Jump to content

User talk:Timwi/List of songs whose title appears more than twenty times in the lyrics

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
< User talk:Timwi
This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Saaga (talk | contribs) at 17:44, 26 July 2004 (→Weird Al Yankovic: forgot to add sig). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

"Opera"

As for: "Opera": No Other word's apart from Opera were in the song.

Belongs therefore definitely into List of songs in which the title constitutes the entire lyrics.
But what's the count?
Hugh!, Frank W ~@) R 23:35 Mar 15, 2003 (UTC)
p.s. (i.e., especially if order will be by count, rather than alphabetically).


Issues with counting

I'm as huge a fan of these lists as anyone, but I have a problem with the counting issue, mostly because it's very vague. I was planning on listing the song "Yoohoo" by Imperial Teen, but the problem is that the background singers are almost constantly chanting - "ah, yoohoo, ah, yoohoo" for the entire chorus. Also, the lead singer will also sing "She said yoohoo" on top of the background singers. First of all, do background singers count? Secondly, is the overlaid "yoohoo" one repetition or two? -- A Very Confused DropDeadGorgias

As long as they can be distinguished at all, I'd rather have counts limited to the lead voice(s) and/or printed lyrics (at least: the numbers I had got for I'm gonna be and Peaches adhere to that). Or better yet: disambiguate by means of correspondingly distinct Wikipedia articles. Regards, Frank W ~@) R 08:30 Mar 18, 2003 (UTC)
p.s. Based on memory, I'm rather sceptical about the supposed 20+ Roxannes (The Police). Hope to listen and to count by myself soon ... (Is up to the count. Frank W ~@) R 05:20 Mar 19, 2003 (UTC))
Listening to it, I counted 'Roxanne' 26 times (and a "Rox"...). It's another situation where the background singers account for most of them. Sting only sings the name a few times. --Mrwojo 13:30 Mar 29, 2003 (UTC)
cool. I've also removed "Fun Fun Fun" by the Beach Boys, because each "Fun" does not count as a repetition. As a series, there are only 14 repetitions, even counting the background singers. -- DropDeadGorgias

The Police

Removing De do do do De da da da (The Police); appears completely only a paltry dozen times. (*sigh!*; and there are't any more "Walking on the Moon"s in Walking on the Moon either ... &). Frank W ~@) R 05:20 Mar 19, 2003 (UTC)

Speaking of The Police, what about Message in a Bottle, Can't Stand Losing You, and Don't Stand So Close To Me? --Dante Alighieri 18:43 21 May 2003 (UTC)
"Message in a Bottle" = 10 times (if it were called "Sending out an S.O.S." then it'd make it heh). The other two songs have many "Du Hast"-like repeats. "Can't Stand Losing You" is sung 5 times, but "can't" and "can't stand losing" are said many more times than that. "Don't Stand So Close To Me" = 12 times (it always appears as "Don't stand / Don't stand so / Don't stand so close to me"). --Mrwojo 13:51 31 May 2003 (UTC)

"Hold Me Tight"

It's been ages since I had a look at this page. Now I realize "Hold Me Tight" is listed as a Beatles song. Well, it isn't. It's a song from one of McCartney's solo LPs. --KF 22:29, 22 Dec 2003 (UTC)

There is also a song called "Hold Me Tight" on /With The Beatles/. So much for artists knowing their back catalogs. -- anonymous, 29 Feb 2004

Weird Al Yankovic

I've just added 20 Weird Al Yankovic songs after listening to pretty much everything that might qualify (except some from "Poodle Hat"). Just to save any other Weird Al fan some trouble, I've verified that the following do NOT qualify:

  • "Achy Breaky Song": only 6! (It just seems like 20+.)
  • "Addicted To Spuds": 16
  • "Another One Rides the Bus": 16
  • "The Brady Bunch": 17
  • "Grapefruit Diet": 16
  • "Gump": 20
  • "Happy Birthday": 20
  • "I Love Rocky Road": 12
  • "I Think I'm A Clone Now": 13
  • "Isle Thing": 20 (even including 8 echoes)
  • "Lasagna": 12
  • "Livin' in the Fridge": 16
  • "Melanie": 18
  • "My Bologna": 9
  • "Ricky": 12
  • "Since You've Been Gone": 12
  • "Slime Creatures From Outer Space": 17
  • "Spam": 20
  • "Traffic Jam": 16
  • "Velvet Elvis": 18
  • "The White Stuff": 10

Also, "(This Song's Just) Six Words Long" is problematic, since:

  • "Six words long" is sung 24 times, but it's only the whole title if you don't count the parenthetical part.
  • If you do count it, it's zero, since the full phrase is never sung EXACTLY, but rather as "This song is just six words long" (14 times) -- a phrase which, by the way, Al, is SEVEN words long! :) (I don't think it qualifies for the List of songs whose title does not appear in the lyrics, since slight variations aren't counted.

Hmmm... I gotta get a life. -- Jeffq 05:33 Mar 08 2004 (UTC)

RE: "Six words long". First of all, your diligence is admirable... In the particular case of "Six Words Long", I think we should go with the precedent set at List of songs whose title does not appear in the lyrics, and not include parts of the title that are set in parentheses. - DropDeadGorgias (talk) 05:58, Mar 8, 2004 (UTC)
Good job doing work "ahead of time" with those songs, as there is now a List of songs whose title appears more than ten times in the lyrics, and I'll add the qualifying songs from your list above to that article. =) -- Saaga 17:44, Jul 26, 2004 (UTC)

Arbitrary boundaries

Although I made my contribution to it, I can't help but feel this list is arbitrary and maybe unencyclopedic. Why twenty times? Why not twenty-five? Fifteen? For that matter, why not make a list songs in the key of B flat major, and another corresponding list every other possible key, and yet another for songs that have no key at all because they don't use the chromatic scale? It seems to me the idea is more about making a list of songs with repetitive lyrics, but such a list is avoided because the repetitiveness of something is subjective, whereas with most of the songs here, we can listen to them and say "Aha! The title occurs more than twenty times!", thus in most cases, whether something belongs on the list or not is a clear yes or no. Nineteen times does not qualify, but just one more and it does. (Actually, it doesn't, because the title of the article says more than twenty times. But who's counting?)

The problem I have with this is that such an arbitrary boundary is inherently artificial. While it makes everything factual and easy to confirm, it also makes it awkward (and gives the article an almost absurdly long title ;)) and even inhibits clarity of purpose. Is the focus on repetition, or on the title? If it's the former, well, certainly often lyrics that are not the title appear often in songs, but this list excludes them. If it's the latter, why? Why does it matter that the title as opposed to something else is repeated a bunch of times?

Well, I think I've got my point across, so I'll shut up for now. ;)

--Furrykef 15:34, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Alice in Chains: "Again"

Does "Alice in Chains" really have a song "Again"? If so, they could join Lenny Kravitz in the list of sets of unrelated songs with identical titles or whatever it's called. Wiwaxia 04:01, 5 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Timwi/List_of_songs_whose_title_appears_more_than_twenty_times_in_the_lyrics&oldid=7186689"