Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Solitude (Black Sabbath song)

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep‎. (non-admin closure) Toadette^Edit! 13:05, 26 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Solitude (Black Sabbath song)[edit]

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Non-notable song, fails WP:NSONG. Supplied sources include rateyourmusic which fails WP:USERG and is not allowed per WP:ALBUMAVOID. Another source is genius.com which is only considered marginally reliable per Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Perennial sources, and cannot be used to establish notability. Two of the three genius.com sources are used to mention cover songs, neither of which passes the difficult requirements of WP:SONGCOVER. The Rolling Stone source is only saying that the song's album is notable, which is correct, but that fact does not make the song notable. Rolling Stone only mentions the song in the context of the album. The song page should be redirected to the album page: Master of Reality. Binksternet (talk) 23:46, 18 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I see that another unreliable source has been added: secondhandsongs.com which also violates WP:USERG because anyone can log in and change the information. Binksternet (talk) 15:53, 19 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Albums and songs and Music. Binksternet (talk) 23:46, 18 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
rateyourmusic has been removed. Aditional sources on the covers have been added on top of genius.com. Another source supporting the songs noteworthiness has been added from Loudwire. How about instead of trying to deleted the article, we all try to fix it. It's a B-side of a single, there's evidence supporting that on the article, and so is Fairies Wear Boots which is allowed to have an article, what makes this song any different? Diskyboy (talk) 01:36, 19 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Redirect to Master of Reality per nomination. QuietHere (talk | contributions) 23:50, 18 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Ah yes, because less information is better! This article has also been majorly improved as listed in the reply above. Diskyboy (talk) 01:37, 19 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You don't need to reply every single comment disagreeing with you, particularly if you do it in a sarcastic and obnoxious way. @Diskyboy Me Da Wikipedian (talk) 20:53, 19 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Redirect to the album per the reasons listed on the nomination Claire 26 (talk) 01:35, 19 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Ah yes, because less information is better! This article has also been majorly improved as listed in the reply above. Diskyboy (talk) 01:37, 19 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Redirect to the album per nomination. Not enough reliable sources for it to be a standalone article. HarukaAmaranth ^春 _香 02:58, 20 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Redirect to Master of Reality per reasons stated in the nomination. Changed my vote to Keep for reasons stated by Jfire below. Turtletennisfogwheat (talk) 13:34, 21 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Keep per significant coverage in the following reliable sources:

