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WP:THEBAND in article titles

Apologies if this has been discussed before — it was hard to search for and I didn't find anything. If there is in fact already a guideline or consensus about this please point me to it.

Per WP:THEBAND, we don't capitalize "the" in band names. So we write the Beatles, not The Beatles. However, this appears to be contradicted by many article titles, such as Strength (The Alarm album) or Friend of a Friend (The Smile song).

And sometimes we omit "the" entirely. For example, Stop (Spice Girls song) or Stoned (Rolling Stones song).

So the possibilities seem to be:

  • Option A: Strength (The Alarm album)
  • Option B: Strength (the Alarm album)
  • Option C: Strength (Alarm album)

What do we do?

Note: I'm not necessarily saying that if we decide one way or another we should then go and fix all these hundreds of articles as a matter of priority. I'm just saying we should probably make a conscious decision about how we handle this and then apply that when we can. Popcornfud (talk) 12:29, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

No strong feelings on things either way, but I had previously thought that THEBAND stuff largely applied to prose? So option A wouldn't be a problem? Sergecross73 msg me 14:45, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
I can't think of a good reason why we would want to capitalize in fragments but not in sentences. And we don't seem to do that generally anyway — for example, see the infoboxes for singles, such as Sympathy for the Devil, which says "Single by the Rolling Stones", not "Single by The Rolling Stones". Popcornfud (talk) 14:49, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
The disambiguation matching the the respective article title feels like a valid reason to me. I can't be alone on this - anecdotally, I haven't seen many (or any) instances of option B in the wild. Sergecross73 msg me 15:10, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
The disambiguation matching the the respective article title feels like a valid reason to me.
I guess that depends on whether you interpret the band name in the disambiguation as a reference to the article about that band, or to the band itself. I've always interpreted it as the second one.
This also seems to match how disambiguation works in articles generally. For example, David Mitchell (author), not David Mitchell (Author). The Wikipedia article for author is titled "Author" but that isn't reflected in disambigs. Popcornfud (talk) 15:20, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
Perhaps this is all bigger than just WP:ALBUMS, as some of this is veering more into general disambiguation philosophy, but my understanding had been that we don't capitalize things like "author" because it's not a proper noun, and the reason THEBAND was implemented was because people found adding a capitalized "The" in the middle of sentences confusing to read. I support Option A, which, in my experience, has generally been the way its done. I don't see anyone using B, and I think C only occurs because there seems to be constant confusion among people whether or not band's have a "the" in front of their names to begin with. Sergecross73 msg me 18:07, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
"The" should be lowercased in proper nouns only when it acts as a determiner instead of a noun. In clauses, "the" usually ends up a determiner, but in phrases, it usually remains a part of the noun: "Single by the Rolling Stones", but "The Rolling Stones single". Otherwise it would be "the Rolling Stones' single". TlonicChronic (talk) 15:47, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
There is no rule in any MoS or naming conventions guideline that support this interpretation, which is just WP:OR opinion about fiddly logic you'd like to apply, but which pretty much no editors would ever remember, and which would lead to non-stop fighting on a sentence by sentence basis in our material. MOS:THEBAND is quite simple on this for good reasons. Worse for your hypothesis, it is directly contracted by that guideline: Drop the where it is awkward, as when the band name is used as a modifier: a Moody Blues song, several Beatles albums. Your claim is also linguistically faulty; "the" never "acts as ... a noun", with perhaps the sole exception of the second "The" in the band name the The.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:38, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
""the" never "acts as ... a noun", with perhaps the sole exception of the second "The" in the band name the The."
except the first word in this sentence is the word "the" as a noun. It isn't a hypothesis, it's how you parse the phrase.
(blank) album. "album" is the noun, blank is an adjective. If "blank" is a proper noun, it's a noun serving as an adjective. If the noun is compound (comprising multiple words) it goes a layer deeper. If the proper noun is "The Rolling Stones", all three words are a compound noun. So the word "Rolling" is a part of a noun (i.e. it serves as a noun). "The", likewise, is an article (an adjective), in a compound proper noun "The Rolling Stones", which is acting as an adjective modifying the noun "album". If "the" is lowercase, it means it isn't a part of the compound noun, it's an article affecting the noun, which is album. TlonicChronic (talk) 03:27, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
100% agreed that it should be consistent. My preference is "X (The Y album)". I have been flummoxed by this nonsense myself for a while. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 00:24, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
Lowercase, obviously, if the word is included at all. We do not write "Jane Smith (Biologist)"; there is no principle to upper-case the first letter of something in a disambiguation string, but to lowercase it unless it is a proper name, as in "Jane Smith (American biologist)"; see WP:DAB. And there is, in MOS:THEBAND, a principle to treat "the" in front of band names like virtually everything else (besides titles of published works that start with "The" like The Hobbit) as lowercase. (There is, further, no principle anywhere that MOS:THEBAND or any other part of MoS only applies to running text and not to titles; MoS is used more in WP:RM decisions that most parts of WP:AT and all the WP:NCsomething naming conventions guidelines combined. E.g., "List of the Alarm albums" would be titled that way, not as "List of The Alarm albums"). So, given two different rules to lowercase this, how is it even possible to have come to a question suggesting that "Strength (The Alarm album)" is even a possibility? Just read the guidelines and apply them instead of looking for ways to evade them. If people would do that, 95% of style disputes would disappear overnight.

