Talk:Brian Wilson is a genius/GA1

GA Review
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Reviewer: Brandt Luke Zorn (talk · contribs) 23:07, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

Just a few comments and recommendations beyond the scope of the GA criteria:


 * While you do a great job of carefully constructing this article from attributed sources, sometimes the thesis of a section gets lost. You could tighten the thread a little bit by adding a few summary-style sentences at the beginning of some of the sections. I'm thinking of "'Genius' as hyperbole" and "Wilson as a victimized 'tragic' genius". These ideas are closely related, so it may not be obvious why some of the comments are boxed into one section and not the other without some hand-holding summarization of the main idea. I would start each of those sections with a big-picture summarization of its main idea, the idea that the writers are either expressing or reacting to.


 * While I think the layout is GA-ready, I have a recommendation about how some of the sections are grouped. I feel that the introduction to Derek Taylor, a critical character in the scope of this article, could be missed by a casual reader because it occurs mid-paragraph. I think one way to cure this would be to regroup the background section so that it encompasses two main ideas: 1) the discursive context of the word "genius" in rock criticism, as it applies to the Beach Boys and in general, and 2) a quick summary of pre-Pet Sounds Beach Boys history. These could be divided as subsections entitled, say, "The idea of 'genius' in rock journalism" and "Brian Wilson's reputation pre-Pet Sounds". The first topic is already complete; the second is almost complete (insofar as it would ever need to be, given the bounds of this article), but you might flesh it out by finding a quote or source on the Beach Boys' general critical repute prior to Pet Sounds—i.e., that their early work had mostly been seen as unserious music for teeny-boppers, etc. Doing so would also enhance the significance, especially for the general reader, of the fact that session musicians (and the sophisticates and hangers-on in the "scene") grew to recognize and respect Wilson's chops. The background section would logically end with the idea that Brian Wilson longed to outgrow the surfin' stage and be taken more seriously.


 * ... Then, I think the section on "Contemporary press" might logically begin with a subsection on Derek Taylor, both introducing him and describing his work on behalf of the Boys. The next section might then group together most of the "May 1966 – June 1967" section, sans Taylor, and reorganize around the theme of press attention after Pet Sounds and "Good Vibrations" and in anticipation of Smile. This grouping would center and introduce Taylor with due weight without making any changes in the text beyond arrangement. It would also helpfully disentangle Taylor's "inorganic" publicity work from the "organic" press reaction that ensued in reaction to Taylor's work/Brian's music.


 * I rearranged the first paragraph of "Effects on the band and Wilson's decline" into roughly chronological order, which I think makes a bit more sense. I wasn't precisely sure of the date of the Dennis Wilson quote, which is just attributed to sometime in the 70s in the Guardian source. You use notes extensively throughout, which I think is fine because you typically use it for parenthetical or marginal material that a dedicated reader would be interested in but which aren't quite worth inserting into the main text. However, I think you buried the Murry Wilson quote, since he otherwise disappears from the main text. A reader might miss the note, and be confused by the mention of Murry at all. I'd move that one into the main text.


 * One note on an image caption: "Composer and Inside Pop host Leonard Bernstein praised Wilson's 'Surf's Up', but did not explicitly call him a 'genius'." The relevance of saying "but did not explicitly call him a 'genius ' " is not immediately clear; it seems that you're implying that Bernstein stopped "just short" of calling him a genius (but might have?), as if exculpating Bernstein, even though the Taylor campaign and the hype underlying the "genius" rhetoric is what's at issue rather than the word "genius" itself. I don't see followup on these implied ideas reflected in the main text, so I'm left a little confused. You do cite sources in the caption, so perhaps something in the sources could be used to flesh this idea out in the main text. Bernstein did call Wilson "one of today's most important pop musicians," which coming from an esteemed and popular classical musician is high praise. I would either expand the idea implied in the caption in the article, or alternately revise the caption to "Composer and Inside Pop host Leonard Bernstein praised Wilson's 'Surf's Up' and called Wilson 'one of today's most important pop musicians'."

Beyond my comments above (which are advice for where you take the article next, rather than comments directed at getting the article to the GA-criteria threshold), this is an exceptional article and deserves full marks. I really admire your work across the Beach Boys articles, and I'm impressed by the way you tackled this topic. It is so central to the band's history and mystique, yet (until you created it) not at all obvious how one would encapsulate the topic under a Wikipedia-suitable article title. This article, and its sibling "Don't fuck with the formula", are inspired ways to deliver encyclopedic, in-depth treatments of these important themes. —BLZ · talk 23:07, 28 January 2018 (UTC)