Talk:God Only Knows

message: I moved this to the talk page:
(Could someone quote Brian's comments about this song from the anniversary edition of "Pet Sounds"? I don't have it available, but it would provide good background information to this article.)
Rx StrangeLove 02:57, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: From article page

message: I have removed the lyrics that were posted on this page in full as all the songs lyrics on 'Pet Sounds' are copyrighted in 1966 under Irving Music. And unless their is permission given to use the lyrics then it is breaching the copyright of the songs lyrics. --Sahafan 09:02, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removed lyrics 

message: No Fair Use Rationales and the lead is huge. Please see WP:FAIR and WP:LEAD. Highway Rainbow Sneakers 16:32, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  GA Failing 

message: It strikes me as odd that in the list of covers, Brian Wilson is mentioned twice, when in fact he co-wrote the song. Slightly demeaning to him! Just a thought. Beanrobot (talk) 17:12, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Brian Wilson - cover?? 

message: As a big fan of this song and having just played it I wanted to thank all the article editors for their contributions. Very interesting to read about. --bodnotbod (talk) 16:22, 28 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Thank You

message: It is mentioned that there were only three vocalists - C. Wilson, B. Wilson and Jonston. But how is it possible, that I can hear Mike Love singing that "bababa" part? --79.97.145.201 (talk) 13:29, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: That's Brian doing the "bababa" part. --Sahafan (talk) 02:37, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vocalists 

message: ABCBCDECBC'? 
Ha ha ha. Santa Claus of the Future (talk) 02:52, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Form 

message: Sources state:
Both are verifiable sources, or at least Mark Dillon is. Unless it can be demonstrated that Dillon is making stuff up, I don't see why this factoid isn't notable enough to include in the article. WP:SPECULATION and WP:NPOV state:
It is not original research; these are published sources. Conjecture is allowed on Wikipedia if it is stated from a neutral point of view, as it is in this paraphrasing: "It is said that Brian Wilson had written in his memoirs that some of the melody in "God Only Knows" was inspired by the Lovin' Spoonful. Others have suggested that their 1965 single "You Didn't Have to Be So Nice" may have specifically influenced the song's vocal layering, though John Sebastian and co-writer Tony Asher are unaware of any such connection."
--Ilovetopaint (talk) 22:07, 5 October 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Addendum: Wilson's "memoirs" in this instance may be referring to his ghostwritten autobiography. If that's where the Lovin' Spoonful connection originates, then it is no doubt of historical significance, and readers can discern that it may have been a fabrication by Todd Gold (if not taken directly from Wilson), providing closure on the subject.--Ilovetopaint (talk) 00:49, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

text: Questions: 1. Why is Brian Wilson's memoir Wouldn't It Be Nice: My Own Story now "disowned" by him? 2. What implication(s) does this disowning have for its use as a source here? Martinevans123 (talk) 17:24, 9 October 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: (a) Read the article you linked to. (b) Either Wilson wrote the book, and says it's crap, and thus the source isn't reliable; or Wilson didn't write the book, and anything ascribed to him in it isn't reliable. --jpgordon::==( o ) 17:36, 9 October 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Doesn't really sound like an WP:RS. Martinevans123 (talk) 17:38, 9 October 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Which means the section can be boiled down to "According to an unreliable source A, X is true. Reliable sources C and D quote unreliable source A." When we know a reliable source is itself citing an unreliable source, unless that citation is in itself remarkable, we shouldn't use the misinformation. --jpgordon::==( o ) 17:48, 9 October 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: It's more like, "According to somewhat-unreliable source A, X is true. Reliable source C restates source A and evaluates the significance and reliability of X."--Ilovetopaint (talk) 18:13, 9 October 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Or, "we've picked out a tiny factoid quoted by the author of source C, who's not sure if it's one of the reliable bits in source A, which most people, including the subject of the work himself, think is mostly pants." Martinevans123 (talk) 18:19, 9 October 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: It's not that tiny if it's corroborated by two sources not including the Wilson bio. If nothing else then at least  Dillon's comparison with the Lovin Spoonful song deserves to be acknowledged along with Asher's feelings.--134.241.39.254 (talk) 20:52, 9 October 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd give the opinion of Dillon more credence. If the disowned autobiography has to stay I think it should go in a footnote. But I don't see that Dillon is enough to give it credibility, even if it was the starting point for his own claim. I'm not sure that list of song-facts in Newsday is a very strong source. I suspect it's just copying what Dillon claimed in his book. Martinevans123 (talk) 21:15, 9 October 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: And it's classic weasel wording: "it has been suggested that". Suggested by whom? Some random fan? Someone close to the Beach Boys? This would be a lot more usable if Dillon had actually made the assertion in its own right, but he neither ascribes it nor asserts it - just says some unnamed being suggested it. So we've got a reliable source quoting an unreliable source's assertion but being unwilling to commit to the assertion himself. I just don't see how we can use this; why spread misinformation? --jpgordon::==( o ) 01:48, 10 October 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: I've since rephrased the wording per the footnote suggestion.--Ilovetopaint (talk) 08:30, 10 October 2014 (UTC)

