Talk:Jangle

Proposed deletion
I'm pretty sure this page needs to go as after a number of discussions in the talk there really is no clarification beyond a few isolated references to the term across the past 3 decades, no authoritative analysis of etymology for the term and reliance on extremely low quality sources.

Compare this, for example, to something as niche and ephemeral as Raga Rock which has specific citation of where the term came from, and quotes commenting on the validity of the term from literal university professors in published histories.Verlaine76 (talk) 14:41, 26 April 2019 (UTC)


 * OK so with no discussion or debate ILTP has decided to go ahead an convert this to a completely new page, but I'll concur, and have finished the job, tidying up, removing redundancies and digressions and the awkward points where it segued back into being about "jangle pop". I also tried to make this less of an article specifically about 12 string guitars as I previously pointed out, simply identifying any track that uses a 12 string guitar as "jangle" and then defining jangle as the sound of a 12 string guitar is circular logic, even if Rickenbacker 12 strings are strongly associated with the sound.


 * Can the title be changed to "Jangle (Guitar sound)" to help with clarification? Verlaine76 (talk) 12:32, 27 April 2019 (UTC)
 * No because there is no other article named "Jangle" and so there is no need to clarify (WP:NCDAB). ILTP (talk) 17:27, 27 April 2019 (UTC)
 * I have to ask who appointed you God of this page.Verlaine76 (talk) 23:10, 27 April 2019 (UTC)
 * It's what he does. Genres and the Beach Boys seem to be his thing. And painting.  danny music editor  oops 03:43, 1 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Can't comment on the latter but I strongly disagree with the former. But there's only so long you can argue with stubborn ignorance.Verlaine76 (talk) 16:29, 1 May 2019 (UTC)

Jangle pop to Jangle
(discussion moved from User:ILIL's talkpage)

Hi IL

Looking up "Jangle pop" and I am redirected to Jangle. Curious I looked at the history and note that you moved the name and changed the nature of the article. Can you explain your thinking? We now don't have an article on jangle pop, a well known music genre - instead we have an article on the guitar noise "jangle" which is the basis for jangle pop. I'm not entirely convinced that we need a separate article for the jangle guitar noise as I think that could well be described within the jangle pop article, but it is certainly an editorial discussion. However, what we do need is an article on jangle pop. The article we did have: is fine, and is not the article we currently have:. My thinking is that the jangle pop article should be restored, and either a sub article, jangle, created or the jangle guitar sound information placed in a section of jangle pop. However, you may well have an explanation that convinces me that the current situation is the correct one. We can (and probably should) continue this discussion on Talk:Jangle. I'll keep both your user page and the Jangle talkpage watch-listed for your reply. Regards SilkTork (talk) 19:25, 15 February 2020 (UTC)
 * There were concerns raised on the talk page regarding WP:CIRC and it was concluded that "jangle pop" had (surprisingly) little notability as a genre. Sources instead predominately refer to "jangle" as a guitar sound. So, after much back and forth, it was concluded that the best solution was to reformat the article to be about the jangle sound. ili (talk) 11:20, 16 February 2020 (UTC)
 * I'll copy this to the talkpage and continue the discussion there. SilkTork (talk) 14:12, 16 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Jangle pop is an established term used in reliable sources. Would you have any objection if I restored the article to its established title, and roll back to when it was about jangle pop? If there is a continuing desire to either a) create a sub-article on the jangle guitar noise or b) change the focus and name so the article is about the guitar noise that underpins the musical genre jangle pop, then those matters can be discussed, and perhaps a formal page move set up. SilkTork (talk) 14:18, 16 February 2020 (UTC)


 * You have it backwards. Jangle-pop should be considered a sub-topic of jangle, not the vice versa. The vast majority of sources in this article do not refer to a jangle-pop "genre", they're talking about the Byrds' guitar technique as applied to various popular musicians throughout the decades. Yes, occasionally music journalists will use the term "jangle-pop" (particularly since the creation of this Wikipedia article), but none have defined the term any farther than "it's music with jangly guitars". This has been discussed to death on this talk page. ili (talk) 14:31, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

From just a very quick and dirty Google search: "jangle-pop at its finest", "the natives are given to the creation of cordial jangle-pop", "You're a twee jangle-pop band", "Those stalwart guardians of jangle-pop", "Jangle pop was the popular sound of alternative music before grunge", "Jangle pop was an American post-punk movement", and several thousand mentions in assorted journals and newspapers:.

