Best Ever Albums

Re: Nationality of artists

SD100852 — Tue, 30 Jan 2024 18:05:34 GMT

Author: SD100852

Posted: 01/30/2024 23:05

Stevo796 wrote:

This may be opening up a huge can of worms, but would there be an appetite to split up the UK's countries? I'd love to be able to explore the best Scottish/Welsh albums, and it may help with solving the Northern Irish issue above?

I could see that just adding another layer of complexity to the whole thing though...

I was thinking that could work well too, especially as you have bands such as the Manic Street Preachers where being Welsh is a huge part of their identity.

Re: Nationality of artists

Arthurknight — Thu, 28 Sep 2023 00:29:41 GMT

Author: Arthurknight

Posted: 09/28/2023 04:29

I'm surprised I haven't yet seen something like this suggested but in my opinion at the top of the hierarchy of criteria for defining an artist or group's nationality should be the the nationality which has been expressed by the artists themselves. Artist provided biographies and self-description when clearly articulated should trump all. Moreover, we have a tendency to label POC immigrant artists in Western countries on ethnic grounds and this is not always in line with the artist's identity.

This effectively resolves almost all examples provided in this thread and others on this topic excepting two conditions:

1. The artist(s) have not clearly expressed the nationality of their group, assuming that the nationality is itself not already obvious (country of origin, formation, and currently based in are the same or heavily weighted in one direction).

2. the artist(s) have expressed a more complex sense of nationality than which can currently be represented by the existing system.

In the case of this first category of issues, it then makes the most sense to ask the question: Why does the artist/group not communicate a clear sense of nationality? Might it be misleading to try to impose one on it? Or, alternatively, do we strip an artist/group of identity and/or statehood by denationalising them? This – I think – gets us more immediately to the heart of the question of why we label artists with a nationality: to locate the cultural context that shapes their work. I find that in almost all cases where nationality is foggy the artist(s) have engaged this question in some capacity already even if not explicitly and this should be used to determine our designation.

In the case of the second category, we really have two options: Improve the system or give primacy to part of an artist(s) nationality.

Right now, we can basically do two things with nationality: clearly label an artist/group as 1 nationality, or clearly label a collaborative project/group as multi-national. The most obvious additional category to include is bi-nationality. This likely resolves 90% of cases where currently we run into issues. Until that is done we will continue to debate whether country of origin or occupation is more important and ignore the bigger picture. What about tri-nationality you ask? Quad-nationality? When will it stop you say! I'd argue that the multi-national label exists for this reason and wouldn't go away if a secondary country label was added.

Re: Nationality of artists

Stevo796 — Mon, 25 Sep 2023 04:57:43 GMT

Author: Stevo796

Posted: 09/25/2023 08:57

This may be opening up a huge can of worms, but would there be an appetite to split up the UK's countries? I'd love to be able to explore the best Scottish/Welsh albums, and it may help with solving the Northern Irish issue above?

I could see that just adding another layer of complexity to the whole thing though...

Re: Nationality of artists

SD100852 — Sat, 23 Sep 2023 20:43:28 GMT

Author: SD100852

Posted: 09/24/2023 00:43

albummaster wrote:

Country of birth would be wholly accurate if the purpose of that became country of birth/band formation instead of nationality. The difficulty becomes using that field for capturing 'nationality', and for many instances this isn't clear-cut because BEA doesn't use country of residence etc as this can be transitory. I've noticed some other websites use two or more fields to capture country of birth/formation *and* current location which somewhat gets around this, although that's a lot more data to maintain and more difficult to keep up-to-date, and doesn't quite capture the idea of nationality.

Unless we make it absolutely clear-cut, I don't think this issue can be resolved without the problem resurfacing down the line. We definitely need to refine the rules, or redraw them, for the site to function in a better way. I'm now thinking it won't be possible to get to a simple set a guidelines that can capture nationality in a way that that's not overly subjective without making the contents more factual.

Agree in the sense that a band doesn't have its own nationality, but country of formation isn't always representative of nationality, e.g. for examples outlined by Romanelli. I do agree it's the simplest solution for capturing origin if the purpose of that field was redefined and/or additional fields added to support it.

