Wikipedia:Peer review/Marvin Gaye/archive1

Marvin Gaye
I think this is a pretty good article, but it could possibly be improved upon. What could be done to expand/touch up this article, so that it is eligible for featured article candidacy? --FuriousFreddy 15:37, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * Looks good overall. The lead section is good, but makes an awful lot of uncited claims about Gaye's greatness -- I know these are accurate, but they should be specifically cited; other stuff that should be cited include Stevenson's motivation for writing "Stubborn Kind of Fellow", neo-soul artists citing Gaye as an influence though not being really influenced by him, the Gaye family's claim that Marvin deliberately provoked his father to murder and What's Going On being the first album with socially aware themes.  The "Joining the Motown and Gordy families" says that Gaye was gentlemanly enough that he didn't need training from Motown's Artist Development director, but it's never really explained what that means (I assume Motown trained stars to act gentlemanly; this idea is unsurprising to me, but many people might be more used to assuming record companies would encourage anything controversial and publicizing).  The claim that Gaye continued to feel pain with no form of self-expression should be cited and is oddly worded anyway, maybe change to continued to grieve without an outlet for musical expression or somthing similar.  Let's Get It On is probably his second most notable album, but only gets a single sentence.  The sentence Tax problems and drug addictions haunted him, and after failing to get Motown labelmate Smokey Robinson to loan him money to take care of the tax issues, Gaye was forced to move to Ostend, Belgium in 1981. should include clarification on what the tax problems were and should be reworded (in what way was he forced to move? to escape prosecution for tax evasion? if Gaye was a corporate executive instead of a soul singer, I think it would be obviously biased to claim he was forced to move because he didn't want to pay back taxes, but then maybe that's not what the tax issues were).  The sentence As noted, Gaye helped give rise to the "singer-songwriter" in African-American and emcompassing Black music should be more specific (I must have missed that being noted).  I'm decapitalizing Black because I think Wikipedia normally doesn't -- was this a deliberate choice on your part?  I don't think I've ever noticed it in anything else you wrote.  Overall, it's a great article and a worthy FAC! Tuf-Kat 23:25, Jun 8, 2005 (UTC)


 * Most of the things--actually, nearly all--that you wanted referenced can be linked to Gerald Posner's Motown book; I can take care of all of those. The one exception is the claim that What's Going On was the first soul album to explore social issues; The Temptations had Gaye beat by three years, as did The Impressions, and (depending upon the flexibility of the definition of soul music) Sly & the Family Stone and The Fifth Dimension. As far as capitalizing "Black", when referring to Black people, I always have (it often gets copyedited out by others). --FuriousFreddy 21:41, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)