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Good article"Heroes" (David Bowie album) has been listed as one of the Music good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.
Good topic star"Heroes" (David Bowie album) is part of the David Bowie studio albums series, a good topic. This is identified as among the best series of articles produced by the Wikipedia community. If you can update or improve it, please do so.
Article milestones
DateProcessResult
January 23, 2021Good article nomineeListed
August 8, 2022Good topic candidatePromoted
Current status: Good article

Requested move 9 September 2015

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The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: moved. Despite a few odd comments by the supporters, there is a pretty clear consensus that the current title is ambiguous, both with the song of the same title and other articles that can be written as "Heroes". Jenks24 (talk) 16:19, 25 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]


"Heroes" → "Heroes" (David Bowie album) – In the previous RM, consensus opposed replacing quotations with parenthetical disambiguation. Over time, the album (last month) looks more viewed than the song (last month). However, I'm not convinced that the stats accurately make the album more popular than the song. Also, neither is more significant than the other. But if we can't remove the quotation marks, we can concurrently keep them and add parenthetical disambiguation for clarity. George Ho (talk) 07:52, 9 September 2015 (UTC) Relisted. Jenks24 (talk) 10:11, 17 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Agree I wonder how many of those extra visits to the album page are in fact looking for the song, but land here because this is the non disambiguated page.--Gorpik (talk) 07:57, 9 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. I just Googled for "Heroes song". The first WP article listed was the article about the song. This article about the album was not even listed on the first page. If I type "Heroes" in the WP search box I see first the album (undisambiguated) and then the disambiguated title for the song. This is perfect. Folks, nothing is broken here. Nothing to see here. Disambiguating this title further (the quotes are natural disambiguation) is completely unnecessary. A few editors like George seem to think ambiguous titles are inherently problematic, but can never explain why. Let's not pretend that titles have more purpose and meaning than they do. First and foremost they are unique identifiers. It's important to understand and appreciate that if all of our titles were random totally meaningless strings, WP would work just as well as it currently does. Meaningful titles are of much more value to editors than to readers. Much like Gangsta. (which George also tried to recently change), this title meets all applicable requirements and follows all applicable conventions. --В²C ☎ 15:02, 13 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Umm... forgetting Heroes (TV series), B2C? --George Ho (talk) 16:51, 13 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
What about it? It is disambiguated, just as this article is by the way of the quotes. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 08:10, 14 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see how WP:SMALLDETAILS helps a lot. We have Baby One More Time, Like a Virgin, and Like a Prayer disambiguated because neither songs nor album is primary topic anymore. Both are equally significant. But we still have Hotel California as song and Fly Like an Eagle as album. --George Ho (talk) 09:14, 14 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
WP:OTHERSTUFF is not very persuasive. Besides, those are mostly rare examples of particularly well-known albums and songs. Let's find something broken to fix. --В²C ☎ 00:25, 15 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
If you are going to use this shortcut very often, B2C, I'm going to propose a retarget soon. That way, it is no longer restricted or limited to deletion discussions. --George Ho (talk) 00:52, 15 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
It has a bearing on why someone would make finding the album difficult for those that have In ictu oculi (talk) 02:06, 18 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.
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Requested move 11 January 2018

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The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Not moved. ToThAc (talk) 19:51, 19 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Quite frankly, I do not understand after all this time why the album and the song are stylized in quotation marks. I feel like this is just a way of stylizing the album and the song, and the proper title for both articles should be Heroes without the quotation marks. JE98 (talk) 04:11, 11 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

