Music Real Life Troping Cleanup

I've noticed a... troublesome running thing about the Music creators' pages...

So I was on the Aerith and Bob subpage for Music the other day and noticed that a lot of the entries were listing band members (real people, mind you) and how they fit into Aerith and Bob rules. Okay, but isn't Aerith and Bob NRLEP? This is technically Aerith and Bob troping real life.

Now as far as NRLEP tropes go, Aerith and Bob isn't one of the more controversial ones - it's listed under the narrative block, and it's acknowledged that it is still very much Truth In Televison. But I went looking further and found some more... disturbing Real Life troping on Musicians' creator pages...

Fiona Apple and Destiny's Child, for instance, both have The Woobie tropes, not covering their songs, but covering their real lives. While it is true that these are things they've all been upfront about, it's not like we're doxxing them or anything, but still, these are some loaded tropes we've otherwise decided don't apply to real people.

Now the trouble with Music is that musicians are very prone to autobiographical songs, so technically we are still real life troping when that's involved. But still, autobiographical songs =/= real life. Troping "thank u, next" is different from troping Ariana Grande's real love life. But there's still a lot of real life troping, including with NRLEP tropes, all over the Music pages. The Music pages should be about the music, man.

I think we should extend the same courtesy we do to actors and writers and such to musicians, right?

Yeah we need to start cleaning up real-life troping on music pages.

Can't help right now though as I am in the middle of something.

Question here before any diving in occurs. IIRC, trivia about Real Life people is allowed on creator pages, correct? I would also think that anything in the creator’s life that impacts their work or other creative endeavors (like music criticism) in some way is trope worthy.

Either case would seem to be acceptable use, and I’d recommend not cutting such examples.

Edited by BoltDMC on Jan 16th 2022 at 3:11:49 AM

I do agree that anything which has been decided as NRLEP should be respected, however.

Yeah Trivia for the most part is fine. Trivia is always about the meta surrounding a body of work, so you can totally put, like, He Also Did if a member of a band has a side project in acting, or Swan Song if a project was a farewell from a band or artist, or Hide Your Pregnancy if a music video tried to downplay that their leading lady was pregnant. And certainly stuff that actively affects their body of work, like Moved to the Next Console and Release Date Change.

Obviously there's Trivia that should avoid Speculative Troping, like Creator Breakdown, Old Shame, and Executive Meddling.

I'm mostly concerned about Main and YMMV troping of their real lives, along with Nightmare Fuel and Tear Jerker (and the other Moments to a lesser extent) from their personal lives.

I'll start by bringing up two tropes that show up on musician pages a lot:

First is Badass Baritone, which is a deliberate characterization trope. Listing it on a musician page seems too close to troping them as people to me, but since it's already a music-adjacent trope I'm not positive. There are also a lot of examples of people who just are baritones under the Music folder on the trope page itself.

Second is Dead Artists Are Better. Based on the page for that trope, it's only intended for in-universe, fictional examples; real-life examples should go under Posthumous Popularity Potential instead. Should be simple enough to go through the existing examples on the Music namespace and move them to the YMMV tab.

There are a lot of examples of these so I'd like some feedback before we do anything.

Badass Baritone has a lot of problems (I hope that's one of the next tropes they look at over on the Badass tropes cleanup), not the least of which being a creepy amount of gushing towards deep voiced actors/voice actors/musicians that for some reason none of its adjacent tropes (Evil Sounds Deep, Contralto Of Danger, Tenor Boy) seem to get. Yeah, I think it's supposed to be a characterization trope, which means it probably ought to be NRLEP.

If I'm not mistaken, Dead Artists Are Better is now supposed to be In-Universe Only and Posthumous Popularity Polynomial is a YMMV exclusively for real life, so yeah move those over.

I'm working my way through the Music wicks for Dead Artists Are Better and want to bring up a few more things for feedback:

First, One-Steve Limit. Since this is a deliberate decision by writers to make stories less confusing, this seems like it shouldn't apply to musical groups. It's not NRLEP, though, so might be a problem for that thread.

Second is decade tropes like The '50s, The '60s, and so on. These are on a lot of Music pages for people who were active in those decades. I feel like these should be removed unless they have music specifically commenting on the time period.

Third is genre tropes - basically everything listed under Genres + Subcategories on the Music Tropes page. I recall that genres generally aren't supposed to be listed as tropes on work pages, but can't actually find it written down anywhere so I'd like confirmation before I pull anything.

For One-Steve Limit, I think there can be valid examples. For example, if bassist Steve Smith takes a stage name to avoid confusion with lead vocalist Steve Doe, that seems like it would count.

Ah, yeah, I should have specified the examples that are like "[Band] averts this by having members Steve Smith and Steve Doe." :p There are some examples like that on the trope page, too.

Edited by GiantCicada on Jan 20th 2022 at 9:31:25 AM

I noticed some cutting of tropes at Johann Sebastian Bach. Some of the cuts are understandable. A couple I have questions about:

• Real Men Love Jesus: A devout Lutheran who wrote a lot of church music.

