Talk:True (Spandau Ballet song)/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Daniel Case (talk · contribs) 03:48, 19 September 2022 (UTC)

I will be printing out a copy to copy edit and review. First, my wife, who was a big Spandau Ballet fan back in the day and has also read all three of the band members' memoirs cited as sources (and we still have them to check), will at my request give it a look over to see what she thinks about how comprehensive and accurate it is. I will also do my usual printout and copyedit and then get back to you. Since I am in the middle of another big article revamp this may take a little time ... hopefully we'll be moving on this within a couple of weeks. Daniel Case (talk) 03:48, 19 September 2022 (UTC)

OK, after a week, I can get back to you with my wife's notes (not many):

• Nothing stands out to her as inconsistent with the Kemp/Kemp/Hadley memoirs.

• She thinks it might be pertinent to note in the background section that Hadley makes no bones in his memoirs about being dissatisfied with Diamond (no big surprise when you read the article about how he was not getting along with the producer) and that having some effect on the band's shift in direction.

• She also recommends looking into this YouTube Professor of Rock episode about the song, featuring an interview with Hadley (I think his presence in it would make it a reliable source). It would be interesting to read about how he says that one of the biggest challenges in singing this song now and then is that octave jump at the end of "Oh I want the truth to be said!"

OK ... now I will be able to do the copy edit and get back to you in another week or so. Or less. Daniel Case (talk) 06:11, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

Thanks so much to you and your wife for taking this on. Back in August I posted most of what you'll be reviewing, and I appreciate hearing what she had to say.

Regarding Hadley affecting the shift in direction, does she have a specific passage where he talks about an interest in changing the style of music they record? Spandau Ballet has become a sort of project for me. I rewrote or created the song and album pages for everything released before 1983, so I've been through Hadley's autobiography and made a list of pages to use for each song and album. I'm looking at pages 100-103 in the Web Archive edition where he really seems to be blaming Richard James Burgess for what happened with Diamond. Once Trevor Horn comes on to remix "Instinction", he seems very happy, and he seemed happy with Swain and Jolley. If there's something to quote or paraphrase, that'd be great. I don't know of anything where he says he wants to change their style of music, though.

@Danaphile: OK. After I mentioned your responses yesterday, my wife came back within a few minutes and dropped her paperback copy of To Cut A Long Story Short in front of me.

I looked through the relevant chapters and, while he doesn't say that part of the problem explicitly, I think it's implied by two things he does say:

• At the beginning of his recollections of the Diamond sessions, he says, among other things, "Right from the beginning I was unhappy with the album. I hated half the tracks ... It felt as if we had lost all sense of direction (emphasis mine) (p.93). A little further on, he says "From the outset, Diamond felt like a disjointed affair. It was as if we couldn't find our rhythm" (p.94)
• Later on he writes about specifically recording "True" in the Bahamas: "It felt as if we were changing direction. A big, soulful ballad was something new for us" (again, emphasis mine) (p.109) Daniel Case (talk) 18:04, 28 September 2022 (UTC)

I added the line from the interview where he says, "I don't do that big note at the end now. I just play it down." I don't know if it was a challenge for him in 1982 with his particular singing style, so I thought I better just quote him directly.

Thanks again for the time spent with this. I look forward to your copy editing list. Danaphile (talk) 21:18, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

Actually, what I do is the copyedit itself ... I have always felt that no GAN should fail over that, and when I do it it eliminates the need for you to do a lot of tedious edits and focus on any more substantive issues (of which, so far, I am glad to say there aren't many). Daniel Case (talk) 18:04, 28 September 2022 (UTC)

Regarding the first of your two bulleted examples, I guess I would differentiate between someone saying that they wanted to change the direction of the music and someone simply pointing out that the direction of the music is unclear. The second example takes place after they've started on the new album. Having spent the past year immersed in this material, I've grown accustomed to Gary having control of the style of music because he's writing the songs.

Yeah, I realized that after I typed it ... it's more like he thought they didn't have any direction on Diamond than that he didn't like the direction they were taking.

Of course, Gary having control of the music ... how well did that work out long term?

I have finished going through the hard copy and next week I hope to be diving in ... it will be a welcome break now that I'm beginning to see light at the end of the tunnel I've made for myself with The Exorcist this last month ... Daniel Case (talk) 20:38, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for taking on the copyediting. I've taken a break from my final copy of the "Gold" song page so that I can look at it later with fresh eyes and started working on the True album page. The extra time you're giving me will be well spent. Danaphile (talk) 23:14, 28 September 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for all of your work on this. There's a citation needed note on the music video sentence about Martin being replaced on the synth bass, which is discussed in the first paragraph of the recording section. I take it that the citation needs to be repeated and that we don't expect the reader to remember when this was first mentioned. Is that correct? Danaphile (talk) 10:50, 24 October 2022 (UTC)

Yes. Sorry I haven't gotten done with this completely yet ... I am working the polls during early voting here in New York, and that's taking a lot of my time. After next Tuesday I'll have the chance to come back with a full report. Daniel Case (talk) 02:58, 5 November 2022 (UTC)

Post-copy edit report

OK. I am recovered enough from nearly two weeks of working at the polls to go into some more depth following the copy edit.

I don't use one of those rubrics when I review a GA; I prefer this way I'm about to do it.

First, the article's strengths:

• It is comprehensive and leaves no questions unanswered in its account of the song's creation and evolution into its place in the band's history. (As for that editor who recently tagged it as overly detailed, not only do I disagree, I think I will remove it because they edit minimally and don't seem to have a history of responding to requests to explain such tags, much less communicate with other editors)

• It is reliably and thoroughly sourced. I wish for your sake there were some better way of indicating the reuse of a source but with a different quote than the method I've come up with (and applied here) of using {{efn}} each time. But until there is, this will have to do; in any event consolidating the duplicated notes shaved about 10K off the article.

• It is about as well-illustrated as it could be given the material.

OK, now to what improvements can be made and some things we could clear up:

• I defer to you on the words linked to Wiktionary articles if you think they're necessary, but at the same time they seem to be very common words, and MOS:INTERWIKI says this is "generally discouraged" unless the word is "unusual".

I removed them. Danaphile (talk) 01:05, 13 November 2022 (UTC)

• The intro should probably be rewritten to reflect the expanded article. As is it reflects a time when it still largely was the article; now that there's plenty of detail in the body text it can state some things much more broadly and generally. I'd be happy to do that myself if you're OK with it; I have plenty of experience doing this with recently expanded articles.

I'm fine with you rewriting it. Thanks.

• You can get rid of that sentence in "background and writing" about how "decades later he was still getting questioned about the meaning ..." because not only is that redundant to the article's later discussion of that, you're getting ahead of yourself and that sudden brief flashforward is confusing at a point in the article that doesn't need it. This is not the only instance where the article needs to be less fragmented.

I removed this sentence.Danaphile (talk) 01:05, 13 November 2022 (UTC)

• The article is about a song by a British band. It thus needs to be consistent in its use of British English. The main text is, but the cutline under the picture of Tony Hadley describes him as initially "skeptical" of the song's potential to be a hit. Shouldn't that be spelled "sceptical"? Or is the American spelling becoming more common in the UK?

I Googled the two spellings and found that it's about 50/50 in the UK and leans toward "skeptical" everywhere else, so I left it. Danaphile (talk) 01:05, 13 November 2022 (UTC)

OK. Daniel Case (talk) 23:16, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

• The "Cover art" section should really IMO come before the release section since it was conceived and created beforehand.

I moved this. Danaphile (talk) 01:05, 13 November 2022 (UTC)

• Sean Daly's "worst song of all time" remark seems to have been made in 2016, about 33 years after "True" was released. For that reason it belongs in the legacy section ... or maybe even out of the article altogether; his newspaper doesn't exactly strike me as having been particularly influential in the music world then, much less now, and you've already got plenty of evidence that some people still hate the song there.

I decided to just move this for now. I removed the "juggernaut power ballad" quote back in June and got reverted, so I'm a little hesitant to ruffle any feathers. I'm not tied to it by any means, however, so let me know if you would feel it would make a difference in the quality of the article if it was removed. Danaphile (talk) 01:05, 13 November 2022 (UTC)

• "Aftermath" needs to go before "Legacy", as the events described in it precede those in that section, creating another jarring time jump for the reader (save for the last paragraph, which might really be better off as an endnote to the account in the background section of how Grogan inspired the song. I also think it needs a better, more specific title ... maybe "effect on band's future"?

So, the Grogan follow-up story would be entered into Background but only be found by the reader in the Notes section--is that right? Also, I used the more generic title for the section just based on what I see in other articles. I'm OK with you changing it if you prefer something else.

Yes, exactly. Daniel Case (talk) 05:02, 12 November 2022 (UTC)

I switched the two sections and made the Grogan coda into a note in Background. Danaphile (talk) 22:45, 13 November 2022 (UTC)

• Both there and in the legacy section, the inline lists of which countries "True" charted in would probably be better off at least in another endnote, especially seeing as the information is repeated in a much more readable format in the "Charts" section (and for that reason you might even want to consider mentioning only those countries where it went to number one).

I'm not sure if we're looking at the same thing. The country list in aftermath is for "Gold", and the one in legacy is for "Set Adrift". Are these OK?

Either way, I think a list in the prose is sort of crufty; it would be easier just to mention inline the countries where it topped the chart and put the other countries and their chart positions, with the sources, in an endnote. Daniel Case (talk) 23:16, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

I've moved the inline lists of countries into endnotes. Danaphile (talk) 20:59, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

• I think you could justify a section, or at least a graf, on the song's many appearances in film and TV since its release. Even that year, it's memorably used diegetically in the dance scene in Sixteen Candles (I think Hughes made the extra effort to get it since he wanted something that would plausibly have been played at a school dance like that one). In just the last couple of months, my wife and I streamed Ashes to Ashes, which uses it for a slow dance between Alex and Gene in the penultimate episode (set when the song would just have been released, actually) and Hot Tub Time Machine. Since one of the references mentions it as among "songs most overplayed in movies", I think we should and could go into more detail on that.

Many song articles are in violation of WP:SONGTRIVIA. That's why I didn't go beyond mentioning the Billboard article. It says the song "will forever be linked to the school dance scene" in SC. That doesn't seem like anything more than a fancy way of saying that it's in the movie, so I didn't think it would pass the test.

Ahh ... I didn't realize WP:SONGS had promulgated these guidelines; of course they make sense.

But within that, I have found enough reliable sources to support the Sixteen Candles scene as notable in itself:

• The Los Angeles Times: "Though not represented on the soundtrack album, the music in 'Sixteen Candles' captured a range of teenage emotions ... Totally crazy this-is-the-end-of-the-world heartache? Spandau Ballet's 'True.'"
• Washington City Paper: "In 1984, a 40-second clip in a John Hughes film made Spandau Ballet's imprint on popular culture permanent. The British new-wave band's most famous tune, 'True,' achieved broad popularity in 1983, but once it soundtracked Molly Ringwald's teen angst during Sixteen Candles' dance scene, it adopted new significance, especially among suburban teens. That assist forever linked singer Tony Hadley's earnest, lounge-singer vocals and funereal attire to a specific era ..."
• LA Weekly: "The business-suit-wearing Spandau Ballet released 'True,' with its swooning Al Green-tinged falsetto in 1983. The song was immediately a hit, especially on urban radio stations. But when it was used as the backdrop for the school dance scene in Sixteen Candles, it crossed over into the permanent teenage scrapbook: The moment where Samantha goggles at Jake, mesmerized as 'Ha-ha-ha, ha-ah-hi' floats over a funky guitar riff that sounds like sex in the '80s. It's a quickie—the whole moment lasts less than a minute—but that song with that look was what landed Molly Ringwald the cover of Time. (And in the '80s, that still meant something.)"

  More later. Daniel Case (talk) 23:16, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

I added the three article mentions above. Danaphile (talk) 01:27, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

Also ... I found enough to support its use (and essentially a cover) in the Modern Family episode "Great Expectations", as Screenrant (which we consider an RS for this sort of thing) did a whole piece about it (hey, it's not every song that gets Ed Norton to do a guest shot on a TV series, and certainly since his character is supposedly Spandau Ballet's bassist here ...) Daniel Case (talk) 02:30, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

I added this. Your post coincided with the episode's original air date: November 18, 2009. Danaphile (talk) 01:27, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

Wow ... didn't even think of that. Good catch! Daniel Case (talk) 02:35, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

• In "Legacy", I think we also want to include what Hadley and Professor Rock discuss immediately after the bit quoted: that it seems to the latter that the Backstreet Boys' "I Want It That Way" lifts that piano lick at the end of "True"'s sax solo for the melody line of its chorus. Indeed, it's alluded to in the very title of the video ...