From the sources used in this article: "early indie's biggest bands were 'jangle pop' groups like R.E.M. and The Smiths", " The Beatles and The Byrds often get the most credit for starting the enduring subgenre that’s come to be known as jangle pop", "British band Life in Film sounds off on 'Jangle Pop', "the music scene was experiencing a groundswell of what were called “college rock”, or sometimes “jangle pop”, bands.".

I'm not disputing that the jangle noise created on guitar is what gives its name to jangle pop, nor am I saying that it shouldn't be discussed, but with the wide use of the term jangle pop, and a broad understanding in the media of what that sound is and which bands it refers to, it is appropriate that we have an article on jangle pop. Indeed, Wikipedia's music articles are entwined with the term jangle pop, and many links point to this article on the understanding that it is going to discuss the music genre jangle pop, not the sound jangle.

I don't think we should be having a discussion about should there be an article on jangle pop, as the weight of sources, and the already existing incoming links, indicate very strongly that there should be such an article. The discussion should be on what to do about the information gathered on the jangle sound that informs jangle pop. Do you see? Now, I don't wish to be drawn out on a simple point that should be fairly clear. But I am not a follower of Bold, Revert, Discuss, so I'm not going to revert. My preference has always been: Bold, Discuss, Revert. So if you are unable to accept that we should have an article on jangle pop, and the weight of evidence is not going to convince you, then we need to open the discussion out to get a wider consensus. I'm not going to revert the article back to what it was, I'd rather there was a consensus. Are you still against restoring the article to jangle pop, and then us discussing what to doing about the information on jangle? SilkTork (talk) 17:58, 16 February 2020 (UTC)