Whether it should be "Strength (Alarm album)" or "Strength (the Alarm album)" would be a WP:CONSISTENT policy matter, really, combined with WP:CONCISE, plus MOS:THEBAND being against use of a leading "the" when the band name is used adjectivally – and putting a "the" (or "The") in there is also against the WP:DAB guideline, too. I see Revolver (Beatles album), Something New (Beatles album), Dirty Work (Rolling Stones album), Undercover (Rolling Stones album), Blue & Lonesome (Rolling Stones album), Aftermath (Rolling Stones album), and many, many more; there's an exception to this pattern at Endless Wire (The Who album), probably because of the amiguity of the word "Who". There are some other "the" or "The" cases, though; the more obscure the band gets, the more likely there is to be a "The" in there, against both the capitalization and DAB guidelines and against the concision policy, simply because fans do what fans do, and few other editors notice. Some examples are The Remixes (The Stone Roses album), Born Innocent (The Proclaimers album), and The Peel Sessions (The Jesus and Mary Chain EP); these need to move to the concise forms. Once in a while there's even inconsistency for the same band: The Present (Moody Blues album) and Strange Times (Moody Blues album), but December (The Moody Blues album). There's no reason for a "the" much less a "The" in any of these cases, with the rare exception of an intolerable ambiguity, as with the Who. But the "(The ...)" problem is even more prevalent when it comes to songs instead of albums, and there are way more of them.

Anyway, this mess could probably be cleaned up with a very large mass-RM; most cases of this stuff can be found with a search on intitle:/\([tT]he [A-Za-z0-9\u00C0-\u00FF ,–\-\.\/']+ (?:album|ep|single|song)\)/ (slow, and it may have to be tried more than once after waiting a while due to timeouts, or maybe broken up alphabetically if it always times out, e.g. with intitle:/\([tT]he [Aa][A-Za-z0-9\u00C0-\u00FF ,–\-\.\/']+ (?:album|ep|single|song)\)/ and so on). I tried [\S ]+ and (?:\S| )+ in place of the [...]+ stuff to be inclusive of more punctuation and other non-alphanumeric characters, but our search's regex doesn't appear to support the \S syntax, so this is not catching cases that have other punctuation marks or Unicode outside the range of alphanumerics and accented Latin-alphabet letters. To find all the opposite cases, without a leading "the" or "The" in the disambiguator, the following will work but will also time out, and it will be extra-huge because it matches all the acts that don't use "the" at all, like "Fleetwood Mac" and "Ice-T": intitle:/\([^(?:The |the )][A-Za-z0-9\u00C0-\u00FF ,–\-\.\/']+ (?:album|ep|single|song)\)/. In both search cases, a vast number of the results are redirects, as we'd expect. The HTML source of the results pages can be parsed in an external tool for the regex /data-serp-pos="[0-9]+">((?:[^<])*)<span class="searchmatch">(\([tT]he [^\)]*\))/ to get at the matches that aren't redirects. A copy-paste of the rendered page content of the search results can be parsed for matches in a similar way with a regex of /[0-9]{4}\r\n([^\(]*)(\([tT]he [^\)]*\))/, though that might need tweaking depending on which browser one copy-pasted from, and what the line-ending format is on the system it is run on. There may be some external tool for searching up a list of WP pages by regular expression that would be more efficient for finding them all and building a list. There are probably limits on how many articles can be listed in one RM, so we'd probably need to have a couple of big ones for each article "type" (albums, songs, etc.), when consensus is clear to make them more concise, then have a bot or something do all the rest of them automatically as no longer controversial.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:38, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