Things can also be further complicated by factors such as if artists/bands that originated from Northern Ireland identify as Irish or British for example. Plus you also have groups such as Nightwish and Viagra Boys who are both widely identified as Finnish and Swedish respectively even though the current lead vocalists of both were not born in those countries

Re: Nationality of artists

Anonymous — Sat, 29 Apr 2023 06:25:28 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 04/29/2023 10:25

albummaster wrote:

Yeah, I like having the objectivity of it, which simplifies things. And I could also ultimately go with birthplace for solo artists as their country by adding this into the definition. It’s what allmusic seems to do and I like the clarity of this site. Seems unlikely that we would be able to come up with a different and better solution to this conundrum than allmusic 😄

Re: Nationality of artists

albummaster — Sat, 29 Apr 2023 04:54:31 GMT

Author: albummaster

Posted: 04/29/2023 08:54

Romanelli wrote:

Country of birth has been the root of a lot of arguments...and country of birth may be the least single accurate way of determining an individual. For instance:

Romanelli wrote:

I agree that there will be instances where mixed is the only way. But let's figure out ways to make that really the last resort. Let's figure out how to use it as infrequently as we can, instead of using it whenever there's the slightest opportunity to do so.

Unless we make it absolutely clear-cut, I don't think this issue can be resolved without the problem resurfacing down the line. We definitely need to refine the rules, or redraw them, for the site to function in a better way. I'm now thinking it won't be possible to get to a simple set a guidelines that can capture nationality in a way that that's not overly subjective without making the contents more factual.

melisandre wrote:

Bands don’t really have nationalities so country of formation is much better. But with solo artists and collaborations it only makes sense to state nationalities. This is the difficulty I can see. I think the only solution is for country to mean something different for bands and solo artists. This would just need to be made clear on the artist editing page

Agree in the sense that a band doesn't have its own nationality, but country of formation isn't always representative of nationality, e.g. for examples outlined by Romanelli. I do agree it's the simplest solution for capturing origin if the purpose of that field was redefined and/or additional fields added to support it.

Re: Nationality of artists

Anonymous — Fri, 28 Apr 2023 16:06:32 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 04/28/2023 20:06

🤡 🤡

Bands don’t really have nationalities so country of formation is much better. But with solo artists and collaborations it only makes sense to state nationalities. This is the difficulty I can see. I think the only solution is for country to mean something different for bands and solo artists. This would just need to be made clear on the artist editing page.

Re: Nationality of artists

Romanelli — Fri, 28 Apr 2023 15:13:38 GMT

Author: Romanelli

Posted: 04/28/2023 19:13

Country of birth has been the root of a lot of arguments...and country of birth may be the least single accurate way of determining an individual. For instance:

Freddie Mercury again. Born in Zanzibar, live there until age 23. His career began well after he relocated to the UK, in exclusively bands that were formed in the UK. Do you flag Mercury with his birth flag? Mercury never recorded while he was a resident of Zanzibar.

John Butler of The John Butler Trio is flagged as an Austrailian artist, and his band is also flagged as Austrailian. However, Butler was born in California, where he lived until only the age of 11. So do we change those flags to US? Which would be completely unrepresentative of the artist and the band, considering that he never played a professional show...or, more importantly to BEA, never recorded a note of music in that country.

There are far too many examples like this...they are literally everywhere. More accurate is where the artist established their professional recording career. Where they are known for being from as a recording artist. Sure, it's good for them to be known as from where they were born...but that's really not the function of BEA.

I agree that there will be instances where mixed is the only way. But let's figure out ways to make that really the last resort. Let's figure out how to use it as infrequently as we can, instead of using it whenever there's the slightest opportunity to do so.

Re: Nationality of artists

albummaster — Fri, 28 Apr 2023 14:16:31 GMT

Author: albummaster

Posted: 04/28/2023 18:16

Romanelli wrote:

I think that with bands, we're trying to think in terms of the nationality of the individual members. If we go down that road, then nationality is going to become considerably less useful. The more we use "mixed", the less useful it is... I would think that you (I know it's true for me) would want as few Mixed Nationality artists as possible. Mixed Nationality is the BEA equivalent of "Other".