  • Oppose Undoubtedly the name of both album and song is "Heroes", with the double quotation marks, e.g. per Pegg, Nicholas, The Complete David Bowie (7th edn.), Titan, 2016, pp. 389–92. (ISBN 9781785653650) Note also Roy Carr and Charles Shaar Murray, in their David Bowie: An Illustrated Record, Eel Pie, 1981, p. 92 (ISBN 0-906008-25-5), about the song in particular: "the quotation marks around the title [provide] an element of compassionate irony to what is essentially the purest love song that [Bowie had] written since the Young Americans album." Then there's the fact that the name "Heroes" is visible in the infobox photo of the album's cover ... Nortonius (talk) 10:44, 11 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support annoying stylism. However the redirect works either way so not losing sleep about it. In ictu oculi (talk) 12:04, 11 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. I'm not sure that it is "stylism", in the same way as upper and lower case letters might be. It seems to be a valid part of the intended artistic expression. Wikipedia really isn't good with the niceties of punctuation and diacritics, is it, no matter how "annoyed" we might be. Martinevans123 (talk) 12:14, 11 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. It’s just styling. An image search of “We can be "heroes" just for one day" shows no use of quotes, indicating that quotes are not essential for any purpose. Sometimes, another method of emphasis is applied, sometimes no emphasis at all. Some argue a nuanced meaning of “heroes”, but this is not supported by reliable sources. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:24, 11 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Hmmm, I think we may have some tension here between the intended artistic meaning and the way it's been reported in media sources, even reliable ones. All media organsitions try to impose a consistent house-style, don't they? I think even some encyclopedias do that too. Martinevans123 (talk) 12:36, 11 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • I would suggest that there are no quotation marks in the lyrics because they are the lyrics; whereas this discussion is about the name of the album and the song. Nortonius (talk) 19:26, 11 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • It seems possible that the lyrics are sung from the perspective of the people within the story, but the title is from a different, outside observer's perspective. (A description of the origin of the song can be found in the interview here.) While the characters inside the story are inspired to think of themselves as (temporary) heroes, the observer doesn't necessarily endorse that idea. —BarrelProof (talk) 01:47, 12 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, BarrelProof and his citation show that it is not just styling:

NME interviews Bowie in 1977:

Charles Shaar Murray: Why does Heroes - or more accurately "Heroes" come in quotes? Are the inverted commas actually part of the title.
DB: Yeah. Firstly - it was quite a silly point really - I thought I'd pick on the only narrative song to use as the title. It was arbitrary, really, because there's no concept to the album.
CSM: I'd felt that the use of quotes indicate a dimension of irony about the word "Heroes" or about the whole concept of heroism.
DB: Well, in that example they were ...
As identified by Charles Shaar Murray, and confirmed by Bowie, they are indeed scare quote indicating the characters' non-standard use of the term. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:58, 12 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Scare quotes, yes. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 13:15, 11 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Interesting. I've never heard of the term 'Scare quotes', which seems a bit more scary than intended. Learn something new every day (or every minute). To make up a "thing", "Visible air quotes", or maybe "yeah, right", seem closer to the meaning implied by the title. Randy Kryn (talk) 13:21, 11 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: Note that the article includes a citation to an interview in which the interviewer comments about the quote marks specifically, saying "I'd felt that the use of quotes indicate a dimension of irony about the word 'Heroes' or about the whole concept of heroism." Bowie then confirms this, saying the title of the album came from the title track, and "The situation that sparked off the whole thing was - I thought - highly ironic." In most such cases of Wikipedia title discussions, we don't have the artist themselves commenting about the question. Note also that this song is included as an example on the policy page WP:AT, saying that in this case the quote marks are part of the title. —BarrelProof (talk) 01:38, 12 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Yes indeed: this. Nortonius (talk) 14:53, 12 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Funny, it seems only this week that we are connecting the decision to a sourced justification. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:51, 13 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Apart from here in the article, you mean, adapting a quotation from Bowie that was added in 2008? Nortonius (talk) 14:45, 13 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I suggest these two proposals are both rapidly closed as "no move". Martinevans123 (talk) 15:01, 12 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
You mean per WP:SNOW? Alternatively, there is no reason to rush this process and decision, and non-rushed decisions tend to be better respected. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:51, 13 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, pretty much. I see that you have struck your own support. The only other "vote for support was from User:In ictu oculi, so perhaps he might like to reconsider too. But I agree there is certainly no rush. The current article title looks like the correct one to me. Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 14:59, 13 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
No thanks. But by all means close. In ictu oculi (talk) 16:05, 13 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I've just read the section that explains the album title and it looks like Lamar has talked about why Damn, but has given no especial significance to the period at the end. Here we have sources where Bowie provides a meaning for the quotes.--Gorpik (talk) 16:49, 18 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
This should be different because this is a totally different article and because the consensus is completely opposite? Martinevans123 (talk) 17:00, 18 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
... besides mention twice already of WP:AT ... Nortonius (talk) 17:14, 18 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Followup discussion

