To-do list:

• Due to Face Of The Band's examples being in poor shape due to inconsistent usage along with outright misuse, it is being disambiguated, so move or remove wicks accordingly.
• Related tropes that wicks may fit:
  • The Face
  • I Am the Band
  • Artist and the Band
  • Series Mascot
  • Stuck in Their Shadow
  • The Band Minus the Face
• Note that disambiguating (previously, cutting) does not preclude taking related concepts to the Trope Idea Salvage Yard or the Trope Launch Pad afterward.

Wick check:

Wick checks for Face Of The Band.

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Results

Edited by Berrenta on Jul 28th 2023 at 9:31:22 AM

Macron's notes

~Tropers/Adept

Macron's notes

I'll abstain on turning it into Trivia, but to requiring more reasons why they are the face as well as removing non-band examples.

Art Museum Curator and frequent helper of the Web Original deprecation project

If we rework it to start requiring objective evidence, would any of the current examples be able to be moved to it, or would we have to completely rebuild it from the ground up in the TLP? From a brief look over the wick check, I don't see any examples that include the kind of objective evidence that a Trivia trope requires.

Edited by Orbiting on Jul 20th 2023 at 10:48:20 AM

Thanks, Macron.

Basically, I don't think "this member of the band is more recognizable than the other members" is really noteworthy. It seems to be just as superfluous as saying "a work's main character is the most recognizable character to the audience".

Now obviously, a band or music group is not a cast of fictional characters, so there has to be an identifiable reason why a particular member (or maybe two, at most) could be considered as the face/lead/protagonist/whatever of the group.

It doesn't necessarily have to be moved to Trivia, but as it is, most of the current examples and wicks are useless.

Edited by Adept on Jul 20th 2023 at 9:56:06 PM

If most of the current examples and wicks are useless, I wonder if we should cut and Yard it and start over. As Orbiting touched upon, we can't change this to require more evidence as-is unless any examples already have more evidence.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Jul 20th 2023 at 10:03:55 AM

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.

This is weird because:

• I wouldn't think there would be debate over who a band's frontman is (but maybe I just don't pay too much attention to music fandom) and I think that a band could have more than one e.g. Vocal Tag Team as long as there's sufficient context for it.
• I can see how such a concept would impact a fictional band (e.g. the That Thing You Do! example on the page) so it can definitely be A Trope
• The on page examples, besides being Natter Central (it's an old page), seem to have a good number of entries that only describe 1-2 faces and how they're prominent — enough that if we counted all the properly-contextualized examples as potential wicks I think the page would still be healthy.

What if we renamed to something like The Bands Frontman? Maybe 'face' is misleading, and 'frontman' is at least a term often used when describing bands.

Edited by Synchronicity on Jul 20th 2023 at 10:23:06 AM

The Bands Frontman does sound like a good name option if we decide to rename.

she/her | TRS needs your help! | Contributor of Trope Report

Definitely support Frontman getting used in its next incarnation (be it rename or yard/TLP).

Vehicle-Based Characterization | Grief-Induced Split | Locker Mail

If we're redefining this as referring to frontmen (instead of any other member, which the current definition can refer to due to it being about the band member's visibility to fans instead of their objective role), that would mean making this objective instead of YMMV, and we'd need a new name to indicate that (The Bands Frontman would work).

Edit: And if we're redefining this to refer to frontmen, that would be a regular trope and not Trivia, in addition to it not being YMMV.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Jul 20th 2023 at 12:09:02 PM

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.

The proposed solution sounds good to me.

Agreed with Random Troper about the proposal.

Edited by Echidna on Jul 20th 2023 at 3:54:53 PM

This can be made objective if "recognized" is replaced with "featured", as usually bands have a representetive who gets most of the credit.

TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup

I agree that that focusing on who's given the most focus by the band and/or marketing, rather than who fans think is the most visible, would be objective in addition to the previous proposal of converting this into a trope about frontmen.

An example of materials objectively focusing on a single member who isn't the lead singer would be all AC/DC album covers that feature a single member (in contrast to how at least one album cover features multiple members, while several don't show anyone), which always feature the lead guitarist instead of the lead singer.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Jul 20th 2023 at 3:20:22 AM

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.