My understanding is that the band name being in parentheses makes it essentially a new sentence/statement, and so "The", being at the start of that sentence, would be capitalized as it is in option A. QuietHere (talk | contributions) 02:52, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
I gotta say I don't get this logic... as I wrote above, wouldn't this also mean we should write David Mitchell (Author) instead of David Mitchell (author)? Or as Candlish wrote above, We do not write "Jane Smith (Biologist)"; there is no principle to upper-case the first letter of something in a disambiguation string".
(As an aside... there is something about the issue of capping "the" before band names that seems to incite chaos in the way it doesn't for virtually any other noun. I've never understood that.) Popcornfud (talk) 03:04, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
But "Author" isn't a proper noun. "The Rolling Stones" or "A Day to Remember" is. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 07:42, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
Per WP:THEBAND, Wikipedia does not treat "the" as a proper noun in band names. Bands are instead treated the same as, eg, "the White House" or "the Eiffel Tower". That's why we write the Beatles and not The Beatles.
But we don't seem to follow this logic in disambiguation, hence this discussion. If you think we should be treating "the" as part of the proper noun then you need to challenge WP:THEBAND instead, as that it is the root of this whole issue. Popcornfud (talk) 16:48, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
I have been following this discussion but staying out of it, but I finally decided to research the sources for the discussion (thanks Popcornfud for providing the gateway link WP:THEBAND), and I am not reading the same information that is being quoted as guidelines, so I would like to ask someone to point out the guidelines that specifically support their arguments.
WP:THEBAND specifically states "For whether to include "the" as the first word of a band's name, see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (definite or indefinite article at beginning of name)." Later it states a mid-sentence case for continuous prose, but for album article titles that reference band names, we are not talking about continuous prose, so that should not apply.
Going to Wikipedia:Naming conventions (definite or indefinite article at beginning of name), it states under the second portion of the lead paragraph, under Part 2 of Convention, "If the definite or indefinite article would be capitalized in running text, then include it at the beginning of the Wikipedia article name. Otherwise, do not (except in the case of musical groups; see below)." Seeing that they except musical groups, one then goes to Wikipedia:Naming conventions (definite or indefinite article at beginning of name)#Names of groups, sports teams and companies, which states "When a proper name is almost always used with "The", especially if it is included by unaffiliated sources, the article "The" should be used in the name of the corresponding Wikipedia article as well." and "This only applies if the definite article is used by the band on their musical publications (CDs, audiotapes, records, etc.) or on their official website."
Popcornfud had stated that "Bands are instead treated the same as, eg, "the White House" or "the Eiffel Tower".", but this is very much not the case, as after the section of Names of groups, there is another section, Wikipedia:Naming conventions (definite or indefinite article at beginning of name)#When definite and indefinite articles should be avoided, which in it's second section of Other cases it specifically states "Definite and indefinite articles should generally be avoided in cases not mentioned above.", the under examples it lists both Eiffel Tower and White House. This means the guideline specifically splits out bands (musical groups) as being treated differently from other proper nouns.
If you were to ask my opinion, I would use the capitalized definite or indefinite article of the band title as part of the parenthesized disambiguation of the album title, but that is not what my long-winded talk above was about. My preceding discussion was about my not seeing support in WP:THEBAND and Wikipedia:Naming conventions (definite or indefinite article at beginning of name) that others state is there, and I would ask the people who see the support to quote the specific sentence or section that supports their arguments, not just list a guideline, because my reading of the guideline seems to support the opposite argument. Mburrell (talk) 00:32, 28 January 2024 (UTC)
Thanks for that analysis. Just to clarify, when I wrote this: Wikipedia does not treat "the" as a proper noun in band names. Bands are instead treated the same as, eg, "the White House" or "the Eiffel Tower". I was talking about capitalizing "the", not about whether "the" should be included in article titles. @Koavf wrote that "The Rolling Stones" is a proper noun, but under Wikipedia style, only "Rolling Stones" is the proper noun, not "the". Popcornfud (talk) 13:17, 28 January 2024 (UTC)
If "the" isn't in the proper noun, it shouldn't be lowercase, it should be removed, e.g., "Beatles album", "Rolling Stones album". Otherwise, you're adding the disambiguator "the album". If "The" is included in the disambiguation, it's a part of the proper noun, and should be capitalized. TlonicChronic (talk) 15:15, 28 January 2024 (UTC)
That's also my interpretation, which is why I probably favor option 3 in my list at the top, followed by 2 and then 1. Popcornfud (talk) 15:26, 28 January 2024 (UTC)
There is an incomplete quoting of the relevant instructions from MOS:THEBAND above. Don't forget that it also says "Drop the where it is awkward, as when the band name is used as a modifier: a Moody Blues song, several Beatles albums". This discussion is about articles for Moody Blues songs and Beatles albums. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 22:48, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

I've alerted the fine folks at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Disambiguation pages to this discussion which they may have some insight to. It's also worth noting that there are directions at WP:NCDAB, which say:

To conform to the naming conventions, the phrase in parentheses should be treated just as any other word in a title: normally lowercase, unless it is a proper noun (like a book title) that would appear capitalized even in running text.

That indicates to me that Option B: Strength (the Alarm album) would be the choice. It's also how the band name would be used in a sentence, and article titles are in sentence case. I've always been surprised that Option A: Strength (The Alarm album) is what is usually used. Thanks to @Popcornfud: for bringing it up. SchreiberBike | ⌨  03:22, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