text: There is a great deal of uncertainty surrounding his contributions to its writing. A certain portion of its contents genuinely came from him, but nobody knows which portions exactly. It's generally considered that all of the contents concerning his thoughts on family and court-related liaisons are crap. In the book  Inside the Music of Brian Wilson, Philip Lambert acknowledged that the memoir may hold some credibility in sections where Wilson talks about the intricacies of his music, and states that the whole book should not be immediately disregarded.--Ilovetopaint (talk) 17:45, 9 October 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: OK, but then we need a reliable source to pick and choose what's crap and what isn't from that book. We can't do so; that would be OR. --jpgordon::==( o ) 17:50, 9 October 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: The Mark Dillon source fulfills this requirement. He is aware of the book's reputation but posits that the factoid may have significance.--Ilovetopaint (talk) 17:55, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

text: I'd suggest that a second-hand appraisal that bits of a book "may hold some credibility" is not really sufficient to make it useful as a source in an encyclopedia. Martinevans123 (talk) 17:52, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

text: I've removed it completely. It has little to do with "musical structure", and this unfounded piece of pseudo-information certainly shouldn't be at the beginning of the section. At most, it belongs in a footnote when discussing the melody -- perhaps just a footnote to the brief mention of the melody in the musical structure section. If some consensus develops for its inclusion it can be replaced, but at the moment the clear consensus is against it. --jpgordon::==( o ) 15:04, 11 October 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Harsh dismissal. You and Jp5472 (who is absent from this talk page) are for removing the material altogether while I heeded Martinevans123's suggestion to simply regulate it to a footnote. The reliable source is nothing more than a comparison to the song, which shares the same key and A-G#-F# hook as "God Only Knows" (this is my observation, it is not written in the sources). I don't care exactly how the information is presented in the article, but I don't believe ignoring its existence is the best thing when a connection between the two songs has been established by more than one source, and that readers generally aren't aware whether the connection has merit. I'll probably bring back the text, this time with the whole thing under a footnote right after the first paragraph of "musical structure", but if you still disagree, I won't bother, and I'll just wait for others to weigh in.--Ilovetopaint (talk) 17:12, 11 October 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: The disagreement is as to the quality of the source, and it's exactly as poor as when we started discussing this problem. When a reliable source has to lean on an anonymous "it has been suggested", when the composer has disavowed another source, and when the lyricist (who worked rather intimately with the composer) expresses ignorance of such a connection, it's undue weight to mention it as anything other than an unverified, unverifiable rumor. (Unless Wilson cares to discuss it again someday.) --jpgordon::==( o ) 18:18, 11 October 2014 (UTC)

text: Yes, it's a shame the source is so weak, because most people would, I think, agree with the similarity between the songs. But the clincher for me is what Brian Wilson has or has not to say about it. If only he could have "saved" the bits he believed in that book. I'd still be tempted to include it in a footnote somehow. Martinevans123 (talk) 19:22, 11 October 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Like, I suspect, all of us in this discussion, I know both songs intimately, having listened to them repeatedly (and in my case, having played them as well) perhaps hundreds of times. I can vaguely see a connection to the vocal layering in the Spoonful song, but then, many (most?) Beach Boys songs involved vocal layering of varying degrees of complexity and sophistication -- as did many (most?) Spoonful songs; harmonic depth is one of the hallmarks of both bands. One could likely look at some Spoonful songs and find some good comparison with earlier Beach Boys songs. Melodically, I think you have to dig pretty hard to relate the two songs; the Spoonful song is pretty conventional, though perhaps I'm missing the parts in the two songs that Ilovetopaint says is so similar. I think it's a bit more similar to The Rite of Spring. But all of this is just my personal opinion and analysis, of no particular value except for conversation, and of no value at all to the article -- the very definition of Original Research. As it stands, it's an interesting but very poorly documented tidbit, and as a result not a particularly useful trivia. --jpgordon::==( o ) 22:21, 11 October 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: I tend to agree with you, --jpgordon. Martinevans123 (talk) 11:43, 12 October 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lovin' Spoonful inspiration 

message: Added progressive rock with reference http://rateyourmusic.com/release/comp/various_artists_f2/the_best_prog_rock_album_in_the_world____ever_/  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.40.106.125 (talk) 08:47, 9 March 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Genre 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: The title is an expression, no more. You guys gotta chill and remember this is Wikipedia. Cheers.00:07, 18 May 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Come again? --Ilovetopaint (talk) 00:21, 18 May 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: Graf 2

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thread_title:  A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion