Talk:John Parr

needs a re-write
John had a call from one of the world's most successful producers, David Foster. Please 216.206.242.200 10:18, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

John Parr is from Worksop, Nottinghamshire. He may say Nottingham when is is being interviewed in the US etc, but this is likely because it is well known internationally. Worksop is 35 miles away from Nottingham. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.197.234.246 (talk) 21:40, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

John Parr wrote a song for The New Monkees, not the original Monkees. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.88.33.224 (talk) 17:15, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on John Parr. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20140122074145/http://www.scunthorpetelegraph.co.uk/Rocker-John-s-ready-Parr-ty-Westwoodside/story-20449007-detail/story.html to http://www.scunthorpetelegraph.co.uk/Rocker-John-s-ready-Parr-ty-Westwoodside/story-20449007-detail/story.html

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 15:11, 30 December 2017 (UTC)

"10 million copies" claim
The only support for the claim "Parr has sold 10 million albums worldwide" is from a press release. There is no evidence that any one of his solo albums sold a million copies. If this figure includes sales of the St. Elmo's Fire soundtrack, the claim is misleading, as this album contained only one song by Parr (albeit the biggest hit from the album). --Fosterpan (talk) 21:36, 4 March 2018 (UTC)Fosterpan


 * Thanks for pointing that out. I have removed it. SmartSE (talk) 22:21, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

"Ineligibility for Academy Award" claim
I'm not pulling the sentence claiming "St. Elmo's Fire" wasn't eligible for the Best Original Song Oscar yet, but it seems a spurious claim because (a) the only criteria for the award is that the song be originally composed for an eligible film and (b) the article on the film itself has very clear cites regarding the song being, in fact, composed specifically for the film. Parr's lyrical inspiration is utterly irrelevant to the award criteria; he and Foster wrote the song for the film.

So if there's any truth to the ineligibility claim, it needs a very strong cite. JFMorse (talk) 05:45, 22 April 2021 (UTC)


 * John Parr appeared on the “Professor of Rock” YouTube channel in November of 2023. In the interview Parr states that the song was in contention for an Oscar(c) and that he “was shooting [him]self in the foot” because he was publicly confirming that the song was written about Hansen. Whether that makes the song ineligible for the Academy Award by the Academy’s rules is not discussed, but Parr does say that is why the song failed to get a nomination. Smulawyer (talk) 03:26, 3 December 2023 (UTC)
 * We're basically just discussing this because I'm still on the fence about removing it 32 months later, but! ;)
 * There are some issues with this, too. Parr is a primary source, offering his own recollection or opinion regarding a subject that wasn't entirely under his control; to be a properly-cited claim it must be a secondary source.
 * More importantly, however, is the Oscars' own submission guidelines for potential nominees for Best Original Song, which require a form to be submitted. Part of that form is the actual affirmation of the song's eligiblity (i.e., recorded in creative collaboration with the film producers and not released in any other form prior to being recorded). Parr would have had to sign this form himself for the song to be eligible at all.
 * Heck, you can even release your own single version of the song you wrote for the movie before the movie even comes out; the telling point is when it was recorded, not when it was released. (This, I did not know until just now.) JFMorse (talk) 08:08, 18 December 2023 (UTC)