This was cut for Real Life Troping, but it references Bach's music and should be fair game to keep. The example isn't as specific as it might be (a borderline ZCE), though. I think this should stay and be fleshed out.

• Sincerest Form of Flattery: Name any great composer of Classical Music. Odds are that, at some point in their education, they studied from and imitated the works of J.S. Bach. Bach's fugues and chorales are still required studying in most music conservatories to this day. Most freshman music theory classes heavily reference the chorales, and Eighteenth-Century Counterpoint classes use Bach's contrapuntal works as their model.

This was cut for being a general example, but I'd argue it's not. Bach's contrapuntal style indeed serves as the basis for every 18th Century Counterpoint class ever taught — and Bach's chorales form the basis for first and second year music theory classes. Again, it's a trope that references the music itself and how it's used. The entry might need to have the first two sentences cut or modified, but the rest strikes me as fine.

I'd recommend we be more careful about chopping things allegedly referencing the person's Real Life vs. something that references their work — and I would argue that this extends to things like written criticism, music performance and conducting, use of the music for pedagogy, and similar stuff. Could we please bring these up here for discussion first?

Can we also get a call on the notion that trivia is or is not okay to include? I was under the impression that trivia is okay on music creator pages.

Edited by BoltDMC on Jan 24th 2022 at 5:40:41 AM

Hey, thanks for pinging me!

For Real Men Love Jesus, I cut it because from what I can tell, that's a characterization trope where someone's faith establishes that they're a "real man" or "badass," similar to Badass Baritone which I mentioned earlier, which seems too close to troping him as a person. You're right that there's not much context to go off of, which is a problem with a lot of examples I'm finding on Music/ pages. I don't have a problem with someone re-adding it if they can flesh it out and establish more of a connection between the trope and his works.

Sincerest Form of Flattery: You're probably right, I was more put off by the first few sentences which are more natter-y. I can re-add the second part.

For trivia, that should be fine to add to the Trivia subpage for a given Music/ article as long as it's a valid example of whatever trivia trope is being added. It's only a question on Creator/ pages since those aren't supposed to have subpages.

In general I am trying to keep examples that discuss their real life as long as it also ties into their career, work, performances, etc. in some way. There is a lot to go through, though, so it's tempting to just cut rather than post walls of examples here. I'll try to go a bit slower and bring more questionable examples here. I appreciate the interest!

I still need clarification if music genres should be removed from trope lists, as well as thoughts on removing decade tropes.

No problem — I'm glad we're finding common ground. Yeah, I agree that discussion is a good way to go here.

I've got a number of the classical music composer creator pages on my watch list, so I may be able to catch these as they happen anyway.

Good question about the genre tropes. Have to give that a ponder and weigh in soon.

Thanks!

Never Live It Down recently became NRLEP, but there are plenty of real-life examples on the music subpage.

There are a lot of NRLEP tropes still on Music/ pages too. Those should be an easy target for cleaning.

I think I've gotten all of the invalid Dead Artists Are Better examples in the Music namespace now. Still a bunch of misuses elsewhere, I think, but that's for another thread.

Thanks for the feedback on Real Men Love Jesus. I'll flesh the entry out so it has more context and repost. Let me know if you think it needs more changes.

The Music folder on Rescued from the Scrappy Heap almost exclusively on the musicians themselves rather than any characters they might've portrayed or depicted in their work, with the sole exception being a point about a specific guitar that became associated with a polarizing genre. Should be an easy removal, and some of them could probably be migrated to Win Back the Crowd with some adjustments if they aren't covered there already.

Music.Fishmans has some examples that trope real people.

Music.Brian Jones has an entire trope list dedicated to the man himself, including at least one YMMV example

I just cut a bunch of stuff on Music.Def Leppard. The page is still a mess but it shouldn't be troping the real-life problems of the band members anymore.

Edited by WarJay77 on Aug 23rd 2022 at 6:14:12 AM

You mean Def Leppard?

EDIT: I see you changed it.

Edited by themayorofsimpleton on Aug 23rd 2022 at 6:14:55 AM

Lol, yeahhhh...

wrong forum, sorry

Edited by NonexistentYeets on Dec 22nd 2022 at 10:45:19 AM

I'm not sure if this example on Falling in Reverse is valid in terms of real-life troping, seeing as we've established that unless an artist is specifically doing Kayfabe Music, stage performances don't count as works and it's also in reference to the music troping Ronnie's solo work, which is distinct from FIR. Also, Situations is actually Escape the Fate.

• Hypocritical Humor: In some of his solo songs, Ronnie will throw out a homophobic insult or two. Yet without fail, any performance of Situations will feature him making out with a bandmate.

Edited by NonexistentYeets on Feb 5th 2023 at 1:33:46 PM

I think it's a deliberate enough performance decision to be fine.