Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Music/Archive 8

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

What should

However, per discussions at Template talk:Infobox song and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Songs, it may be better to treat them as generic qualifiers and not part of the song title, much like how brackets containing phrases such as "(feat. Artist)" are currently treated.

(Notifying participants in the aformentioned discussions: TheSandDoctor, Ojorojo, Richard3120, Reidgreg, Martinevans123 and SMcCandlish.) Jc86035 (talk) 06:08, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

• Comment Shouldn't
  this discussion. It was begun again by Status without any discussion. Also, "Turn It Up" (remix) and "Iginition" (remix) were apparently refashioned from earlier songs. It seems that the originals and the remixes could be accommodated by one article, which is the goal of SONGCOVER. Knicks Remix may be the name of the EP, which includes "Knicks" (remix) and "Knicks" (instrumental remix). —Ojorojo (talk
  ) 18:03, 29 April 2018 (UTC)

Comment. The thrust of our deliberations and subsequent project vote! on the inclusion of songcover was that articles are on songs, not on various recordings of that song. I see no reason to change that perception, and certainly not without taking it to the wider community. --Richhoncho (talk) 18:19, 29 April 2018 (UTC)

When should a descriptive phrase in parentheses, such as "(Acoustic)" or "(Remix)", be considered to be part of a song's title and be included within quotation marks when the song is mentioned? (pick one)

• A1: Always; "Song (Acoustic)"/"Song (feat. Artist)"
• A2: Always unless reliable sources explicitly indicate that it shouldn't be (part of title by default)
• A3: Only if reliable sources explicitly indicate that it should be (not part of title by default)
• A4: Never; "Song"

When should a descriptive phrase after a dash, such as "Remastered Version" or "Radio Edit", be considered (along with the dash) to be part of a song's title and be included within quotation marks when the song is mentioned? (pick one)

• B1: Always; "Song – Radio Edit"
• B2: Always unless reliable sources explicitly indicate that it shouldn't be
• B3: Only if reliable sources explicitly indicate that it should be
• B4: Never; "Song"

When should a descriptive phrase in brackets such as "Remix" or "Acoustic" be written in

• C1: Always; "Song (Remix)" and "Song" (Acoustic)
• C2: Always unless reliable sources explicitly indicate that it shouldn't be
• C3: Only if reliable sources explicitly indicate that it should be
• C4: Whenever it is considered to be part of the title per A and B; "Song (Remix)" and "Song" (acoustic)
• C5: Whenever it is considered to be part of the title per A and B, AND reliable sources don't explicitly indicate that it shouldn't be capitalized (capitalized by default only if considered part of title)
• C6: Whenever it is considered to be part of the title per A and B, AND reliable sources explicitly indicate that it should be capitalized (not capitalized by default even if considered part of title)
• C7: Never; "Song (remix)" and "Song" (acoustic)

When should a descriptive phrase after a dash such as "Radio Edit" be written in

• D1: Always; "Song – Radio Edit" and "Song" – Remastered Version/"Song" Remastered Version
• D2: Always unless reliable sources explicitly indicate that it shouldn't be
• D3: Only if reliable sources explicitly indicate that it should be
• D4: Whenever it is considered to be part of the title per A and B; "Song – Radio Edit" and "Song" – remastered version/"Song" remastered version
• D5: Whenever it is considered to be part of the title per A and B, AND reliable sources don't explicitly indicate that it shouldn't be capitalized
• D6: Whenever it is considered to be part of the title per A and B, AND reliable sources explicitly indicate that it should be capitalized
• D7: Never; "Song – radio edit" and "Song" – remastered version/"Song" remastered version

Which parts of a track name should be included in the article title? (pick one)

• E1: The song name including all descriptive parentheticals, and excluding descriptive phrases such as "Remastered Version" and "Radio Edit" shown after a dash, and excluding indication of featured artists; Song (Remix)
• E2: The song name excluding descriptive phrases, but a parenthetical should be used as a disambiguator if one is needed and the parenthetical forms a unique title; Song (remix)
• E3: The song name excluding descriptive phrases, but parentheticals should be disregarded for purposes of disambiguation; Song (Artist song) or Song (Artist remix)