When I added this to Legacy, I also inserted "Professor of Rock" between the words 2017 and interview in the Recording section where it's first mentioned so that I wasn't presenting this new insertion as if it was the only time the interview was sourced, but I gave it a citation with its own time stamp. Danaphile (talk) 22:45, 13 November 2022 (UTC)

• Lastly, I am very surprised that this is one of rare articles we have about a well-known popular song that doesn't have a section devoted to cover versions of the song. And since, again, in that Professor Rock video we can see a snippet of Paul Anka's swing-styled version, and he and Tony even discuss it briefly, with Tony saying that he sometimes does it that way in shows (it's a very interesting take on the vocal), we absolutely must have this section.

  There's a good list of covers (at least from this century) here that includes Anka's. I don't know if that page counts as an RS, but it certainly wouldn't be the only source this information is available. We would only have to limit (ahem) coverage in that section to covers by notable artists, i.e. those we have articles on: Thomas Anders (on Songs Forever), Joanna Wang (on Start from Here), The Soldiers (on Letters Home) and David Campbell (on Let's Go. Many of those have links back here already; there's no reason not to reciprocate.

  Also, two other covers tie into the use of the song in movies: Will.i.am and Fergie in 50 First Dates and Cary Brothers in Sky High.

Many, many song articles are in violation of WP:SONGCOVER. Looking at the history of the article, I see several editors had removed cover versions that didn't meet the criteria set forth there before I started working on it.

OK. That said, I think that since Hadley tells Professor Rock that Anka's version has sometimes led him to sing it the same way, it is probably worth a mention. (Shame that Joanna Wang's version hasn't gotten enough notice to be notable ... it's about the only version sung by a woman, and it's interesting for itself for its spare jazzy arrangement that sometimes sounds like Steely Dan, and being the only cover that also incorporates the sax solo. Worth a listen). Daniel Case (talk) 02:43, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

I decided to research reviews of the Anka album and added comments from some of those along with Hadley's response. That inspired me to look around for reviews of the others you mentioned, and I added the ones I found. Danaphile (talk) 20:59, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

OK, that's what I have now as it's getting late where I am. Tomorrow I'll add a list of suggestions that might, IMO, in the future, make the article even better, especially if you're considering an FA nom down the line. Daniel Case (talk) 06:51, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

Actually, I'll save that for after we wrap this review up. Daniel Case (talk) 19:04, 11 November 2022 (UTC)

Many thanks for all of your work on this. I have indented comments and questions on some of your bulleted items above and will get started on the others. There's a "citation needed" note on the music video sentence about Martin being replaced on the synth bass, which is discussed in the first paragraph of the recording section. I take it that the citation needs to be repeated and that we don't expect the reader to remember when this was first mentioned. Is that correct? Danaphile (talk) 21:27, 11 November 2022 (UTC)

Yes. Basically, any time you end a paragraph without a citation it just ... it looks bad. Daniel Case (talk) 05:04, 12 November 2022 (UTC)

Thanks. That's a good rule of thumb to keep in mind. I added one there. Danaphile (talk) 17:57, 12 November 2022 (UTC)

I look forward to your additional comments. Danaphile (talk) 22:45, 13 November 2022 (UTC)

Promotion and post-promotion comments

OK ... I got back to this article again finally, and, finding everything I had mentioned above addressed, took it upon myself to rewrite the intro so that it now covers the entire article very broadly, which was easier a task than I had dreaded.

Thanks so much for all of your work on this! Back when you did some copy editing to the intro, I meant to ask about my phrase "they were more impressed by 'Lifeline' and 'Communication', the former of which became the first song recorded and released as a single from the album". On October 5 you changed it after the song titles to read, "ultimately the first song recorded and released as a single from the album". Is that because "Lifeline" was initially recorded and released as a single before they started working on the rest of the album? It now reads, "'Communication', its first single". Maybe our views of what qualifies as first are different. Danaphile (talk) 22:48, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

So, the article is a ✓ Pass. I have made the appropriate edits; the bot will put the icon in the article text at some point soon if it hasn't already.