Definitely agreed on that. Country of formation should be a factor to get to the 'common sense' results we want to see, although it's not at the moment, as entirely based on membership right now (& some collaborations are formed abroad etc). There are also plenty of legitimate multi-nationality individuals. The only factual way of defining a country would be to use country of birth which doesn't the capture softer factors of where somebody grew up etc (nationality being what we are currently determining). I agree we would not be insulting people on purpose by assigning one flag, but if it's the wrong one (as far as that person is concerned), then something doesn't sit right with that (although might be the easiest option to administer). I really don't want to over-complicate things, although seem to be doing well at that, and definitely this is one aspect that has truly spun out of control. I definitely agree that Mixed should be used a last resort, where there is clearly no clear argument either way, but need to make things so simple/clear-cut, debate isn't needed .

MadhattanJack wrote:

I don't know if this is a "popular" position to take, but the best thing for BEA to do in such cases is to avoid sticking out like a sore thumb among other websites who are all saying basically the same thing, even if the other websites are ostensibly "wrong.

Definitely agree.

melisandre wrote:

I guess we could simplify things by deciding that the nationality of a band is where they formed rather than where they reside. I mean, they all met somewhere initially after all.... Helpfully, Allmusic states where a band formed rather than where they are from so this site could be a good reference point if we go with this idea.

Country of formation/country of birth would be the simplest thing to do (Occam's razor), and the field would become country of origin rather than nationality. Probably need to think about what sort of impact that might have on existing data and take into account the current burden of the existing mechanism. Right now, I'd be strongly in favour of changing it if it unblocks the existing difficulties of policing the current system and maybe this is what should be done.

Re: Nationality of artists

Anonymous — Fri, 28 Apr 2023 07:03:50 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 04/28/2023 11:03

I guess we could simplify things by deciding that the nationality of a band is where they formed rather than where they reside. I mean, they all met somewhere initially after all.

There are still issues with bands like Fleetwood Mac, who are a UK band, who effectively reformed in America and became more famous after that. But I think that perspective would resolve a lot of issues anyway.

Helpfully, Allmusic states where a band formed rather than where they are from so this site could be a good reference point if we go with this idea.

Re: Nationality of artists

MadhattanJack — Thu, 27 Apr 2023 16:57:04 GMT

Author: MadhattanJack

Posted: 04/27/2023 20:57

By the way, just in the last hour after posting that (while I was mowing the lawn, in fact) I thought of four bands just off the top of my head that are much better-known than Elizabeth Colour Wheel, but have just about the exact same nationality scenario: Garbage, That Petrol Emotion, Deerhoof, and Asobi Seksu. None of these are listed on BEA as "Mixed Nationality," and personally I would consider it rather absurd if any of them were. (I'm probably going to think of a few more over the course of the next several hours, but hopefully that's enough precedent for now.)

(Admittedly, I also thought of a counter-example, namely Miami Sound Machine — but again, I would classify them as American, not Cuban, even though Gloria Estefan was born in Havana.)

Re: Nationality of artists

MadhattanJack — Thu, 27 Apr 2023 16:09:36 GMT

Author: MadhattanJack

Posted: 04/27/2023 20:09

albummaster wrote:

...that's one of many that have been difficult to moderate - Elizabeth Colour Wheel is the latest instance.

Elizabeth Colour Wheel...? They've only made one album, and honestly it's not even all that good. And I agree with Romanelli - that's an American band who just happen to have a Chinese singer, who mostly resides in the USA. (Though to be fair, considering the extreme pretentiousness that's on that page I just linked to, I can see why some Americans would rather have them show up under a different flag.)

I don't know if this is a "popular" position to take, but the best thing for BEA to do in such cases is to avoid sticking out like a sore thumb among other websites who are all saying basically the same thing, even if the other websites are ostensibly "wrong." In ECW's case, there's no Wikipedia article, so the next-best thing (not that a Wikipedia article is all that great) is probably Discogs, and all three related Discogs pages essentially have her/them as based in the USA:

ECW: "4 piece band from the North East US"
Lane Shi: "Experimental artist. Born in Haining, China, located in Brooklyn, NY, United States."
Otay:onii: "otay:onii (official capitalization) is an experimental project from US. Born in Haining, China, located in Brooklyn, NY, United States."

...So, to me, having ECW the band listed as "Mixed" only makes sense if we assume the band came into existence the moment Lane Shi was born. Also, this "official capitalization" stuff is not just pretentious, it's a selfishly-put burden on others (i.e., us), so you know, a big "nyaah nyaah nyaah" on them, I say.

Re: Nationality of artists

Romanelli — Thu, 27 Apr 2023 10:50:16 GMT

Author: Romanelli

Posted: 04/27/2023 14:50

My opinion on this...