Is a parenthetical that contains a non-descriptive phrase (excluding the name of an artist, etc.) and a descriptive phrase, such as "(Nightfall Remix)", treated as descriptive or as part of a proper noun? (pick one)

• F1: The entire parenthetical is treated as if it were a proper noun and not descriptive, and statements within A–E do not apply to it (i.e. "Nightfall Remix")
• F2: The entire parenthetical is treated as a descriptive phrase, but the non-descriptive part is treated as if it were a proper noun; the descriptive part does not require capitalization if not specified per C (i.e. "Nightfall remix"/"Nightfall Remix")
• F3: The entire parenthetical is treated as a descriptive phrase and does not require any capitalization if not specified per C (i.e. "nightfall remix"/"Nightfall Remix")
• F4: Defer to sources, but default to treating the whole phrase as a proper noun
• F5: Defer to sources, but default to treating the whole phrase as descriptive but the non-descriptive part as a proper noun
• F6: Defer to sources, but default to treating the whole phrase as descriptive

If you do not think the guidelines need to be amended at all, or you think any of these questions is unnecessary or is missing an option, please say so.

Survey

• A4, B4, C7, D7, E3 and F2.
  WP:MOSCAPS indicate that excessive capitalization should be avoided, and so descriptive things like "(remix)" should not be capitalized. Furthermore, it is extremely common for record labels and artists to tack on metadata to the end of the track title (e.g. in physical track listings and in iTunes and Spotify), and these should be uniformly treated as not part of the actual song title. Overcapitalization in sources can also be a problem due to publications' style guides, or lack thereof, so I don't think that capitalization in sources should necessarily be followed, especially if they are specialized music publications. Jc86035 (talk
  ) 06:07, 27 April 2018 (UTC)
• For A and B, none of the options strike me as quite right. "(Murder Remix)" is clearly titular, whereas "(remix)" is purely descriptive. A dash is different punctuation to serve the same purpose as a parenthetical, so the same rules would apply. Whatever is part of the title belongs in quotes and should be capitalized; whatever isn't does not and should not. In keeping with that, I vote for C4, D4, and F1. As for E, the only reason a parenthetical (or dash) should be included in the article title is if the song only exists in that form, or the version in that form is sufficiently notable of its own accord that it merits a separate article. (Unless I'm wrong: it happened once back in '97.) Pstoller (talk) 11:53, 27 April 2018 (UTC)
  • @Pstoller: With regards to your issue with A and B, I ran into this while I was writing the RfC, and so picking F1 or F4 would also mean saying that A–E should not apply to "(Murder Remix)" (and so regardless of the outcome of the other five questions, if closed as F1 or F4 the article would probably keep its current title and be referred to the same way it is now). Articles for remixes are evidently quite rare, but I was mostly thinking of Ignition (Remix), which is sometimes referred to as just "Ignition", and also refers to itself as the "remix to ignition" (implying that we would not capitalize the first letter of "Remix" due to it being descriptive, although it's still not clear to me whether "(Remix)" is actually part of the title). Jc86035 (talk) 12:49, 27 April 2018 (UTC)
    • Simply put, I believe remixes and alternate versions with a name beyond "Song (remix)"—that is, where the remix/version gets its own name, as in "Murder Remix"—are proper nouns in their entirety, and should be capitalized and quoted as such. Those with only purely descriptive augmentations should not. I vote for whatever combination of letters gets us to that place, which on re-reading appears to be A4, B4, C4, D4, and F1. (C7 and D7 would achieve the same result, but C4 and D4 are expressly consistent with A and B, which seems to be the point of this exercise.) Regardless of how rare articles about remixes and alternate version are, I stand by what seems the rather obvious position that articles about an alternate version should have the version name in the title, and all other articles should not. Pstoller (talk) 02:58, 28 April 2018 (UTC)
• Support A4 and B4, keeping in mind that a small minority of artists may choose very strange titles which should not be confused with parenthetic notes. Regardless of what version or remix, the base song is the same and I feel that title is the only thing that should be in double quotes. For capitalization I was leaning toward C7 and D7 but have to support C3 and D3 as we should follow use in reliable sources to determine what should be capitalized as a proper noun. e.g.: (Backstreet Boys remix), (remix), (Murder Remix). A certain amount of common sense should be exercised, and caution with sources that overcapitalize. Also support E3 but I feel I could use a couple more examples for F. – Reidgreg (talk) 18:59, 27 April 2018 (UTC)
• Don't care excapt we should never use "feat." That is used as am abbreviation of "featuring", and we should always use the latter. Walter Görlitz (talk) 01:04, 30 April 2018 (UTC)
• Modified A1 (never "FEAT", etc, but "Acoustic" does change the song, in my opinion, and is worth noting); B4, C6, D7, and E3. Strikerforce^{Talk Review me!} 21:05, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