But why would we include the "the" in it at all except in cases of so much ambiguity (like the Who or the The) that confusion might result? THEBAND says not to use a leading "the" in cases treating the band name as an adjectival modifer (as in "on the third Alarm album", "the release of two Alarm singles that year", etc.; this is the exact same kind of usage. PS: I've even been running into cases of a leading "the" or "The" being injected in these disambiguators for bands that don't consistently themselves use a leading "the", as with Adore (The Smashing Pumpkins album), but in other cases (more sensibly) not, e.g. EP1 (Pixies EP) and Bossanova (Pixies album). A few main articles are themselves misnamed per WP:THE, including The Smashing Pumpkins and some side articles like The Smashing Pumpkins discography.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:48, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
Why include it? Because "The [foo]" is the name of the band. See A Day to Remember below. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 07:41, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
See further below. They are not parallel cases, the actual source usage on the matter is very different for the two kinds of cases, and if your "is the name of the band" assertion were true in a sense WP cares about, then MOS:THEBAND could not exist (well, not unless it said exactly opposite what it says now). Please distinguish more clearly between "this is what our rule says" and "this is what I wish our rule said".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:54, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
  • WP:THEBAND should not be at odds with WP:DEFINITE and MOS:THE. I don't think it is. It is just a bit more context specific. We use The Beatles because disambiguation is necessary but the Beatles in prose. We should use X (Beatles song). There are no other bands that would need the here for disambiguation so we prefer concision over precision (WP:TITLEDAB). Parentheses are not the start of a new sentence. If for some unlikely reason we had to use the it would be X (the Y song). I don't think that there is an issue with the guidance. The inconsistency is probably people being unaware of the guidance or willfully ignoring it.
A/An is (probably) a different case. Going through the list of musicians, I was hard pressed to find up to a hand full. As noted below, it is common in usage to separate off the definite article (the). There is a band A Day to Remember and Homesick (A Day to Remember album). There are Homesick albums and song by different bands. Unless someone can come up with style guide guidance otherwise (SMcCandlish) or other arguments against, I would probably go with uppercase A per this example and write it into WP:THEBAND. Cinderella157 (talk) 02:29, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
Addressed this in subsection below.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:58, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
  • Option A or C depending on the band; never B. MOS:THEBAND is doubly clear on this (bolding mine): "Mid-sentence, per the MoS main page, the word the should in general not be capitalized in continuous prose." A parenthetical disambiguator is neither mid-sentence, nor continuous prose, so the "the" in a proper name gets capitalized (A). If the "the" isn't part of the proper name, it shouldn't be there at all (C). I've never seen Option B in the wild, because it's bizarre and wrong. —swpbT • beyond • mutual 15:13, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
  • Comment on the related question of whether '[T/t]he' should be included or not: There was a big and controversial RfC five years ago at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Music/Archive 8#RfC: using "The" in song/album article titles. It was initially closed in August 2019 in favour of option C. But the decision was then overturned at WP:AN in October 2019. Since then there has been no consensus about option C versus A/B. I don't recall ever encountering option B in the wild. There has generally been a consensus for consistency among articles about each particular band, so we have consistency to use "Beatles song" and "Rolling Stones song" and "Dave Clark Five song" and "Spice Girls song" and "The Chainsmokers song" and "The Stone Roses song" and "The Alarm album", but no consistency across different bands. There is only one band-disambiguated article for The Proclaimers, so no opportunity for inconsistency. Some bands may have never had anyone attempt to achieve consistency – and thus the Moody Blues situation (10:3 for songs and 7:2 for albums in favour of including 'The'). —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 22:05, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
    Sounds like this is an area in need of a sortout. But there seems to be no consensus about how to proceed. Sigh. Popcornfud (talk) 14:11, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
    For me, any reasonable standard is better than no standard. I'd advocated for option B above, but that's persuaded no one. At this point I'd be happy with option A for bands for whom their Wikipedia article starts with a capitalized The and option C for all others. As discussed below, it would also be a capital A or An for bands which start with those words. SchreiberBike | ⌨  21:19, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
    The first word of an opening sentence would be capitalized anyway, so it seems like this is just saying you basically favour option A, is that right? (which would involve renaming articles about songs and albums by the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Dave Clark Five, and the Spice Girls, among others). —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 22:38, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
    Yes, option A as I understand it. I checked the list of bands immediately above and the Wikipedia article about the Spice Girls does not start with The, so the title of the article about the album Music by each of those bands would be:
    • Music (The Beatles album)
    • Music (The Rolling Stones album)
    • Music (The Dave Clark Five album)
    • Music (Spice Girls album)
    I hate it when a long discussion ends with no consensus and Wikipedia remains inconsistent. People seem unwilling to make compromises that might not favor their choice but which would make our encyclopedia better.  SchreiberBike | ⌨  22:50, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
    I just checked the Spice Girls article. It starts with "The Spice Girls are an English girl group formed in 1994, ...". So maybe you're focusing on the article title rather than the first sentence? —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 22:55, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
    Yes, I miswrote. Rather than "Wikipedia article starts", it should have been "Wikipedia article title starts". I'm not involved in music much, but I assume there's discussion that determines if the proper noun which serves as the band's name is "The Alarm" or "Alarm" and that is reflected in the title.  SchreiberBike | ⌨  23:11, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
    Indeed, your assumption is (basically) correct. Eagles (band) is a classic example. It's covered in Wikipedia:Naming conventions (definite or indefinite article at beginning of name)#Names of groups, sports teams and companies, although I'm not sure everyone would agree with what it says there. Ramones and Pixies (band) and Nazz are other cases without "The" in the article title, although it's in the opening sentence of all of those. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 23:24, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
    To me, omitting "the" from the article titles for bands would be consistent with how we do titles for other proper nouns that use "the", such as White House, Eiffel Tower, British Conservative Party, or countless other examples. As I said in a comment above, I don't understand what it is about band names specifically that creates such anarchy... Popcornfud (talk) 23:43, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
    After the clarification, my impression is that SchreiberBike's latest suggestion is simply Option A, which would involve renaming articles about albums and songs by the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and the Dave Clark Five, for example. Personally, I favor Option C. With Option C, we don't need to worry about capitalization, and we have WP:CONCISE titles, and the RfC five years ago was clearly tilting toward Option C before it was overturned to no consensus (i.e., no consistency across different bands). Option C is also better aligned with MOS:THEBAND's instruction to "Drop the where it is awkward, as when the band name is used as a modifier: a Moody Blues song, several Beatles albums". I think we're much farther from having a consensus in favor of Option A than one for Option C. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 21:25, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

Are "A/An" and "The" treated differently as articles?