I just don't think that's going to fix the issue, at least not when it comes to actual bands IRL. Unlike with fiction, where these things are often simplified and made glaringly obvious so characters can fit into an archetype, things are messy IRL. Many bands have multiple people who could claim that title depending on what metrics you're using to define "most prominent". For a band like Fall Out Boy, an argument can be made for vocalist Patrick Stump (voice is very unique, flamboyant performer, always front and center and in every promo of the group) or bassist and lyricist Pete Wentz (considered the most attractive and charismatic, off-stage personality is very big and revealed through lyrics, is just as regularly featured in promos as Patrick because of it)

Or K-Pop groups where there's designated roles such as: The Leader of the group who in general handles all of the interview and promotional questions (so in terms of IRL person-to-person interaction, they could be said to be the Frontman, but still not show up that often in music videos, sing that often in songs, or be centered in photos); main vocalists (who have the most singing lines and thus get the most face time in videos); the visual (a person explicitly in the group for their good looks, who is also often prominently featured in promos); the center (the person who is considered the central focus of the group overall); and the main dancer (who will be featured prominently in music videos for their dancing). Yes there is overlap and yes a person can be multiple roles, but for larger groups (and having groups of 7+ members is pretty common in kpop), these are often all different people [1].

Especially since we're not going off of hard numbers, a trope like this is prone to devolving into, if not debates, then examples where multiple people are listed as a compromise, which seems at odds with its definition.

because of this i can't tell whether it would be better off 1) making it NRLEP, 2) making it YMMV, or 3) making it Def-Only or Fan Speak

Edited by amathieu13 on Jul 20th 2023 at 4:50:41 AM

Now that you mention it, yeah, Amonimus's idea of making it about who's featured more instead of recognized more isn't as easy to work out as Synchronicity's idea of making it solely about lead vocalists, since the latter would be clearly set in stone.

Also, I'm not sure why you pointed to my post when I was commenting on someone else's idea (which I may have misinterpreted since I was tired at the time) and not proposing an idea of my own; the post above mine was the one that proposed that idea.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Jul 20th 2023 at 11:22:59 AM

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.

Reworking it to be about a band member who gets disproportionate marketing focus would require sending it to the TLP to gather examples, correct? Because none of the misuse is in that direction.

My first choice in this thread was to cut the current page and either Yard any proposals or send them to TLP because of how much of a mess the current incarnation of Face Of The Band is. I'm starting to lean back toward favoring that after taking a look at the wick check and seeing how small the list of good examples is and how large the amount of ZCEs and other unclear examples is.

I think how much of a mess this is means the idea of retooling this into an objective trope about lead vocalists probably wouldn't be workable either unless it's done from scratch via TLP.

Edit: I saw that the inbound count is 5,368 since 2012 despite the page existing since 2008, so even though it has quite a few wicks (which we've established are mostly bad), the inbound count doesn't appear to be very high, so I'm willing to put a full-fledged cut on the table if we Yard any of the proposals that came up or take anything straight to TLP without Yarding.

With that in mind, I'm now in favor of cutting the current page and Yarding/TLPing whatever ideas are determined to be workable, since I don't think retooling this as-is would be doable due to how much we'd have to get rid of, as opposed to how TLP would be able to work on fixing the lack of workable examples by finding more.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Jul 20th 2023 at 12:11:20 PM

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.

Leaning towards cutting and yarding as well at this point.

For some reason I was under the impression that this is a pre-existing term, so we should salvage something from the page, if only to keep the name. Since I found that it's not, any tropeworthy ideas need to be built from scratch.

Edited by Adept on Jul 24th 2023 at 8:50:27 PM

See, I just don't know if "band frontman" is a noteworthy concept, considering it's just sort of the way bands are structured. Where would it even go, Trivia?

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Maybe it isn't, and either way, the lack of good examples means I don't think there's anything to put on the table other than cutting and Yarding/sending to TLP, and we could defer to TLP to sort out tropeworthiness issues if it ends up being taken there. (I don't mean it has to be taken there; I'm speaking hypothetically since I don't TRS can retool Face Of The Band without TLP being involved, meaning sorting out tropeworthiness would be TLP's job if anything ends up being taken there after this thread is done.)

Edited by GastonRabbit on Jul 20th 2023 at 1:47:20 PM

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.

I mean, I'd rather just cut. Maybe yard if there's anything noteworthy here, but I really don't see Band Frontman being worth talking about. It's just sorta... a thing. Popularity and marketing presence are more notable, even if they're not as easy to pin down.

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

I could get behind a plain cut, especially since Yarding being a free action means there's no need for a crowner to explicitly mention it anyway.

Edit: I don't mean I support Yarding. I'm just saying the fact that TRS isn't needed for it means that this thread doesn't need to do anything with it.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Jul 20th 2023 at 1:50:17 PM

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.

Is cutting allowed, at 1.5k wicks/5.4k inbounds? (Serious question, as I'm unaware of what the upper bound for cuts is.)

Ah, my b. I should get some sleep and not skim threads tiredly.

Edited by Yindee on Jul 21st 2023 at 3:06:12 PM

Vehicle-Based Characterization | Grief-Induced Split | Locker Mail

I already said it is because while that inbound count would be good for a newer page, this page was made in 2008 and the inbound count dates back to 2012, meaning it's not that high relative to its age.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Jul 21st 2023 at 2:02:01 PM

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.