• Support For now A4, B4, C7, D7, and E3. Article titles should not contain (remix), (feat. So and So), (acoustic), etc., since these refer to a specific variation on the song, which should be addressed in one article about all the iterations (
  WP:SONGCOVER). —Ojorojo (talk
  ) 15:50, 30 April 2018 (UTC)
• A4, B4, C7, D7, E3 and F2, per pretty much the same reasoning as Jc86035. Furthermore, we should not be using dashes in these titles at all. And virtually no remixes are independently notable, and should instead be merged into the article on the song (and to the section in that article for a particular artist's version if necessary). Some songs have a dozen or more remixes, and they should all redirect to the song article/section. [Aside: Some notable "remixes" are actually covers or near-total remakes with a lot of sampling, and may be independently notable (e.g. the DNA version of "Tom's Diner" could possibly qualify for an article, as far more people are familiar with it than with Suzanne Vega's original acapella piece, from which the vocals were sampled and sped up, over a hip-hop musical background; probably less than 1% of people who've heard the song have heard the original or even know it exists).] Create redirects using upper/lower case variants, since people (i.e., those looking for articles) approach capitalization radically differently: "Foo Bar (Bazz Quux Remix)", "Foo Bar (Bazz Quux remix)", "Foo Bar (bazz quux remix)", etc. If a word like "in" or "of" is included, you get even more variants, because some "musicky people" like to overcapitalize them, generally in mimicry of All Words Capitalized On My Album Cover Because I Like It marketing stylization. If you read/write offsite music-related material, you already know that the parenthetical convention is dominant in the real world, by a very wide margin. We thus do not need to account for dash variants, since that would also entail dealing with hyphen variants, and we'd spend all our time creating redirects no one is actually likely to use. They can just use the Search feature. And, yes, do capitalize non-descriptive remix names, which are effectively subtitles (and many of them are proper names such as stagenames but may look like everyday words – only someone intimately familiar with the release and the people behind it may realize that). So: "Foo Bar (Bazz Quux remix)", but "Foo Bar (dance mix)", "Foo Bar (radio edit)".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:34, 8 May 2018 (UTC)
• Comment Could |prev_title= and |next_title= be set up like |A-side= and |B-side= where adding quote marks defeats those produced automatically. So although |prev_title=That Song (live) produces "That Song (live)", |prev_title="That Song" (live) would produce "That Song" (live). —Ojorojo (talk) 19:26, 13 May 2018 (UTC)

  @Ojorojo: Yes (and this could be done for {{Singles}} as well), although another tracking category or two would probably have to be used to avoid breaking things. Jc86035 (talk) 16:28, 18 May 2018 (UTC)

  Sounds like a plan.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:40, 4 June 2018 (UTC)

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Hello there. I'd like to see what other editors think in regards to the use of the word "The" in band names in parentheses in the titles of articles about songs and albums. Here's an example of what I mean by this: there is currently an article titled "

• Beach Boys redirects to The Beach Boys
  .
• Beatles redirects to The Beatles
  .
• The Jimi Hendrix Experience
  .
• Rolling Stones redirects to The Rolling Stones
  .
• Who, however, leads to a disambiguation page, and does NOT redirect to The Who.