Related question but somewhat off-topic, so I created this subtopic. Would we treat "a" and "an" differently than "the"? For instance, if a band were called "A Moment to Remember" (pardon me for not being able to think of an actual band with an indefinite article name), we surely wouldn't call articles "Debut Album (a Moment to Remember)" or "Debut Album (Moment to Remember)" would we? Why is "the" treated differently? ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:04, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

I thought of one: Thee Silver Mount Zion Memorial Orchestra have a new name every album and one time it was "A Silver Mount Zion"; had they just been named that the entire time, would we just chop off "A" or make that one word lower case in disambiguation? I think not. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:06, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
You were actually quite close to A Day to Remember (or perhaps "a Day to Remember"). I don't know what the answer should be, but it is at least worth noting that the A is capitalized throughout that article. Why they would be treated different I couldn't say, but it is a bit strange. QuietHere (talk | contributions) 07:21, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
How odd that I almost randomly guessed an actual band name. Sure enough: Homesick (A Day to Remember album), not Homesick (a Day to Remember album) or Homesick (Day to Remember album). ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 07:41, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
"The" and "A"/"An" are lowercased when the article refers to the subject, and isn't a part of a proper noun. "a Day to Remember album" is an album by Day to Remember. "an album by a Day to Remember" is an album by one of the many bands called Day to Remember. "the Beatles album" refers to "the album" by the Beatles, "The Beatles album" refers to an album by "The Beatles", and "an album by the Beatles" refers to "an album" by the one and only Beatles. The reason we separate "the" but not "a" is because it makes sense to refer to the specific (definite) object "Beatles", but it's strange to refer to the general (indefinite) object "Day to Remember". TlonicChronic (talk) 09:54, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
They're both strange to me. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 16:44, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
It's not improper to say "an album by The Beatles", but because proper nouns are definite objects, it's really common to pull out the definite article when a proper noun acts as a grammatical noun in the construction. I think pretty much every major editorial does it. TlonicChronic (talk) 17:25, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
A leading A[n] is extremely rare in a band name and the like (the only other example that comes to my mind is A Split-Second, hyphenated for no known reason). In every case I'm aware of, RS pretty much uniformly treat it as a more integral part of the name than a leading the in the case of something like the Beatles, and capitalize it. So WP should, too, per MOS:CAPS (words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources are capitalized in Wikipedia), and it should be included in the parenthetical disambiguator as an integral name part. Just because a/an and the are both grammatical articles doesn't make them exactly equivalent in every way (same with prepositions: we treat longer ones differently from four-letter and shorter ones). "the band name being in parentheses makes it essentially a new sentence/statement" - No, it doesn't, or WP would have an order of magnitude more "(the Something)" or "(The Something)" instead of "(Something)" disambiguations.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:48, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
There's also A Certain Ratio, of course. It would be unacceptable to render that as a Certain Ratio? (I'm guessing the reason for use of a hyphen in A Split-Second will be known by the band and was probably because they wanted to.) Martinevans123 (talk) 15:33, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
Having lowercase "A"s or "An"s mid-sentence, to me, doesn't read as right as "the", in the case of artist names. I agree with Martin above, you wouldn't read A Certain Ratio as a Certain Ratio as that doesn't read like a band name. – zmbro (talk) (cont) 15:36, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
We have Sextet (A Certain Ratio album) and Force (A Certain Ratio album). Martinevans123 (talk) 16:48, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
If you need another to test the theory on, there's A Flock of Seagulls. Any disambiguation for their albums has the full band name. - X201 (talk) 17:00, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
FYI: At Wikipedia:Requested moves/Technical requests there was recently a request from a user who thought that "The" should not be capitalized in the article title for Friend of a Friend (The Smile song). I replied that there are many thousands of WP article titles in which that word is capitalized, such as 20/20 (The Beach Boys album) or Strength (The Alarm album) to name just two. Per the topic of this thread, everyone above has valid points, and the fact that some contradict others may just show that WP policies and/or the English language itself are not very flexible. Both of the following seem odd to me: "In 1967 The Beatles traveled to India" vs. "In 1967 the Beatles traveled to India". ---DOOMSDAYER520 (TALK|CONTRIBS) 14:23, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
Odd seeming to you or not, in running text we consistently use lower-cased "the". That's something quite different to use of a band's name in album titles? Martinevans123 (talk) 14:48, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
You may have missed my point. Using lower-case "the" or "a" for band names in the running text is at least consistent, but it causes confusion about article titles among less-experienced WP editors. ---DOOMSDAYER520 (TALK|CONTRIBS) 15:17, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
Oh I see. Well yes, I think it probably also causes confusion about article titles among more-experienced WP editors. Martinevans123 (talk) 15:44, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
That user was me, hence this subsequent discussion. I assumed the page move would be uncontroversial due to WP:THEBAND. How naive I was. Popcornfud (talk) 15:30, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
Oops, sorry. Somehow I started reading this discussion in the middle and didn't realize it went so far back. Well, if it still matters I am in favor of keeping things as-is (capitalize "The Band") in article titles, if only to keep all of us from going crazy. ---DOOMSDAYER520 (TALK|CONTRIBS) 21:17, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

To make it more complicated: are all "the"s the same?

