Talk:What a Girl Wants (Christina Aguilera song)

Dominguez source reliability
Background information provided in this article (and many others concerning Aguilera's early work) cites Christina Aguilera: A Star Is Made: The Unauthorized Biography by Pier Dominguez as a reference. While Dominguez appears now to be a doctoral student pursuing serious academic work, I am concerned about the reliability of this particular source (which was published when the author was 19 years old, before the bulk of his academic career had begun). For one thing, parts of its contents read like a fan publication (consider, for example, the following: "The fact that [Madonna] approached Christina instead of Britney for a contribution to her [The Next Best Thing] soundtrack says something about whom she really respects."). Works such as these are generally not considered reliable unless the specific cited material was itself from another reliable publication, such as a newspaper. A close examination of the bibliography to this work reveals that, while some sources cited are indeed reliable, a number of them are gossip media, Internet chatrooms, other unauthorized biographies (such as this particularly confidence-inspiring one) and the like. A newspaper review points out some of the work's factual inaccuracies and inconsistencies. Perhaps most concerning is that personal emails from Shelly Kearns, Aguilera's mother, are frequently cited as sources. However, The New York Times points out that Kearns dismissed the work; if this page, published earlier the same year, was NYT's source, then, even more troublingly, it appears the author did not even attempt to contact Kearns, despite repeatedly citing correspondence with her ("No, I've never heard of these people ... A true journalist who supposedly 'researched' something so well, you'd assume, would have tried to contact us at least once to ask questions..."). Additionally, it is perhaps worth noting that his only previous publication at this point had been released by Writer's Club Press, an author mill with no editorial oversight. This work is published by Colossus Books, which is owned by Amber Communications Group, Inc., which also allows authors to self-publish work for a fee via its Quality Press imprint ("a special service-book packaging imprint for authors who wanted to self-publish their books instead of waiting to gain an interest from mainstream publishers").

In light of these troubling facts and Wikipedia's policy on unreliable biographical information about living people ("Contentious material about living persons ... should be removed immediately and without waiting for discussion. ... The burden of evidence for any edit on Wikipedia rests with the person who adds or restores material."), particularly the policy on self-published material ("Never use self-published sources ... unless written or published by the subject"), I recommend that all information attached solely to citations of this particular Dominguez work be deleted from this page, or that these citations be replaced with those from reliable works. I would remove them myself if I had access to the edit page for this article. 98.155.5.150 (talk) 01:55, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

Ophélie Winter and Ce que je suis
I must say that I find it odd that I can't anything here in regards to the situation with Ophelie Winter. A song of her called 'Je que je suis' uses an identical melody to 'What a girl wants', and was first released in 1998 (not as a single, but merely on the album Privacy) and in 2000 (this time as a single, but after 'What a girl wants' had hit the charts in France).

I came to this page because I vaguely remember the situation; it was presented as if Aguilera et al had plagiarized the song from Winter and that the matter would be settled in court - I never learned what happened afterwards. And, after a glance at the English and French wikipedia pages, I'm sadly not alone in my ignorance.

The only press-related page I could find on Google thus far (in French) (http://www.actustar.com/Actualites/8243/l-affaire-ophe-winter-christina-aguilera), does mention it - but it is only one page and considering the amount of gossip rags among entertainment websites I can't deem it to be reliable to give me any conclusions about what happened in this case.

I hope that someone more knowledgeable reads this and is willing to give some clarification. In any case, I will try to dig up a bit more info in the upcoming week. Come January 7th 2011 - if nothing else has been added - I will add a section called 'Other versions' (as opposed to the usual title 'Cover versions' as that is not entirely clear to me) and shortly describe the situation in a couple of sentences with the available information. As it now stands, I will conclude with the notion that regardless of any possible claim both parties might have or have had, there is no apparent evidence that either party has challenged the other for the rights of the song.Hyperzoanoid (talk) 22:49, 31 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Interesting. I found this in The complete book of the British charts: singles & albums by Neil Warwick, Jon Kutner, and Tony Brown: . Apparently "What a Girl Wants" was originally recorded by Winter in 1998 as « Ce que je suis ». It doesn't mention anything about a lawsuit, though. Yves (talk) 22:57, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply Yves, and yes I misspelled the title :) (In fact, I thought I could sneak back and correct it, he.)...unfortunately I can't view the page right now, but at least there's a source. Hopefully there's more to come, otherwise we're just going to help ourselves with all that's available. Thanks again and best wishes for 2011.Hyperzoanoid (talk) 01:33, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Going through the links I did find some more info, specifically on this page. According to lescharts.com, the songs both hit the French charts at February 26 2000 as singles (as opposed to the album versions of Ophelie and Christina respectively and 1998 and 1999), with 'What a Girl Wants' staying until June 2000, while 'Ce que je suis' left the charts two months earlier. Also, a user review at the bottom of the page describes 'Ce que je suis' as the French version of Aguilera's song. That post was made in 2009 however, and given the lack of information on the subject overall I'm not convinced that's a conclusive answer, not even mentioning the fact that it contradicts the abovenamed authors stance (although their authority on this could be questioned as well of course).

Anyway, both songs charting at the same time learns us that the parties have at least clashed in some way. I consider that enough info for now and will add it to the main page. As said, people with more knowledge are free to adjust it afterwards but at least it'll be in the article.Hyperzoanoid (talk) 02:14, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

External links modified
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New source
Story Behind the Song: 'What a Girl Wants' by Dave Paulson, USA TODAY NETWORK. Might be useful for expanding the "Writing and recording" section later on. Bisbis (talk) 21:02, 21 April 2018 (UTC)