I think that with bands, we're trying to think in terms of the nationality of the individual members. If we go down that road, then nationality is going to become considerably less useful. The more we use "mixed", the less useful it is. If we use individual nationalities to determine what to use for bands...we'll have Fleetwood Mac (a UK band) as mixed. Metallica (a US band) as mixed. White Lion (a US band). Arguments will pop up for Van Halen, The Band, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers (they had a British drummer for over 20 years). The bass player for The Black Crowes for over 20 years is from Germany. I could go on...for hours.

My point is that we're making things far too difficult for such a small thing. If having nationalities on your charts is important to you, then I would think that you (I know it's true for me) would want as few Mixed Nationality artists as possible. Mixed Nationality is the BEA equivalent of "Other".

For the examples above: Fleetwood Mac was formed in the UK. Metallica was formed in the US. White Lion was formed in the US. Van Halen (US). The Band (Canada). TP & The Heartbreakers (US). The Black Crowes (US). Simplify, and in the process, more bands will have a distinct nationality based on where the BAND (not necessarily all individuals) are from. It's not our jobs to be that detailed and to make those determinations. And all we have to show nationality is a single flag. We don't have the tools to worry about a band from the UK that was formed in the UK with a singer who was born in Zanzibar (Freddie Mercury became a UK citizen at age 23.) Queen is, and should be, flagged as UK.

For individual artists: where the artist's career has been based. We could plant the mixed flag on so many people...again, labelling them as basically "other". And we have been. Born in one country, now in another shouldn't mean dual nationality on BEA. Keep it simple, and give them a nationality. We're not insulting anyone by assigning a distinct flag. Simply assign a country in which their career is based. I think we're using "place of birth" and what the artist claims their nationality to be (which can be, I have seen, exaggerated), and complicating things rather than saying, "this artist, based on their career, is from _____." This isn't a site to determine those things in so much detail.

Mixed Nationality, IMO, should always be the last resort. A duo with one from US & one from UK? Absolutely. I would estimate that most individuals can be assigned a country. I would say that most bands can be as well (there would be exceptions...but last resort). I think that we should be looking for ways to NOT used Mixed Nationality instead of trying to find reasons to assign it. 11% of my overall chart are flagged as, basically, "other". On the overall chart? 29% (Top 1000). To me, that is not helpful. At all.

Maybe multiple flags can be used? I know that would be some work for AM. And that would only be really effective if only one flag per artist was designated as primary...except for tru Mixed Nationality cases.

Thank you for the opportunity to voice an opinion on this. Bottom line (for me): I don't want my charts littered with artists designated as "other". I don't know why anyone else would, either. We're not offending anyone by assigning a flag so we can see on our charts where an artist is from. Let's simplify, not try to re-invent the world of artist nationalities.

Re: Nationality of artists

albummaster — Thu, 27 Apr 2023 09:15:51 GMT

Author: albummaster

Posted: 04/27/2023 13:15

MadhattanJack wrote:

This is about Rina Sawayama, isn't it?

Sometimes you just can't win... 🙁

No, it's not - although that's one of many that have been difficult to moderate - Elizabeth Colour Wheel is the latest instance.

MadhattanJack wrote:

I'd hate to think your only way out of situations like that is to retool the database to make Nationality a 1:Many table off of Artists, because that couldn't possibly be worth the development effort. But either way, I doubt many people are putting in "Mixed" because they think that's fundamentally more desirable in situations where just one out of four or five band members is from a different country than everyone else. (I know I haven't been doing that, at least.)

We came full circle with multi-nationality earlier in the thread, and it's not workable as a solution (ok for some cases, but falls over for others). Guidelines are causing confusion, so it's nobody's fault but my own that there are oddities.

Re: Nationality of artists

MadhattanJack — Thu, 27 Apr 2023 05:23:09 GMT

Author: MadhattanJack

Posted: 04/27/2023 09:23

This is about Rina Sawayama, isn't it?

Sometimes you just can't win... 🙁

I'd hate to think your only way out of situations like that is to retool the database to make Nationality a 1:Many table off of Artists, because that couldn't possibly be worth the development effort. But either way, I doubt many people are putting in "Mixed" because they think that's fundamentally more desirable in situations where just one out of four or five band members is from a different country than everyone else. (I know I haven't been doing that, at least.)