E.g. If a band were named "The Day Begins" (I'm sure some emo band is named this), is that different from "The Count Basie Orchestra"? I.e. the former is a kind of title that would be very weird to see as "Debut Album (Day Begins album)" versus "Debut Album (The Day Begins album)" or to see in running text "Dave Bass is the bassist for Day Begins" or "Dave Bass is the bassist for the Day Begins" would seem wrong, but "Dave Bass is the bassist for The Day Begins". Am I wrong here? ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:30, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

I think "The Day Begins" falls under the same exception as "The The" and "The Who". We already don't drop it in cases where dropping it would create nonsense or confusion. I think that's different from "The Count Basie Orchestra". —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 21:38, 14 February 2024 (UTC)
So how do we characterize these? I would certainly understand "the third Who album was shorter than their previous two": that would not be confusing. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:40, 14 February 2024 (UTC)
I think those cases are already mentioned in some guideline, but I don't remember where. "The The" and "The Who" are examples in WP:THE, but without comment there. I could also imagine bands called "The Whole Shebang" or "The End of Summer". Artists sometimes seem to take pleasure in creating difficulties. Personally I would find "the third Who album" awkward and would want to rephrase it (not just insert "The"). —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 21:50, 14 February 2024 (UTC)
I would vote to write the The, the Who, and "the third Who album". All seem fine to me. Popcornfud (talk) 00:01, 15 February 2024 (UTC)
But if we're dropping "The" in disambiguation phrases for most bands per Option C above, would you use the article titles Infected (The album) and Tommy (Who album)? I suggest not. But dropping "The" works OK for Something New (Beatles album) and Undercover (Rolling Stones album). —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 00:08, 15 February 2024 (UTC)
("Who album") doesn't look remotely odd to me, TBH. "(The album)" looks odder for sure, because it could obviously be mistaken for, well, "the album".
In either case I'd be fine with changing to "(the The album)" or "(the Who album)" if the general feeling was that these were unclear. And in both cases, capitalizing "the" doesn't assist clarity. Popcornfud (talk) 00:13, 15 February 2024 (UTC)
That's some variation of Option B (at least for certain bands). I've never seen an article title like Infected (the The album) and Tommy (the Who album) and I really doubt we could settle on that choice for anything. Having said that, I just discovered Talk:Dusk (The The album)#Requested move 31 December 2018, which means examples did exist, at least briefly. But no one really tried to defend them in that RM. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 00:19, 15 February 2024 (UTC)
I won't rehash all the arguments I've already given, but I am genuinely, truly surprised that Option B is not the norm on Wikipedia, as I really can't see why WP:THEBAND would not apply. I assumed that would be the consensus view. Like I said above, this whole thing came to light because I requested a page move assuming it would be noncontroversial. Shrug! Popcornfud (talk) 00:36, 15 February 2024 (UTC)
What about the examples I gave to start this? ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 01:02, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

Seemingly unreliable review

Is Saving Country Music a reliable source? It is not listed at Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums/Sources. See https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Time_Traveler_(album)&diff=next&oldid=1189490404 In case it is not, please remove it. Thanks. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 04:41, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

It does seem like I vaguely remember it not being considered unreliable, but it's not listed here or RSP, and I don't generally edit country articles, so I can't be sure... Sergecross73 msg me 14:26, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

And another

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Carolyn%27s_Boy&diff=prev&oldid=1208520864 this is also not listed. Should these be removed? If so, can someone please do so? Thanks. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 22:20, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

Albums only containing infobox and track listing

Hi, many old album pages look like database entries, including only an infobox, one introductory sentence and a track listing table. In my opinion, such pages should not be on Wikipedia because WP:NOTDIRECTORY, as they provide no content of encyclopedic value, nor give any indication of notability (appearance in charts, reviews, critical reception...). I have blanked and redirected some of these pages (here an example). I would like to hear the thoughts of more experienced editors on this, before I continue. Broc (talk) 21:34, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

I would only do this if I couldn't find evidence of notability first. Otherwise it's just a stub and that's not really against the rules. At the very least give it a BEFORE search. Even if you don't have the time to improve it yourself, you can leave source on the talk page with {{refideas}} if you find any. QuietHere (talk | contributions) 21:53, 17 February 2024 (UTC)
E.g. FabricLive.15 was pretty easily sourced to show that it's notable, I reckon. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 23:08, 17 February 2024 (UTC)
For what it's worth, this seems to be all of the other redirects:
Your judgement is pretty good here that they are probably not-notable, but I'll check all of them individually. Again, thanks--you have a good instinct if not the perfectly thorough best practice. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 23:14, 17 February 2024 (UTC)
Thanks a lot for the help! I'll try to be more thorough for the next ones :) Broc (talk) 23:17, 17 February 2024 (UTC)
Pobody's nerfect and teamwork makes the dream work, etc. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 23:31, 17 February 2024 (UTC)
If you do this, please add {{r from album}} ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 22:26, 17 February 2024 (UTC)
It all depends on editorial preference and the specific article. If you do a search and can't find any sourcing, then a redirect can be the right choice. But if you can find sources, it's better improve it or tag it for needing improvement. Historically, people who just go around rapid-fire redirecting articles generally are seen as disruptive though, and/or start getting people who actively work against their efforts, so I wouldn't recommend that path. Sergecross73 msg me 22:32, 17 February 2024 (UTC)
Thanks for the inputs. I generally wonder how deep a WP:BEFORE should be for such pages. Let's make an example for this album (which I've also recently redirected to the author) Frank Sinatra: The Greatest Concerts. A duckduckgo search returns barely any results other than the discogs entry and Wikipedia mirrors. In my opinion this is sufficient to say that the notability is not evident and to warrant a redirect (given that the page has little to no information in it anyway). What do you think?
P.S. thanks @Koavf, I wasn't aware of this redirect category. Broc (talk) 22:58, 17 February 2024 (UTC)
No worries, B. I appreciate you going thru this old cruft-y stuff. Unfortunately, this is a growing pain of the site: a lot of stuff was just added wholesale from 2004 to 2009 without a lot of discrimination and it should have had more care given to it 15 years ago. :/ ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 23:09, 17 February 2024 (UTC)
Oh, and to actually answer your question: that's a totally legit example of something that should be redirected. You don't need to break your back scouring for sources. Feel free to redirect, keep the relevant categories, and add the redirect template. Thanks. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 23:10, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

