be a lot more covers than I thought, here is a list of them: [2].

I have only included those which meet the threshold of WP:COVERSONG.

(7) 'Dark satire' and parody seem worth emphasizing. There is nothing pleasant about what the mother is going through here in the song.

I agree the description of the lyrics was a little light under Writing and recording, so I've fleshed it out a bit.

(8) Song title was used for a Hollywood film in 2019 I seem to recall.

I'm having trouble finding sources on the film, let alone any sources that connect the film's title to this song.

(9) Wikipedia disambiguation page for the song's title might have some extra ideas not covered in the current version of the article.

Nothing I can see.

(10) Use of Indian stringed instrument I don't think means Eastern influence, which the Stones also used in other songs like Paint it black.

The composition's Indian influence is well-establish through the body and by the sources used.

That should get things started. ErnestKrause (talk) 17:41, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

Comments above. Thanks. Tkbrett (✉) 13:58, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

Monday comments

Those improvement over the week-end were useful. Some other things to look at.

(1) The lyrics I read as being 4 stanzas of 5 verses each, being answered by the 3 verses of the refrain throughout the song. It might be nice for the structure of the song to be recounted in this article, possibly in the Lyrics section. For example, the 1st stanza seems focused on misbehaving children and parental inadequacy; the 2nd stanza deals with the tedium of daily household chores and repetitive kitchen duties; stanza three deals with marital complaints about a husbands inadequacy; while the fourth stanza lists the malaise of daily survival among life's daily setbacks. Doing this or adding some added quotes from the lyrics might make this more plain for the reader of the article and make more plain Jagger's lamentation about the struggling housewife. For example, see here for the music theory: [3].

In other song articles I do my best to provide as much as I can on the song's composition and structure, but I'm somewhat limited here by the sources available. Unterberger has a bit on the escalating characteristic of the verses, so I've mentioned that. Unfortunately, HookTheory is a user generated site.

(2) This is the Rotten Tomatoes version of the film I mentioned, which seems more than a merely coincidence of matching words in the titles; problems with children, etc.: [4].

The connection is not mentioned in any reliable sources. Without any, we cannot include it without relying on original research.

(3) Your comment that this is the first song dealing with addiction problems might need to be adjusted. Use of 'cocaine and champagne' was part of Cole Porter's songs well before the Stones, and songs about drinking oneself to either oblivion or to death are of a very old tradition. The point you make is valid, however, and its a question of the best wording to describe what the Stones are doing with the very old issue of substance abuse.

The statement is support by John Campbell McMillian in his book Beatles vs. Stones (Simon & Schuster, 2013, p. 141) and is cited as such in the body. McMillian qualifies the statement as applying to pop music, so Cole Porter isn't relevant here.

This phrase in the article looks dubious (even with you citing RS): "The first pop song to address middle-class drug dependency". Even if I limit myself to only substance abuse in using alcohol as a 'cure' for sadness or heartbreak, then calling this the "first pop song" on this subject seems a stretch, with or without using an RS.

(4) As I go through the listings of genre on a simple Google search then "rock" by itself seems the largest and most popular designation with some stating 'psychedelic rock' and 'folk rock' and 'rock-n-roll', but not folk rock by itself. I just don't hear this as a folk rock song like something by Peter Paul and Mary. What do you hear as 'folkish' about this song; it can't be the lyrics, or is it for you?

Most of the sources that describe the genre characterize it as folk rock; this is sourced in the article by Luhrssen & Larson 2017, Margotin & Guesdon 2016 and Davis 2001. Unterberger, who wrote two books about the genre, also uses the terms folk rock multiple times to describe its sound. What I think isn't really relevant, since that would be original research – better to let the sources direct you.

(5) Similar point about it having Eastern influences. The fact that the song uses a sitar does not seem to go very far. For example, if someone told me that a song which used a cowbell was therefore a farm song, then I would have difficulty with this type of assertion. The sound itself is exotic and maybe you could call it that, rather than calling it Eastern because of the country of origin for the instrument used. The sound of the instrument is exceptional, like in Paint it Black, but Paint it Black is not an Indian (Eastern) song. Here is an interesting video on the electric version of it if you have not seen it: [5].

The song's Eastern/Indian influence is well established by the authors and musicologists cited in the article, such as Margotin & Guesdon 2016 and Babiuk & Prevost 2013. Malvinni discusses the song's modal qualities directly in how they relate to an overt Indian-influenced sound, and this is mentioned in the body of the text. I don't follow your points about the sitar, considering that this song does not even incorporate one, a point the page makes clear. The page for "Paint It Black" also discusses that song's Eastern influences, though that's beyond the scope of this page.

This is a video of the isolated tracks; it is the slide guitar substituting for the sitar which is usually discussed for the Indian or Eastern sound which you can hear on this link [6].

The article is fairly close to being at peer review level, see if you can look at some of the last comments I have made. ErnestKrause (talk) 14:54, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

Comments above. Thanks. Tkbrett (✉) 17:40, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

Closing

Article is a fairly straightforward presentation of the song, its musical structure and its lyrics. I have mentioned several optional topics to take up in the article, particularly on drug use and substance dependence to solve emotional problems dating to well before the 50s and 60s in song. The article is well-written and covers the main topics, with some nice images in the text which are on Wikimedia. Article is promoted. ErnestKrause (talk) 18:13, 18 April 2022 (UTC)