Therefore, articles about songs or albums by specific bands should be titled as follows:

• Example (Beach Boys album)
• Example (Beatles album)
• Example (Jimi Hendrix Experience album)
• Example (Rolling Stones album)
• Example (The Who album)

Under this model, the "The" would be included for such bands as

doors, and who) either lead to disambiguation pages or articles which are not about the bands. Meanwhile, the "The" would NOT be included for bands whose names are still the primary topic even without the "The", such as the Beach Boys, the Beatles, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, and the Rolling Stones. I don't know if I'm allowed to cast a vote, if you will, since I started this discussion, but I would support this as a proposal. Thoughts? –Matthew - (talk

) 16:13, 7 July 2019 (UTC)

Note: I have eventually come to oppose my own initial proposal. I now support retaining the exact names of bands as given in their respective articles. See below for details. –Matthew - (talk) 03:35, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

• Support or remove all The from parenthetical disambiguators – Add
  Shirelles -> The Shirelles to your list, where I got reverted for a such a change at Tonight's the Night (The Shirelles song) and some others a few years ago. @Discographer: might say if he'd reconsider with this framework. IIRC there was an explicit discussion and approval for the Beatles case; I had assumed that applied more generally, but didn't try to define the limits. Dicklyon (talk
  ) 20:57, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
• Keep all (proper names) with the guidance of
  MOS:THEMUSIC; I prefer to see "the" left out when an authoritative references tell us that "the" is not part of the band name, and left in when "the" is part of the name. i.e. use the proper name properly. What redirects exist is not a useful metric. "(Beatles album)" is bad and "(The Beatles album)" is good because it's the band's name. Fred Gandt · talk · contribs
  21:24, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

  I disagree. I think that "Revolver (Beatles album)" looks less awkward and rolls off the tongue much better than "Revolver (The Beatles album)" does. However, I would prefer "Endless Wire (The Who album)" to "Endless Wire (Who album)", because of the primary topic reasoning I outlined above. I understand where you're coming from though. –Matthew - (talk) 21:32, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

  I appreciate your desire for information to be aesthetically pleasing, though I sincerely hope you wouldn't forgo clarity and accuracy to achieve it. Thinking of Verve, I pondered "Forth (Verve album)" and felt bad for casual readers/researchers. Is that the forth album Verve released, or an album called "Forth" released by the Verve? That "the" really helps clear things up doesn't it? I suggest a shave with Occam's razor i.e. KISS. Fred Gandt · talk · contribs 01:47, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

  I think that there are two problems with your example about Forth though. First, it's spelled "Forth", not "Fourth", so I don't think people would get confused there. Second, under my proposed model, the band The Verve would include the "The" in a case such as this, because the term "Verve" leads to a disambiguation page. Regardless, there are no other albums with Wikipedia articles called Forth, so as of right now, that article is just titled "Forth (album)" anyways. I don't think that my proposal would be confusing for casual readers/researchers. –Matthew - (talk) 03:16, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

• Remove all because of common usage. Certainly the name of John Lennon's most famous band was "The Beatles" but he, and every other writer, dropped the "the" when the band name was used as an adjective, for instance the statements, "sounds like a Beatles song" or "never appeared on a Beatles album". Essentially, our parenthetic disambiguation is the same type of descriptor, and the "the" is not needed. Binksternet (talk) 21:43, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

  I think I agree, actually. It may be the Beatles, but in such instances like you mentioned with John himself, simply "Beatles" works without issue. My problem lies with bands like The Clash and especially The Who. Never once have I ever heard somebody refer to The Who as simply "Who", but after a quick Google search, I've found that there are a few sources which do write it that way. I may well end up changing my position in agreement with yours. –Matthew - (talk) 22:33, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