At this point it is now eligible to be nominated for DYK, since it is a GA and never ran on DYK before. I do a lot of DYK nominations; would you like me to do it? (In the Songs project, I did that for "Sex and Candy" after promoting it). I can see a lot of interesting hook material—Grogan, the Backstreet Boys, Paul Anka, among others. We have a week to get the nom up; this shouldn't be a problem and I will credit you, of course. Let me know so I can review another nom for QPQ. Daniel Case (talk) 06:13, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

Yes, that'd be great. Thanks. Danaphile (talk) 22:48, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

Now, as for what additional things the article could cover if we are thinking of nominating it for FA down the line:

• I'd love to know what Grogan thinks about having inspired this song. Has she ever spoken about it since Kemp revealed it was about her? I'm sure you probably researched that, and if you had found anything you would have included it, but ... doesn't hurt to look deeper.

• My wife has a similar collection of books by members of Duran Duran. It's been a while since I read them, but I do remember at least one of them John Taylor, I think) talking about the Spandau rivalry. We should see if they have anything to say about "True" given the anecdote in the article where D-Squared leaves them a nice note about how good the song is.

• The article has a brief mention of how the record company in the U.S. wanted to promote the song on urban contemporary radio, since they felt that audience would be receptive to it, but at the same time wanted to downplay the band being white. I'm thinking of researching and writing a short endnote there about how this also happened with the Average White Band when "Pick up the Pieces" came out (black stations just balked at playing a, well, white band that sounded so black, and only relented when listeners more or less forced their hand) and Kenny G (they put his picture, wearing a hat and sunglasses, in black-and-white negative, on one of his first albums so it wasn't so obvious that he was white). It's interesting that it seems to have come into play here, especially as the song openly shouts out Marvin Gaye just a year or so before his death.

• In the course of looking for material on the song's use in movies/TV and cover versions, I found some interesting academic analyses, like this one about how "True" is sort of deliberately uncool by the standards of the era, yet uses that to seem cool. We could have something about that.

• It was apparently also central to Hadley v Kemp, the lawsuit the other three members besides Martin brought against him around 2000 or so, unsuccessfully seeking to be awarded cowriter credit on "True" and some other SB songs, or at least to have Gary honor an oral agreement he had made at one point to divvy royalties up with them. The sax solo was a key part of Norman's argument, since it takes up about 10 percent of the song.

  Ultimately the court disagreed that he had added anything significant to the song, since his phrases didn't really depart from the song musically; the solo was a matter of performance rather than authorship. There has been considerable debate about the wisdom of that decision, quite a lot of which is in papers online like this. I think this, too, merits a section or subsection.

I will be adding the article to my watchlist and seeing what I can do to make these additions. I will leave you for now with some personal observations that have nothing, really, to do with the article's quality, but just crossed my mind as I was reading it a couple of months ago:

• I love the part where they all think it's a number one after hearing the playback. Cue The Troggs Tapes: "It's a fuckin' number one, man, as soon as you sprinkle your pixie dust on it ..."

• The part where the article talks about how the change of image in the video probably hurt their future potential in the US market reminds me of how one guy on our wrestling team at the time suggested we should play "True" to mock the visiting team as it came out to the mat at our home dual meets (Usually at the time, as the home team, you came out to hard rock ... we used "Fantasy" by Aldo Nova since our team captain liked it, and one of the schools we wrestled came out to Van Halen's "Unchained". You get the idea ...) This guy further said that if we did that, he'd make a point of looking at one of the other wrestlers and, once he had gotten their attention, winking and making a kiss.

  Obviously we can't put that in the article, but I think it very well illustrates why Spandau Ballet is largely remembered over here for just this song ...

Once again, you have done extraordinary work on this article bringing it to this status. I am looking forward to seeing your work on other Spandau Ballet song articles ... my wife especially to "Gold", because for her that's a better song. Happy editing! Daniel Case (talk) 07:16, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

Thanks again! Right now I'm working on the True album. I posted my work on "Gold" a bit ago, but I'll be going back to tidy up citations now that I've picked up some better options for those. Danaphile (talk) 22:48, 23 November 2022 (UTC)