Stolz, Nolan (2017-11-08). Experiencing Black Sabbath: A Listener's Companion. Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 31–32. ISBN 978-1-4422-5692-7. "Solitude" is a soft song that provides contrast, for it is placed between "Lord of This World" and "Into the Void" on the album. Geezer lightly drives the song while Tony provides light strumming on the guitar. Bill adds some very light finger cymbal work that is colored by a delay effect. Tony also plays flute on this track, an instrument he started to play after his time working in Jethro Tull. Although he had only been playing flute for a couple of years at most by this point, he sounds quite competent here, better than "amateurish" as he described it.' When the flute takes the melody at 4:00, its first phrase is like the first phrase in his guitar solo, a bit of cross-instrument self-quotation. The third and fourth phrases of the flute melody (4:24 and 4:34) are like Ozzy's vocal melodies. Starting at 1:40, there is an uncredited piano part. It sounds as if it's in reverse, but when played backward it's still not clear. Thus, it's probably not reversed but has reverse reverb, the same effect they used on the vocals for "Megalomania" on Sabotage four years later. Tony said he had not played piano before 1972, so it was likely engineer Tom Allom who played it. Tom, not credited at all on the album, has since taken credit for engineering duties on Master of Reality. Tom played piano on "Planet Caravan," and the parts are quite similar. Ozzy's voice is almost unrecognizable, as the timbre of his voice on this song is so different than how he usually sounds. His melodic apex comes at 3:04 and 3:28 ("the world is a lonely place" and "crying and thinking") when he alters the melody to go higher, yet he refrains from singing loudly.
Tony Iommi (2011). Iron man. Da Capo Press. p. 94. ISBN 978-0-306-81955-1. (This source is non-independent but has useful opinion from a band member.) We just weren't afraid to do something unexpected. Like 'Solitude', maybe the first love song we ever recorded. Ozzy had a delay on his voice, and he sang that quite nice. He has a really good voice for ballads. I'm playing the flute on that song as well. I tried all sorts of things in the course of doing albums, even though I couldn't play them, and after being with Jethro Tull for that short stint, I thought I might try the flute. I did it only to a very amateurish extent, I must admit. But I've still got that flute.
Darnielle, John (2008). Master of reality. New York : Continuum. pp. 77–79. ISBN 978-0-8264-2899-8. The tape was cued up to "Solitude," which is the song that people used to argue about for a lot of reasons. #1 was because the singer on it does not sound like Ozzy Osbourne. People said it was the drummer, Bill Ward, but I could never believe it. I guess I don't really know how records get made, but I've heard most of the Black Sabbath albums, and I think if Bill Ward could sing, he'd be on more than this one song. But again, it certainly doesn't sound like Ozzy, though. Here's the thing though: it also doesn't sound like Black Sabbath. It sounds like a folk song or a soundtrack to some Merlin story. It's only got two chords; there's a flute playing all through it. It's never really seemed to fit on the album for me, because it doesn't even sound like Black Sabbath at all, but that's exactly what makes it seem like it might be really important. You can tell yourself all sorts of stories about this song and all of them could be true...
Wilkinson, Paul (2007). Rat salad : Black Sabbath, the classic years 1969-1975. London : Pimlico. pp. 115–117. ISBN 978-1-84413-925-5. There are several striking points to be made about 'Solitude': that the song swings along in a most uncharacteristic 6/8 time is just the least of them. Although Sabbath had by this time explored time changes to a limited degree, the introduction to 'Behind The Wall Of Sleep* aside, they had thus far limited themselves to 4/4 or 8/8 arrangements. The fast waltz of 'Solitude' was thus quite a departure for them - particularly as they were enjoying the accolade of being the heaviest band in the world. lommi's blues-tinged soloing, which crops up periodically throughout the piece, is clearly a throwback to his pre-Sabbath influences, and it provides the perfect moody accompaniment to Osbourne's plaintive, echo-laden, chorus-inflected vocal.
McIver, Joel (2014). Sabbath bloody Sabbath. London Omnibus Press. ISBN 978-1-78305-517-3. A slippery bass melody finishes the song, before Geezer crops up again atop the mellow intro of 'Solitude'. Once again lommi steps off the gas, allowing a distant landscape of echoes to build up behind Ozzy's keening vocals - perhaps his best ever up to this point - and an unexpected flute that drones in the background. The vibe is very much of a Doors-like ethereal ambience, focused on the lyrics of rejection and loneliness ("T've not stopped crying since you went away") and a valuable breathing space in this intense album. The flute provides an almost jazzy interlude before the song spirals to a close.

As the subject of multiple, non-trivial published works whose sources are independent of the artist and label, "Solitude" meets WP:NSONG and WP:GNG. Jfire (talk) 22:17, 21 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In that case, I change my vote to Keep now that you pointed out the sources go beyond trivial mentions and actually analyzes or goes into detail about the song. Turtletennisfogwheat (talk) 23:26, 24 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see these sources talking about the song independently of the album. Everything here can be summarized at the album article. Binksternet (talk) 01:15, 25 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Are you referring to WP:NSONG coverage of a song in the context of an album review does not establish notability? But these sources are not album reviews, they are histories of the band and detailed critical interpretation of individual songs. Of course the sources mention which song the album is from, and compare and contrast it with other tracks on the album. That's normal for critical interpretation of artistic works. A book review might make comparisons to the author's other works. A review of a TV episode may discuss its relation to prior or subsequent episodes or the series as a whole. None of these things mean that the coverage is ineligible for WP:GNG. The guideline even says that the subject with significant coverage does not need to be the main topic of the source material. Here we have multiple sources talking at length about the characteristics of this song. Wilkinson (2007) spends two full pages on this song specifically. Not the album, not other songs, "Solitude". It's a clear a WP:NSONG pass as I've ever seen. Jfire (talk) 02:01, 25 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Keep per Jfire. Passes GNG. Carrite (talk) 10:16, 25 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Keep or redirect Sources shown above meet GNG but I have a slight preference for redirect to the album because the sources discuss the song in the context of the album. Ben Azura (talk) 23:32, 25 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.