Talk:Whatever It Takes (Leona Lewis song)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Whatever It Takes (Leona Lewis song)/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: J Milburn (talk · contribs) 17:02, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Review to follow in a few minutes. J Milburn (talk) 17:02, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

• "from Gospel music and pop music" Firstly, why have you capitalised the "g" of "gospel"? You also do this further down the article. Secondly, it would surely be a pop song with gospel influences, rather than a song with pop and gospel influences?

  Thought Gospel would be capitalised. No, not really, one reviewer called it gospel and another pop, so it is both. Neither is more influential than the other.  — AARON • ^TALK

  Yes, but she is a pop singer, rather than a gospel singer. It is called "gospel-pop" by Levine, in the context of a review of a pop album- that's a long way from describing it as a gospel song. J Milburn (talk) 18:43, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

  Changed.  — AARON • ^TALK 18:52, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

• "lacking any "kick." Upon" See MOS:LQ

  Put outside.  — AARON • ^TALK

• "due to strong digital download sales" Peaking at 61 isn't what most would call "strong", especially for someone as big as Lewis

  Well 61 is pretty strong considering when "Lovebird (song)" failed to chart in the top 200, selling less than 600 copies. To be at 61 is quite a lot.  — AARON • ^TALK

• "Atlanta, GA and at Battery Studios, NYC" Not a fan of those abbreviations

  Spelt out now.  — AARON • ^TALK

• The "Recording and production" section reads a bit too much like a list of credits, and mostly just repeats what is said in the credits section. What inspired the song? What's it about? In what way is it gospel-influenced? Whose idea was that? How does it fit in with the rest of the album? Also, I feel like the "composition" belongs with this section, rather than with the critical response.

  If I knew the answer to those questions, then they would obviously be in the article. No offense, but it irritates me people say those things. I have obviously looked to find information like that, but it rarely exists these days unless singers are asked specifically about the song.  — AARON • ^TALK

  It irritates you when reviewers point out holes in coverage? What exactly do you want from a GA review? If the information isn't out there, then so be it, but if there's very little information about a song, then that's probably a pretty good indication that it doesn't warrant an article (or that the article isn't going to progress far beyond start or stub class). Certainly, answering key questions about the subject is necessary for the good article criteria, and, to repeat, I'm not even sure what this song is about. J Milburn (talk) 18:43, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

  Just because there isn't information about it, doesn't mean it's not notable. There is no background info at all about "Where Have You Been", and look at how successful it was. People seem to think that Background sections are the most important, which is not the case. It was the first song to be written how the album, that's all Lewis has ever said. What I mean by irritating is how reviewers assume that nominators haven't looked for the information, or that it hasn't been included. We, as editors (at least the good ones), always search for as much information as possible. Information may have existed 5 years ago, but it can get lost. The older a song is now, the harder it is to obtain information.  — AARON • ^TALK 18:52, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

  Sure, I accept that the song is technically "notable" in the Wikipedia sense- I've not challenged that. Whether it warrants an article is a slightly different matter. A glance at the article on "Where Have You Been" shows me that there's a lot in that article which is lacking in this one: A sense of what the song is about, for a start! You write "What I mean by irritating is how reviewers assume that nominators haven't looked for the information, or that it hasn't been included". I didn't make any such assumption- I guessed that you'd looked but not found, but I certainly didn't assume it hasn't been included- I can see that it hasn't been included, found or not found. My key point here is that the article is severely lacking in any real information, and articles lacking in information are never going to be good articles. J Milburn (talk) 19:29, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

  But if it's notable, then it can warrant an article, surely? I know you didn't explicitly say that, but for a nominator that is how it comes across.  — AARON • ^TALK 19:38, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

  Not everything that is notable warrants an article. Let's say you found two articles in local papers about a particular date on a tour. Would you say that the performance needed its own article? Other examples: If I found two responses to an article in an edited collection, that article would be notable in its own right. However, the information would be more usefully contained in an article about the edited collection. Another one: Someone could write well-sourced articles longer than this one on dozens of passages (or even individual phrases) from any of the works of Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Aquinas, Nietzsche, Hume or any other highly significant writer. Each of those thinkers have whole academic journals devoted to them and their work (in some cases, several academic journals). Not everything that is notable has to have an article, and not everything that is notable is best covered in its own article. Sometimes technically notable subjects are better covered in "parent" articles. Even if they are given their own articles, some subjects are never going to be complete enough for GA status. It seems that this is one of those things. J Milburn (talk) 20:55, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

  I think it is worthy of GA. I haven't done articles for "Here I Am" and "Yesterday" for example because there simply isn't the info.  — AARON • ^TALK 21:07, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

• "The song garnered a mixed response from music critics. Nate Chinen for The New York Times was complimentary of "Whatever It Takes", writing that it is an" Tense muddle

  Well, his review was in the past, and the song is still present. "is complimentary" doesn't work, likewise "writing that it was an" doesn't either.  — AARON • ^TALK

  It's poor writing. I think you'd do well to find a featured article like that. J Milburn (talk) 18:43, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

• There are more tense muddles in the section; also, check the quoting as above.
• I'm not really feeling the track listing; you're not listing the tracks of "Whatever It Takes", you're listing its appearances. Is there a guideline supporting this? I've been told in the past that the general practice is not to do this.

  It is still different versions on different releases.  — AARON • ^TALK

  That doesn't answer the question. J Milburn (talk) 18:43, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

  I've never seen anything saying that they can't list other appearances.  — AARON • ^TALK 18:52, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

  That doesn't make it a track listing. It's telling that the article is short even when you include things that normally would not be included in articles about songs. J Milburn (talk) 19:29, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

• The sources that are there seem solid. (I'm not mad keen on the way you list the newspapers' publishers, but there's not anything wrong with it as such.)

I had a search for other sources and I found a few (made difficult by the fact that "whatever it takes" is a pretty common phrase when we're talking about reality TV...) that mention the song as part of the concert tour with very short descriptions ("impressive", "biggest songs", "old faves") and several articles (which are copying from AP) even manage to get it very wrong ("also showcased numbers from her upcoming second album Echo, which features R&B song Whatever It Takes"). I can copy a few of these citations across to you if you're interested (I have access to Nexis); you may be able to pick at them and get a few more citations-worth in. My concern, though, is there's never more than a half-sentence on the song. I'm certain it doesn't pass the GNG.

I don't know what AP and Nexis are.  — AARON • ^TALK

Associated Press and Nexis. The point still stands. J Milburn (talk) 18:43, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Yeah I guessed that.  — AARON • ^TALK 18:52, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

This leads me on to my gut instinct- I'm not really feeling this article, sorry. It seems to have a lot of bumph and not much by way of actual content; I get that it's technically notable, as it has charted, and I see that you can piece together a few comments from reviews and interviews, but I'm not sure that this necessarily means that it needs an article, and I certainly don't think that such a thing leads well into GA status. I'm not sure there's much here that wouldn't be more at home in the album or tour articles. I'm going to put this on hold for now, but I'm not sure, short of some more sources, that this is something that could ever really be GA status. J Milburn (talk) 17:42, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Ok, for the reasons I have outlined above, I'm not convinced that this article meets the GA criteria at this time or that it will any time soon. As such, I am closing this review at this time- I recommend you look into merging the article with the article on the album. J Milburn (talk) 15:45, 11 February 2013 (UTC)