Rockol as Italian source

Hello, I realized there is no "generally reliable source" for Italian albums. I would suggest adding Rockol [1] to the list, what do you think? Broc (talk) 10:49, 18 February 2024 (UTC)

RARB (The Recorded A Cappella Review Board) as reliable source

Would you consider RARB a reliable source? The editors seem to be subject-matter experts, but anyone can submit works for review. Broc (talk) 15:04, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:The Bootleg Series, Vol. 5: Freedom Jazz Dance#Requested move 26 February 2024

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:The Bootleg Series, Vol. 5: Freedom Jazz Dance#Requested move 26 February 2024 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Vanderwaalforces (talk) 18:07, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:Red (Taylor Swift album)#Requested move 28 February 2024

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Red (Taylor Swift album)#Requested move 28 February 2024 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Vanderwaalforces (talk) 09:11, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:What the Dead Men Say (album)#Requested move 3 March 2024

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:What the Dead Men Say (album)#Requested move 3 March 2024 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Vanderwaalforces (talk) 11:50, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:Evermore (Taylor Swift album)#Requested move 5 March 2024

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Evermore (Taylor Swift album)#Requested move 5 March 2024 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Vanderwaalforces (talk) 11:06, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

John Lee Hooker Sings THE Blues

The Allmusic review provided here is for an entirely different album titled "John Lee Hooker Sings Blues." Although the album titles are nearly identical, this review pertains to a release from a year earlier with different tracks. It's worth noting that "John Lee Hooker Sings THE Blues" has also been re-released as "Driftin' Thru Blues," featuring the same tracks but in a different order and with an alternate album cover. As for addressing the issue, I'm not permitted to remove the Allmusic link. However, it's crucial to acknowledge that the linked review corresponds to the wrong album. Unfortunately, the correct album link lacks a review.

So how do I proceed?

Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lee_Hooker_Sings_the_Blues

Provided Link: https://www.allmusic.com/album/john-lee-hooker-sings-blues-mw0000081237

Correct link: https://www.allmusic.com/album/sings-the-blues-mw0004092150

Re-release: https://www.allmusic.com/album/driftin-thru-the-blues-mw0002226038

Phalanx70 (talk) 17:54, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

Why can't you edit the article and change it to the correct review? voorts (talk/contributions) 22:21, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
Went to album article and removed AllMusic citation and review to other album, as not applying to this listed album. Mburrell (talk) 23:14, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
I got a big warning doing that. So I got a bit scared ;-) I'm not an experienced Wiki-editor. Phalanx70 (talk) 11:46, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:See You Up There#Requested move 25 February 2024

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:See You Up There#Requested move 25 February 2024 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. – robertsky (talk) 14:15, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

Wikidata equivalent project

Heads up that I've been meaning to make this for a while and finally did today: d:Wikidata:WikiProject Albums. Anyone who is interested in structured data about albums, please do join and help bring best practices and complete data to our sister project. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 22:13, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

"Received critical acclaim"

Hello everyone, it's been a while... various family issues meant I had to put all non-essential stuff on hold for most of 2023, including Wikipedia. Anyway, I've been thinking over a couple of things while I've been away, and one of them is the critical reception section in album articles. Many articles start this section with the sentence "The album received critical acclaim." But how useful is this statement? The truth of the matter is that the days when an album would get an absolute pasting (in the UK at least) in NME or Melody Maker are long gone, and it's tough nowadays to find a review for any album in any genre that is less than 6/10. The nature of journalism these days means that nobody wants to be over-critical of any record, resulting in bland reviews and high scores.

I had a look at the aggregate scores in Metacritic since 2020. From 2020 to 2023, there were a total of 1533 albums included. The number of albums that scored lower than the score needed for "general acclaim" is only 25, and only two scored lower than 50%. Most of us would consider an average rating of 70% or 7/10 to be a pretty solid rating, and 1413 albums achieved this, i.e. more than 92% of all the albums included on Metacritic so far this decade. So saying that an album received "critical acclaim" seems a pretty meaningless statement to me, as virtually all of them are acclaimed.