 * I would only support rolling back the article if there was more literature that details the prescriptions of a so-called jangle-pop genre. As you just demonstrated, there is marginal discussion of "jangle-pop" beyond its passing reference in web articles and books, none of which paint a coherent picture if you consolidated their claims into a Wikipedia article. For example, "Jangle pop is an American post-punk movement originating in the mid-1960s that was invented by R.E.M., and created by the Searchers and the Everly Brothers in the 1950s." Gibberish. And yet, there's no confusion over "jangle". Authors are consistent in defining the term as a trebly guitar arpeggio sound popularized in the '60s. "Jangle-pop" is also often shortened as "jangle" which opens a whole 'nother can of worms.
 * One compromise could be to keep Jangle as it is and instead create a Jangle pop article that collects all these contradictory viewpoints. I don't think we should do that, but at least it'd show how ridiculous and ill-defined the term really is, and it's better than pretending that the genre has any real recognition. Pinging ... ili (talk) 13:40, 17 February 2020 (UTC)
 * I understand some of your hesitations, but it's not for us to decide if jangle pop is a musical genre or not, we just summarise what reliable sources say. If we start to insert our own opinions, thoughts, feelings, then we wander into WP:OR, which works two ways (insisting a topic is notable when its not, denying a topic is notable when it is). As there are plenty of reliable sources which talk about jangle pop, we can't deny its existence, no matter how much we personally feel it's a ridiculous and ill-defined term. As for the compromise, we should be rolling back rather than creating new, because there's a lot of contributor history to this article that under Wikipedia rules we need to keep. If we create new, we'd have to do a history merge (treating the new article as a cut and paste rename), or at the very least a link back, which then makes it hard for future editors and researchers to track down who contributed what, as they have to search back through the histories of two articles. This article's history as Jangle pop goes back to 2003, with nearly 300 contributors. We need to restore all that. As you're still not in agreement with that, I will open this up to wider discussion. But I won't be able to do that for a few days. SilkTork (talk) 03:59, 18 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Hello SilkTork. -- ILIL and I had thorough, verging on fractious, discussion over the original page (I'll admit I was the more aggressive one then, you can read what I wrote, but while I stand by the stance I took, I regret the rather unpleasant tone I employed at the time - may bad, I've grown up since). So I'm somewhat touched that ILIL has called me in here. I personally don't co-sign everything on the current "jangle" page as ILIL left it (I still feel it's tendentious, leans on some circular reasoning, and I'd quibble with the quality of some of the sources) but it's not a hill I'm interested in dying on as in general there's nothing particularly egregious on it in the end.
 * However reverting to a jangle pop page is a worse idea and I do agree with everything ILIL has posted here (and not only because it largely echoes what I wrote in the first place).
 * There seem to be no authoritative sources on the term and genre Jangle-pop. To reiterate my previous postings on the Jangle-pop talk page, which ILIL has already mentioned, Jangle-pop as a genre didn't exist prior to about 2003. Around then two articles were posted: an Allmusic.com summary of "jangle-pop" as a small subgenre that existed in the early 80s, centred around Mitch Easter and his band the dBs and REM, whom Easter produced, and a totally unsourced Wikipedia that said exactly the same thing. I suspect one was plagiarised from the other. I've found no source for these assertions outside of these two articles - none of the REM biographies I've read referenced Jangle-pop, and Mitch Easter is a pretty marginal figure outside of his connection to them. Of sources back then that I did find prior to 2003 jangle pop or jangle-pop was basically a phrase where guitar pop bands would used a strummy or arpeggiated sound would get called "jangle pop" but only largely by accident, as they were pop but not rock bands that supposedly relied on a jangle sound. This covers almost all electric guitar based pop music prior to 1965 as (distortion pedals and overdrive sounds were only just starting to gain use) and a significant chunk of it afterwards, so you can guess what happens next.
 * Over the last two decades, that wikipedia page grew, but remained unsourced (or improperly sourced) for its first few years, when the "Jangle-Pop" wikipedia article started being replicated by bots and content farms. After a while, Wikipedians started expanding the genre, by cramming in examples, usually with little more than personal preference of bands that sounded "jangly", way beyond that small early 80s Athens, Georgia clique, so everyone from The Smiths, to even My Bloody Valentine were included at points as JP bands. Then of course the term was applied retrospectively to artists and bands who existed decades before the term was ever used who might have influenced those 80s indie bands, from obvious examples like the Byrds, but also back to their influences like the Beatles, the Searchers, the Everly Brothers, etc. You can see this happening by going back though the page histories.
 * After a while, sources did appear on the WP page, but often hilariously they were links to content farm sites that had actually plagiarised earlier versions of the wikipedia page. Many of these content farm sites disappeared so there were a number of dead links in the references section by the time I got to it. Now of course there are apparently plenty of authoritative sources written by actual people but again a lot of them were low quality listicles and offhand space fillers, or reviews that used jangle-pop as a description but never properly defined it. Again most of them are obviously cribbing from the wikipedia generated definition of the term (i.e. any band that has a pop guitar sound without too much distortion either using strumming or arpeggios). So there was a feedback loop, as the WP article built up, lazy journos and younger bands raised on WP as "the source for all info" started using the term, and Wikipedians started attaching the tag to all sorts of bands, again often with no citation or source, of if there was a source, it was some spurious, non authoritative list of "my favourite jangle pop bands". This feedback loop has a name, citogenisis and is so common that it itself has its own wikipedia page. I think the post 2000s rise of Jangle-pop as a ubiquitous term is one of the best examples of this but isn't featured as it was a slow moving process over decades, rather than one single "gotcha" incident by a journalist on a deadline falling for a hoax. However I'm thinking of putting together an article that I'll pitch to a fairly authoritative/academic resource on this whole process, so I might get that changed. I was thinking of doing a Youtube vid on it back when ILIL had out first head to head but thought better as while I disagree with ILIL on a number of points I do think he's arguing in good faith. So in the end the sprawling ubiquity of Jangle-pop as a genre across Wikipedia, the web and beyond in this century is largely an invention of Wikipedia!
 * Searching back through pre 2000s material, I can find very few uses of the term "jangle pop", and none of them defining the term in any proper form. It's an anachronistic and ahistorical term. And I've looked through Google archives, databases of rock journalism dating back to the 1960s including rock/indie journals such as Rolling Stone, NME and other papers in the UK music press that EXTENSIVELY covered artists now being declared as "jangle pop". I can't find anything anywhere that amounts to anything more that using the term basically a quick adjectival-phrase, certainly not a specific, coherent genre, in the way Brit Pop, Grunge, Nu-Metal, Folk Rock, Bebop, Western Swing. That all changed after 2003, after which Wikipedians went hog-wild and stuck it as a tag on nearly everything.
 * Anyway, if you want to re-ignite the jangle-pop page I would expect it to be clearly placed in the context of a post 2000s term that has been retrospectively/anachronistically applied to bands, all of whom were already found in clearly defined existing genres (Indie Rock, College Rock, Folk Rock, British Invasion, New Wave, Psychedelic pop, etc). If you want to prove me wrong, go ahead but I don't think you will because I'VE LOOKED and I couldn't find anything clear, authoritative or definitive that doesn't circle back to the Wikipedia/Allmusic articles from the 2003, or is not very obviously influenced by them and the world they inadvertently created for the term; that includes all the links you posted initially here.
 * -- Some critiques on your sources.
 * Shake Some Action - The Ultimate Guide To Power Pop - published 2007, uses jangle-pop twice as a passing description in short capsule reviews, applying the term retrospectively.
 * The Trouser Press Guide to '90s Rock - and older book, likely the best source you have. Used the term four times, again as a quick adjectival for reviews by some obscure bands, which is all I can find as usage prior to 2003. (I had a link to similar a Bare Naked Ladies review in the late 90s, and the Smiths in the 80s, but this supports the assertion that it's just a description, not a genre, but can't find those sources today). Nothing is done to define the genre. Again hard pressed to see this as authoritative. Had you heard of this book prior to your Google books search?
 * I found my friends - published 2015, seems to be self published, term is used in an apocryphal story and more as an insult than a genre definition.
 * Shadows of the Music Industry - self published book from 2014. Applies the term retrospectively. The author is a self publishing crank who's written on paranormal phenomena and "alternative" religious history, UFOs. spirits, the occult, etc. The blurb from the book itself reads "The book explores the hidden stories of Satanism, the occult, mind-control, cover ups, and the death of various artists from the 1930’s to the 2000s." So he's not a music historian, he's a professional conspiracy theorist.
 * Allmusic.com - Yup, that's the Allmusic post I mentioned, been trying to figure out if they stole that from Wikipedia or vice versa. But even if we accept THAT as original and authoritative (there's no prior source for the claims made), that's a pretty narrow definition that will require removing the Jangle-pop tag from 99% of the bands it's attached to right now in WP. All those 60s bands? All those UK 80s indie bands, all those American Alt-Rock college bands, New Wave acts? Gone. Just Early REM, the dBs, and whoever the hell Uncle Green, Miracle Legion and Lets Active were.Verlaine76 (talk) 16:39, 19 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Just for your information. Allmusic established in the 1991 and in the first 10 years produced catalogs describing the history of music genres and listed significant albums with reviews. 2001 edition of the popular music genre guide already had a definition of Jangle pop, identical to the one on the website: page 4 (as printed on the pages). And this was the 4th edition, while the previous ones were published in 1992, 1994, 1997. In 1994 edition jangle pop wasn't mentioned yet, and I couldn't find the 1997 edition. Solidest (talk) 15:11, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

