Talk:Dark Horse (George Harrison album)

Article reads like a fan trying very hard to justify an album that was poorly received and lacks objectivity; this article belongs among the worst of what Wikipedia has to offer—bias, personally and ideologically motivated, and poorly written.

“Cultural historian Michael Frontani [chastised the criticism of the album and tour]” you mean a random associate professor at a nameless university with no credittrials as a historian being that he isn’t a history professor but a communications professor!

This article is awful. Clearly written by a beatle fan that feels personally spited and offended that his idol George had a poorly received album. Very poorly written. Bias. Etc. 2600:1012:B159:E092:4183:2664:79B:61D2 (talk) 23:42, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

Hi there. Funny you mention it, one of the only serious historians to have actually written about the Beatles, Erin Torkelson Weber – who wrote a fantastic and incredibly readable book on the band's historiography in 2016 (The Beatles and the Historians, McFarland & Company) – has a lot of good things to say about Michael Frontani. She seems particularly fond of his essay "The Solo Years", the one cited on this article and which appears in the Cambridge Companion to the Beatles (Cambridge University Press, 2009). She has sometimes highlighted it as one of the best contributions to the essay collection, as mentioned on several podcast interviews, but here's an easily findable mention in a comment on her blog.

Could you specify anywhere else here you find bias or weak sourcing? I have to say, I think the pages on George's solo material are some of the best Wikipedia has to offer, providing a gold standard for other music-related pages. With that in mind, I'd like to see a little more substance to your complaints. Tkbrett (✉) 00:17, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

I agree. First off, it's incredibly insulting to the editor who did write it, who is a great writer, and who I have lots of respect for. It seems to me like you're reading it the wrong way. When George left the Beatles, he started off on a high note, so when he reached what most at the time considered a low point just four years later of course it was surprising. If I was alive at that time I probably would have felt the same way. Also, "Clearly written by a beatle fan": I mean who else do you expect to write an article like this? Imo JG66 worked really hard to present insight as to why Dark Horse turned out as "bad" as it did. As editors, we have to be entirely neutral, and I think he did a damn good job of doing that for both this article and Extra Texture. On a final note, you clearly haven't read that many articles on WP if you think this is one of the worst. – zmbro _(talk) 17:32, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Saw this opening post at the time, decided to let it slide (bewildered). Thanks to Tkbrett and particularly zmbro for their input and words of support.

To the IP who started the thread: if you've got a genuine complaint about the standard of writing in the article and especially a perceived lack of objectivity, then fix the issue or list the problems here for discussion. As for me, as the article writer, I'm quite capable of keeping the music fan in me separate from the actual contributions I make to a page. I'm a fan of the story behind these albums – that's what explains my participation on Wikipedia. (Otherwise, I imagine I could find countless pages on YouTube and elsewhere to post any supposed fan-related grievances.) In fact, I'm equally adept at seeing music journalism – from the 1970s or the present day – for what it is, so to read "Clearly written by a beatle fan that feels personally spited and offended that his idol George had a poorly received album" is just ridiculous.

The pertinent issue here is whether Michael Frontani's personal opinion is notable and worthy of inclusion. From having a multitude of sources about the Beatles' solo careers in the 1970s, I'd say Frontani's mostly right – that is, factually correct – in his Cambridge Companion essay (but not always), although I could accept an argument that his opinion might not merit inclusion. The idea that Harrison was unfairly treated and that there was an element of vindictiveness in Rolling Stone's coverage certainly does, because several sources recognise this. One being the Joe Hagan biography of Jann Wenner, Sticky Fingers, where the in-house rewriting of a mostly favourable Harrison tour article is cited as an example of Wenner's treatment of musician "friends". JG66 (talk) 22:45, 31 January 2022 (UTC)