• I don’t have a stance, but I do in general support coming to a consensus one way or another. This is one of those perennial time wasting arguments that do nothing other than rile editors up and turn them against one another. Sergecross73 msg me 21:47, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
• Remove all, even in "The Who" and "The The". The inital cap is a sufficient signal that a proper name is being referred to. "Endless Wire (Who album)" is no less clear than "Endless Wire (The Who album)". Deor (talk) 22:43, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

  Oh someone didn't forget the The (yay). To be clear then, by "remove all" you suggest "Dusk (The Album)" is more appropriate than the current "Dusk (The The album)"; you don't think that this and your "The Who" examples are possibly a little confusing to readers who may not be familiar with article title policy, and in fact are very good examples of exactly why we shouldn't "remove all"? Fred Gandt · talk · contribs 01:22, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

  It would be "Dusk (The album)", not "Dusk (The Album)", and yes, I think it's sufficiently clear for use as a disambiguator. Deor (talk) 15:23, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

• Keep "The" when it's used as proper-noun Wikipedia-article title. So "Eagles" but "The Who".--Tenebrae (talk) 23:09, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
• There actually already was an RfC consensus on this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:The_Smashing_Pumpkins/Archive_5#Request_for_Comment. Do we really want to reopen a hard-fought discussion that ended in a workable compromise? --Tenebrae (talk) 22:43, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

  That discussion is a consensus on one band. This is on handling all bands in general. Sergecross73 msg me 23:06, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

  Oops. Well, maybe that discussion will help inform this one.--Tenebrae (talk) 23:09, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

  That discussion is completely off point. But there was one on the Beatles which concluded to drop "The" in disambiguators (and I thought I recalled also in categories such as Category:Beatles songs, but looks like not). Not sure where that is. Dicklyon (talk) 00:18, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

• While this discussion is heavily featuring the Beatles as an example of "common use", remember that there's is but one of many and varied names. Consider the common use of "the Band of Joy". And just for kicks; let's not forget the The? A reliable coverall !policy should be indifferent to specific cases (which can be argued case by case as needed); we already have a reliable coverall, and it's to use bands' proper names. Fred Gandt · talk · contribs 01:07, 12 July 2019 (UTC)
• Remove all I agree with the reasoning offered by Binksternet above. This has nothing to do with disambiguation (the rationale provided by the RFC proposer), nor does it have anything to do with whether or not "the" is officially part of the band's name; it has to do with on common usage. My observations of common usage are as follows: When used as a noun in a sentence, the band name is preceded by "the" in almost all cases, even if "the" is not officially part of the name. There are exceptions on a per-band basis in common usage, depending on the nature of the band name, such as if it is pluralized, and when otherwise it would be confusing to leave out "the". "I went to a concert and saw the Beach Boys, the Beatles, the Carpenters, the Eagles, and Bread" (the last being a common usage exception). You probably wouldn't write "I went to a concert and saw the Beach Boys, the Beatles, Carpenters, Eagles, and Bread." However, the inverse is true if the band name is being used as an adjective, even more so in a sentence than in parenthesis after a song or album title. "I went to a Beatles concert. I went to a Beach Boys concert. I went to a Carpenters concert. I went to an Eagles concert. I went to a Bread concert." You certainly wouldn't write "I went to a The Beach Boys concert"; you wouldn't write "I went the Beach Boys concert" either unless you were referring to a particular Beach Boys concert (HA see how I left out "the") that is already known to the reader. Although "the" in the parenthetical reference is less objectional, I think it should still follow this common usage and be left out. When I first saw this change being made to article titles of Beach Boys works (HA did it again), I thought, "here's another case of someone with too much time on their hands making a mass arbitrary change." However, after thinking about it more and actually looking at articles with "the" removed, I think it is comes across better, is more consistent with common usage, and should be the convention going forward. —hulmem (talk) 01:52, 12 July 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose. Look, I get the premise here, and agree that "Revolver (The Beatles album)" doesn't roll off the tongue as well as it does without the "The". But the first problem (there are a lot of them) with changing this convention is that including the "The" is never wrong, while dropping the "The" can be wrong in so many different ways.

As discussed, there are countless situations in speech and prose when it is contextually acceptable (huuuge emphasis on contextually) to omit the "The" when talking about bands with "The" in their names. But the situations for omitting a "The" in prose or speech are almost purely intuitive, will vary from band to band, and can sometimes be a judgment call. It's not an on/off switch either, but more of a spectrum; some band's "The" is stickier than other's. It's not possible to replicate the "naturalness" of judging when to hack off a "The" with a yes-or-no rule like this. The current rule, "use the band's formal title as given in the Wikipedia article", is simple, easy to remember, intuitive even to readers and new users, and the process to check or make a correction is trivially easy. Basing a new rule about dropping "The" in every case is silly, and any rule about dropping it sometimes based on redirects/disambiguations is unworkable and needlessly complicated.

The reason "The Who" presents a difficulty is that people very rarely call the band just "Who", while people routinely say "Beatles" or "Beach Boys". Why? There's a whole spectrum of acceptable cases to drop the "The" from a band's name. It's not just because "Who" is a common word, because there are other bands with "The + [common word]" names where the "The" gets more commonly left off, like the Fall. Yet no one searching for the Fall would type "Fall", even though it is sometimes contextually natural to call them that. Similarly, even given that people sometimes say "Who" to refer to the band, it's usually when you're already waist-deep into reading about them—i.e., you already know you're reading about The Who, so there's no opportunity for confusion. It may sound a little odd, but you still know Who they're talking about. But that unusual, purely contextual usage has no bearing on whether people think of "The" as a dispensable part of the band's name as a title. Would you call "The Police" just "Police", or "The Band" "Band"? Rarely, if ever. What about, say, The 1975? I guarantee that outside of a deliberately jokey usage about how unnatural it sounds to refer to them that way, you will almost certainly never find an instance of someone calling that band just "1975". And "The The"—again, outside a joke, no one would ever call them plain "The"!! This is silly; we'd be switching from "The Beach Boys" to "Beach Boys", which is acceptably natural either, but also switching from "The Who" to "Who", "The Band" to "Band", "The 1975" to "1975", and "The The" to "The", which all sound unacceptably unnatural without their "The".

You could try to adopt a rule for selectively dropping "The" in some cases but not others, maybe based on redirects/disambiguation pages as discussed above. But there is never going to be a simple, unambiguous, easy-to-remember rule of thumb to make that distinction in a way that works. There are going to be tons of tricky cases that will arbitrarily depend on a band's relative level of notability in relation to the common noun—as judged by the state of Wikipedia in a given moment. Some examples: People commonly say "Doors" to refer to the band, while "Clash" for "The Clash" tends to be unnatural (but like "Who", occurs in rare, contextual instances). So while keeping "The Clash" remains good, natural-sounding, and obvious, mandating "The Doors"—but not "The Beach Boys"—just because of a redirect/disambiguation is totally arbitrary and confusing. It ditches/thwarts the purported reason of adopting of more natural-sounding titles, basically on a technicality. Worse, the distinction would be done for a reason that will seem opaque and arbitrary to an average user or reader, not to mention hard to apply for experienced users. Some more: "

kinks" redirects to The Kinks, replacements goes to the disambiguation page Replacement

. Quick: based on the proposed rule for selectively dropping "The", which one gets the "The" left off in an article title? Can you remember intuitively, or do you have to take a second to remember to yourself how the rule works? What if the state of the titles/redirects change?

Analogously, the problems with a rule like that can also be shown if you were to apply it to titles of articles about TV episodes—and why not, since TV show titles, like band names, sometimes sound natural without their "The". So, some examples from TV land:

Sopranos redirects to The Sopranos, and people routinely say "Sopranos" for the show; Americans is of course its own article, separate from The Americans (hardly anyone calls the show just "Americans"); office is its own article, natch, while The Office is about the original British show—so what about the (more popular, but disambiguated) The Office (American TV series)

, plus the fact it would be profoundly weird to call either show "Office"? How would this all play out for articles with "(The _____ episode)" in the title?

Even if you like the idea of making some new rule so that some articles can have "more natural" titles like "Revolver (Beatles album)": at the end of the day, the reason for that new rule (and opening a can of worms), the purported big benefit, is... that if you were to read a title like "Revolver (The Beatles album)" out loud, it may sound momentarily unnatural. What?? Ask yourself, when are you ever saying Wikipedia articles out loud, or even typing them out like that? Do you tell a friend "Oh, check out the Wikipedia article 'Revolver' (The Beatles album)'"? That sounds odd, but it's not because of the "The". No, you would say "check out the Wikipedia album about the Beatles album Revolver". You'd go by subject, not the actual title. And this is keeping in mind that the "drop every The" rule would enforce "weird-sounding", or even outright wrong, phrases like "(The album)". So even if we're taking the problem of natural-sounding vs. weird-sounding titles very seriously, on net you'd probably lose more natural-sounding titles than you'd gain.

Disambiguated Wikipedia article titles are not really Titles, and we don't (or hardly ever) have to announce them or think about them as Titles. They are purely an expedient for finding the right content. "Copy-paste the band's exact title as given in their article" is a fine rule; adopting any change discussed here would add needless complication and confusion for, at best, little gain. —

talk

02:35, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

@

BLZ: I think you've changed my mind here. While it does pain me from an aesthetic point-of-view to admit that including the "The" is never wrong, while removing the "The" in some cases may cause issues, I can't help but agree with your reasoning. The Kinks are an especially tricky case, and the fact that titles and redirects can change is problematic. I concede my previous viewpoint, and (with great and petty sadness), now support retaining the exact names of bands as given in their respective articles. –Matthew - (talk

) 03:32, 12 July 2019 (UTC)*

• Note – I updated
  MOS:THEMUSIC for how we do this normally in text; no prejudice to whether it applies to disambiguators. Dicklyon (talk
  ) 03:17, 12 July 2019 (UTC)
• Support. Tony (talk) 01:07, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
• Retain articles Otherwise, what would we do with
  A Silver Mt. Zion? If the name of the main article is "The XYZ", then let's retain "The XYZ [foo]" for consistency's sake. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M
  ☯ 01:45, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
• Remove all. Simple, natural and perfectly clear without the definite article.

• [Lukewarm] support for removing all; make exception for The The. Having got so used to seeing examples in Beatles song and album articles, I go to an article like the Rolling Stones'
  The Beatles' break-up
  to The break-up of the Beatles.
• One thing that's always confused me with the removal of "The" from the Beatles article titles: how come we still have "The Beatles chronology", "The Beatles singles chronology", etc, in the infoboxes? It's not as if the header sets the band name in the possessive form: it's not The Beatles' chronology (as one would write "the Beatles' career" or "the Beatles' touring history") – which makes sense, because the band name is being used adjectivally. But then, shouldn't the chronology headers also lose the word "the"? Same with some of the template titles for the band, I guess. JG66 (talk) 03:52, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

  talk

  ) 08:01, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

  There is that inconsistency with band names, yes (and I can't fathom that one either). But I'm talking about why we have, say, "

  Rolling Stones singles chronology". (Either that or make it possessive: "The Rolling Stones' singles chronology".) JG66 (talk

  ) 15:03, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

  While interesting, this RfC is about the use of "the" in parenthesized disambiguation; either you're suggesting this RfC needs to have its scope altered, or this is off point and distracting. Fred Gandt · talk · contribs 18:59, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

• Remove all (
  WP:CONCISE. (Exception for "The The".) Mathglot (talk
  ) 08:04, 22 July 2019 (UTC)
• firm written guidance here, so I would suggest establishing local consensus by band. If guidance is needed, then I support always using "The" when it's the band's name. That way it's always accurate and doesn't require editors to review DAB pages or tally up how reliable sources are using it. (Summoned by bot) Argento Surfer (talk
  ) 15:13, 23 July 2019 (UTC)