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The album Damn., with a dot (and several other such cases, e.g. Gangsta., at Gangsta (manga)) are just marketing stylization. The quotation marks in "Heroes" and the song "'Heroes'" whence the album gets its name are semantically meaningful (like "!" or "?" in most titles of works that include one), in this case indicating irony/sarcasm. Don't confuse punctuation being present with whether the punctuation is encyclopedically meaningful. If I make an album and call it >>Chicken<< you can expect the title here, were it notable, to be Chicken (SMcCandlish album). If a song on it is called "Wanna Play 'Chicken'?" the interior quotation marks and the question mark would be retained as meaningful.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:27, 19 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Heroes.. the inspiration

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I heard Brian Eno in an interview the other day say that the inspiration for the song came from an elderly couple of alcoholics, certainly the lyrics would suggest that ? When Tony walked back into Hansa after the kiss, Bowie said, you’re in the song... Tony was slightly alarmed as he was married at the time.. Pdrm3r (talk) 21:40, 13 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Got a link for the interview? Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 21:47, 13 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

February 2018

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In my edit summary for this edit, there's a redlink: I intended the link to point to the move discussion concerning the quotation marks, "Requested move 11 January 2018", which at the time of writing is still here on this talk page. Just so you know. Nortonius (talk) 17:58, 25 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

GA Review

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GA toolbox
Reviewing
This review is transcluded from Talk:"Heroes" (David Bowie album)/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Vaticidalprophet (talk · contribs) 06:56, 23 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

GA review
(see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not)
  1. It is reasonably well written.
    a (prose, spelling, and grammar): Top quality prose. No issues.
    b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists): Everything you need for GA.
  2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.
    a (references): No issues.
    b (citations to reliable sources): Consistently reliable sources, presented appropriately.
    c (OR): No issues.
    d (copyvio and plagiarism): No issues.
  3. It is broad in its coverage.
    a (major aspects): Oh hell yes. You could probably bring this to FAC.
    b (focused): A Berlin Trilogy article will always need to cover more ground than most albums, but this hasn't impeded the focus here.
  4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.
    Fair representation without bias: This article has serious NPOV issues, because it omits the objective and reliably sourced fact "Heroes" is the second greatest album of all time. Therefore, it must immediately fail I'm kidding, it's great.
  5. It is stable.
    No edit wars, etc.: No issues.
  6. It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate.
    a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales): All checks out (and a particularly in-depth fair use rationale for the cover art).
    b (appropriate use with suitable captions): No issues.

Overall:
Pass/Fail:

· · ·

Are you supposed to pass a GA in the first round, rather than hold it for a perfunctory week to copyedit one ref splice? Well, that's someone else's problem. I've read this article many times before, and I genuinely assumed it was a GA or even FA before I saw it on WP:GAN. I combed through the article and found one case where some references were in the wrong order. I could have easily fixed that myself, so I did. Fantastic work, so I won't make you wait any longer. Vaticidalprophet (talk) 10:11, 23 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Vaticidalprophet Wow thank you so much for the quick pass! Honestly wasn't expecting that :-) – zmbro (talk) 20:49, 23 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

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