Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of autobiographical songs


 * 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 delete. Malcolmxl5 (talk) 02:33, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

List of autobiographical songs

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For starters, the page is almost entirely unsourced and surely a WP:OR magnet. But fundamentally, I don't think this page is the proper way to include this information. Virtually all musicians take inspiration from their own lives at least once in their career— "autobiographical songs" are so commonplace, so standard, so unremarkable that a list is unnecessary, in the same way that List of people with blue eyes is unnecessary. While a song's inspiration is noteworthy, that info is best included on the song in question's own page (or, if it doesn't have one, then the album it's from), not simply dumped in a big, WP:INDISCRIMINATE list. — Kawnhr (talk) 02:28, 11 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Albums and songs-related deletion discussions. — Kawnhr (talk) 02:28, 11 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Music-related deletion discussions. — Kawnhr (talk) 02:28, 11 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. — Kawnhr (talk) 02:28, 11 July 2020 (UTC)


 * Delete - WP:SALAT problem here, and per nom. &mdash; Rhododendrites  talk \\ 03:47, 11 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom. In addition, the criteria for inclusion are not well-defined. "Howard Hughes" by Rasputina is indeed about Howard Hughes, but that makes it biographical, not autobiographical; Hughes was obviously not a member of the band which formed long after he died. "How Do You Sleep?" presents John Lennon's opinion about Paul McCartney, but it's not about Lennon; it's about McCartney. "Hey Jude" is commonly said to be about Julian Lennon, but it wasn't written by Julian nor does it even contain any biographical information about him; the lyrics are structured as advice to the addressee rather than describing the life of "Jude". If this article winds up being kept, I recommend reorganizing it as a table rather than having separate lists by title and by artist. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 04:19, 11 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete When I woke up this morning/You were on my mind/And you were on my mind/I got troubles, whoa-oh..." That's an autobiographical song because it is about *I* - whether it is factual is another issue. Also, per above nominations. Pointlessness at it's finest. --Richhoncho (talk) 08:58, 11 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete: Per WP:TRIVIA. ASTIG😎  (ICE T • ICE CUBE) 09:09, 11 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete not enough sources to actually establish this is a thing.John Pack Lambert (talk) 20:25, 13 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete and suggested Snowball. I very much like 's comment "pointlessness at its finest" and their suggestion that literally dozens or hundreds of blues songs that start "I woke up this morning..." could qualify here, if there were any sensible criteria for inclusion here, which there ain't. --Lockley (talk) 18:34, 14 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete per nomination. MarioSoulTruthFan (talk) 10:22, 15 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete. I am a little on the fence here because I could see a list of autobiographical songs being a meaningful category, similar to autobiographical books, but this list is nowhere near that so if such a list were to be created it would need to start from scratch.  For example, "Ballad in Plain D" narrates real life events and so could legitimately considered autobiographical. Metropolitan90 brought up John Lennon, which got me thinking of some of his songs.  "Ballad of John and Yoko" and "New York City" both relate real life events using real names and places and so could legitimately be part of a list of autobiographical songs.  So too could "Mother," since we know it refers to real life events involving his own real life parents.  But there are other of his songs that name names that are more generic in expressing emotions to a son or wife, like "Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)" or "Oh Yoko!" which are hardly "autobiographical" in the sense of an autobiographical book.  Similarly, we know "Woman" and many of his other songs are directed towards Yoko Ono, but are no more autobiographical than many, many other songs.  Or "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)," which we know was based on a real life event but was fictionalized so it doesn't really fit an autobiographical song list.  Or "Help!", which apparently reflects his real life emotions but again, is hardly more autobiographical than many songs that reflect the singer's or writer's own emotions.  Or moving off Lennon a bit, I am sure that Paul McCartney saw a 17 year old he wanted to dance with at some point in his life but that doesn't make "I Saw Her Standing There" an autobiographical song in any meaningful sense.  So while I can see creating very tight guidelines for such a list, this list is nothing like that and is either trivia or indiscriminate (or really both). Rlendog (talk) 16:07, 16 July 2020 (UTC)


 * 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.