Jangle pop conflated with college rock?
In this April 2019 edit by, the article text was changed to say that jangle pop is sometimes conflated with college rock. I disagree with this addition for two reasons: the cited source does not explicitly say that jangle pop and college rock genres are sometimes conflated, and we already explain how jangle pop found an early home at college radio stations who helped popularize it, thereby making it a part of the college rock radio format and the college rock sound. College rock is bigger than jangle pop, incorporating more influences than just jangle. For that reason, I am removing the conflation statement. Binksternet (talk) 20:11, 24 December 2020 (UTC)
 * The source says as clear as day Jangle pop and college rock are the same.--2601:3C5:8200:97E0:793A:1031:8357:5838 (talk) 20:18, 24 December 2020 (UTC)
 * No, it says "At the time the song was released, the music scene was experiencing a groundswell of what were called 'college rock', or sometimes 'jangle pop', bands." This could mean several things, and it certainly is not a statement about two genres being conflated with one another. The bands in the groundswell could be called college rock because they are on college radio or because they are in the college rock genre, and they could be called jangle pop for their sound. Both labels could be applied at the same time but for different reasons. The writer, Rob Caldwell, is a fine music journalist, but he's only talking about one song, not the definitions and confusions of two genres. You're reading too much into his one ambiguous sentence, to create a new definition here. Binksternet (talk) 21:16, 24 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Like I said it the source says college rock or jangle pop. You are trying to change the wording to get your way. Anybody that can read knows it was talking about college rock and jangle pop being the same. WP:STICKTOSOURCE.Even allmusic calls college rock jangle guitar-pop. --2601:3C5:8200:97E0:793A:1031:8357:5838 (talk) 21:32, 24 December 2020 (UTC)
 * If reading is your thing you will have seen that the AllMusic page in your link does not say college rock and jangle pop are the same thing. It says that R.E.M. and the Smiths are college rock bands, and that they paved the way for "countless practitioners of jangly guitar-pop" such as the dB's and Let's Active from the US, and the Housemartins and the La's from the UK. Binksternet (talk) 22:56, 24 December 2020 (UTC)
 * So are you implying The Smiths and R.E.M. never played Jangle pop? My issue is jangle pop redirects to a sound effect not a specific genre of music. Would like to hear User:ILIL views on it since he is the one that added it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:3C5:8200:97E0:2501:1058:B5D8:D4A6 (talk) 23:57, 24 December 2020 (UTC)
 * That's because there is no specific genre of jangle pop, it's a vague description of the guitar around in some songs that has been conflated with a genre. Any band in the last 60 years that's used clean guitars with strumming or arpeggios is being defined as this specific genre. The whole article rests for "authoritative sources" on off-hand comments and single lines from reviews and summaries. Most of the bands referenced sit within clear existing genres (British Invasion, Folk Rock, new wave, alt-rock, Americana, indie-pop, etc) and have been shoehorned into this new genre. It's as if any band that used a synthesiser in the 60s and 70s got included in the genre of "Synth-Pop". 14:36, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