I can understand including the comment as part of the Metacritic rating, e.g. "The album has a rating of 67% on Metacritic, indicating 'general acclaim' on the website", because this is at least a verifiable statement. But is there any point in starting the section with such an OR statement, when it has almost no worth? And should we remove this opening statement from any album articles that include it? If an album is notable enough to have a Wikipedia article, it was probably notable enough to receive good album reviews. In fact, it would be far more notable to mention the poor ratings of the 25 albums that dipped below the 60% score, as they are far rarer, or the ones that score 80%+ and receive "universal acclaim" on Metacritic. Richard3120 (talk) 01:06, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

Glad to see you back! What you're talking about is a problem in the video game world too. Realistically, outside of the rare complete abomination, receptions tend to scale from "critical acclaim" to "positive" to "mixed", on a scale of 6/10 to 10/10. I think a lot of the problem is modern reviewers working on such a scale and forcing us to use it to because of how Wikipedia functions. I do remove unattributed claims of "acclaim", but Metacritic and other aggregators use the term pretty liberally, so it's not like it cuts it down all that much... Sergecross73 msg me 01:27, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
Hey, yeah, glad to hear from you, hope things are better. Yeah, Kelefa Sanneh mentioned this in Major Labels: A History of Popular Music in Seven Genres, that popular music is the "most positively" reviewed of the popular arts--partly because one has to go out of one's way to produce a technically poor-sounding album. "Lo-fi", like "rockabilly", for example, has been just an aesthetic choice for a while, not the result of finances or equipment. Caro7200 (talk) 12:37, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
I definitely see this as a problem. "critical acclaim" is a ubiquitous phrase on Wikipedia articles about the arts, and I see it as symptom of the generally poor standard of writing about critical reception on Wikipedia.
WP:FILM has a guideline on this, MOS:ACCLAIMED, that we could adopt: Describing a film with superlatives such as "critically acclaimed" or "box-office bomb" is loaded language and an exceptional claim that must be attributed to multiple high-quality sources. Be wary of news headlines, which are not reliable sources, that may contain exaggerated or sensationalized claims not supported by the body of the source. (There's more at the link.) Popcornfud (talk) 12:49, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
I also think this is a problem. I agree that there needs to be some form of guideline similar to WP:FILM for how this is handled. I work with many older albums and I've conveniently had quite a lot of sources that explicitly say "X album received positive reviews on release" and "X album received mixed-to-positive reviews", or even "the most well-received album since Y album". Although Metacritic certainly helps for recent albums, I think there should be a standard set where an album received specific types of reviews should be sourced, especially "acclaimed" ones. – zmbro (talk) (cont) 17:07, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
@Zmbro: I hate the terms "mixed to positive" or "mixed to negative"... I know I'm being picky and it's probably the EFL teacher in me that's getting annoyed, but "mixed" means "both positive and negative" so it's tautological as far as I'm concerned... it should be "mostly positive" or "mostly negative" if one needs to lean one way or the other. And yes, I'm going to add some detail to Audio Vertigo which says that many critics called it the band's "best album in years", but I can literally source those quotes. Richard3120 (talk) 19:02, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
"mixed to positive/negative" is definitely on my copyediting shitlist. It's not just syntactically confused, it's also weaselly, inevitably mostly used to flatter something that didn't get great reviews. The consensus has generally been against it when I've seen it discussed. There are a few discussions in the WP:FILM archives, I haven't checked other places. Popcornfud (talk) 19:03, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
@Popcornfud: "it's also weaselly, inevitably mostly used to flatter something that didn't get great reviews"... 100% agree with you. Richard3120 (talk) 19:08, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
One difference between albums and films is that there are a slew of albums and individual tracks released constantly (as I recall, some 120,000 songs are uploaded to various streaming services a day), whereas the effort and budget required to make even a simple film is orders of magnitude greater than an album, so review outlets will generally not bother with an album that is a 4/10 (why would they?), but if there are three films opening on a weekend, they will generally put forth the effort to tell readers if they are worth watching. (Additionally, it is pretty trivial to hear new music for free or at no additional cost if you have one of a number of streaming subscriptions, but going to the movies costs $20+.) So you will have a lot of films that actually have middling or lo scores, but it's pretty rare to have many albums that are reviewed broadly and are less than at least a 3/5 stars or something. Still, it is necessary to state in the lead what is in the rest of the article and not characterizing the reception would be inadequate. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 22:18, 14 April 2024 (UTC)
I usually just go with something like "generally positive/negative reviews" as an introductory/topic sentence, since there's usually not an RS that analyzes all of an album's reviews and determines whether they're positive or negative. voorts (talk/contributions) 21:44, 15 April 2024 (UTC)
It just seems a bit pointless to me, because as I said, every single album gets "generally positive" reviews these days, so we're putting an identical introduction to every album article. Richard3120 (talk) 23:07, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Albums/Album_article_style_advice#"Release history" tables

There is a discussion on the talk page about "Release history" table with four options rather than "[Record] Labels": "Distributor", "Licensee", "Marketer", "Promoter". Any contributions would be helpful. 183.171.123.25 (talk) 12:08, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:When the Pawn.../Archives/2024/May#Requested move 11 April 2024

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:When the Pawn.../Archives/2024/May#Requested move 11 April 2024 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. EggRoll97 (talk) 22:03, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

Dispute at Talk:Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran

There is a discussion at Talk:Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran that needs opinions regarding an edit war based on the singles in the infobox for the article. The discussion can be found at the article's talk page here. Thanks. HorrorLover555 (talk) 03:37, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:And Here She Is ... Ann-Margret#Requested move 7 May 2024

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:And Here She Is ... Ann-Margret#Requested move 7 May 2024 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Wikiexplorationandhelping (talk) 14:19, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

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