Weirdest split I've ever seen...
Two articles, almost completely identical word-for-word, treating virtually the same subject. And for what? For the sake of not having Jangle pop be a redirect? The fact that it's such a shoddy copy-and-paste job should be taken as an admission to the fact that proposing separate articles for "jangle" and "jangle pop" makes no sense. I've never seen such a brazen case of WP:OVERLAP. ili (talk) 19:59, 17 November 2021 (UTC)


 * Given that there are no other article on 'jangle' technique on the interwiki (the English article will be a single one), and there are plenty of jangle pop articles. And given that original jangle-pop article was reworked weirdly with some bias towards existing sources (I never cease to be bewildered by the sweeping changes to articles where @ILIL is involved in, in a bad way). It seems to me that the best option would be to keep them separate. So it's . While both articles should be reworked to avoid overlaps, leaving only what is relevant to guitar playing style in Jangle including the words about 60s folk-rock scene, while moving everything about 80s post-punk derived style to Jangle pop. Solidest (talk) 17:19, 18 November 2021 (UTC)


 * There are two viable options - move Jangle back into Jangle pop, or rework the articles to see if it is worth keeping Jangle as a separate article. I'm supportive of Solidest's suggestion. Once that has been done we can have a clearer idea of what the articles look like. As a point of note, this was not a cut and paste, but a restoration (including page history) of the article to the point at which it was moved from Jangle pop to Jangle. I have then edited it to fix some errors and improve sourcing. SilkTork (talk) 18:38, 18 November 2021 (UTC)


 * I stand corrected, sorry. I also support your suggestions to rework the articles based on whether the sources are explicitly referring to "jangle" or "jangle-pop". ili (talk) 00:29, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Hey, I don't recall ever engaging with you on any talk page, and I think you need a history lesson. challenged the sources on this article, specifically about whether they were actually referring to a "jangle pop" genre or simply a "jangle" sound commonly used in popular music (there's a difference!). To address the editor's concerns, I proposed moving the article to Jangle — a solution that worked for the both of us. Since you're going the route of personal attacks — instead of actually explaining whatever you mean by "weird bias towards existing sources" — why not be helpful and name the other articles that you think I've ruined and let's see if we can undo the damages? ili (talk) 00:24, 19 November 2021 (UTC)