Re: Nationality of artists

albummaster — Thu, 27 Apr 2023 04:54:08 GMT

Author: albummaster

Posted: 04/27/2023 08:54

Just resurrecting this thread (yet) again as current guidelines still resulting in too many artists being deemed 'Mixed' (which we all agree is undesirable), so we need to refine the wording to make it less ambiguous, so the guidelines produce expected/logical results without ambiguity.

It feels like I'm making rules up on the fly, but just thinking if we are having problems deciding between 'mixed' or a specific nationality, a series of further tests could be applied e.g. for collaborations, was the collaboration formed in the same country as the majority of its members?

Are there any other tests that could be added to the guidelines to better able BEA to self-govern? Nationality assignment is the only current area that is consistently causing issues with data moderation (the rest of the site runs fairly smoothly). Or is this just making things even more complicated, and could guidelines be simplified to achieve the same result? (Nationality guidelines absolutely need to change, but do they need tweaking or completely rewriting to make them work?).

Re: Nationality of artists

SD100852 — Wed, 8 Jun 2022 11:07:33 GMT

Author: SD100852

Posted: 06/08/2022 15:07

ForegroundNoise wrote:

Quote:

I think it's probably better if BEA avoids listing multiple nationalities on any artist. Both because it significantly complicates data moderation, and because "nationality" can be subjective. For bands, it's more about the complication e.g. AM's example where there's a band with 5-6 members of different nationalities. For solo artists, Romanelli's John Lennon example is probably the most egregious (and I agree that we're heading in that direction), but consider Tina Turner who renounced her US citizenship in 2013 but hasn't released a (non-compilation) record since way before then; for all intents and purposes I'd consider her to be from the US.

Just to respond to this and to add a suggestion I've not seen here yet:

1. I agree that Mixed Nationality should be treated as a last resort, though I personally disagree with the idea that we should "avoid listing multiple nationalities on any artist". For individuals real-life nationality and identity is often complicated and diverse, and I think our database should reflect this (I also disagree with Romanelli that listing identity is a "luxury"; on the contrary I think it's extremely important to be mindful of the demographics of our musical tastes, especially given how Anglo-American centric us westerners can end up being in our listening habits).

2. For collectives, I personally think we should institute the same guidelines as awards bodies such as the Mercury Prize, where an artist is deemed eligible if more than 50% of its members are British/Irish. This would mean bands such as White Lion listed above would be classed as American, Arcade Fire classed as Canadian etc., even if some individual members might have a different nationality. In cases where the nationality is an even split, the dual nationality function can be used (once it's integrated onto the site), with Mixed Nationality reserved for rare cases where there are multiple nationalities present and no majority can be determined.

I cannot agree more in regards to the importantance of listing nationalities on here, one think I enjoy doing on here is looking out to see who are the top acts and albums from certain countries are and again it's always a good thing to be mindful of the demographics of our music tastes (such as say finding out how many albums I've listened to have been from acts originating in non-English speaking countries). It could also highlight the achievements and influence some countries have had on the popular music scene (for example how many highly rated albums have been made by Icelandic acts considering the population of that country is only around 360,000).

Re: Nationality of artists

albummaster — Mon, 9 May 2022 03:14:35 GMT

Author: albummaster

Posted: 05/09/2022 07:14

Hayden wrote:

Just tossing it out there—

We have the (somewhat new) 'Individual/Collaboration' option (which, I still don't quite understand the point of unfortunately). How about if the artist falls under the 'Collaboration' category, a second nationality becomes available? This new collaboration—

Thumbnail. Click to enlarge.

Limen by KMRU & Aho Ssan

—by KMRU (Kenya) and Aho Ssan (France) is classified 'mixed' strictly because it's a collaboration, even though both artists are given their nationality on our site when solo.

What if the collaboration option linked each solo artist (i.e. KMRU & Aho Ssan) instead of mixing them into a single entity (KMRU & Aho Ssan), which would then classify the act as Fr/Ke?

If that makes sense.

The collaboration/individual flag allows individual artists to be assigned to collaborations, so you can see what other acts an artist belonged to etc (e.g. obvious example of Paul McCartney being a member of Beatles & Wings etc, as well as being a solo artist). At the moment, BEA restricts membership of collaborations to those artists that already exist on the site, so not all artists have their entire membership listed (there are quite a few gaps), otherwise nationality could be derived from its members, but it would also require those artists to be fully populated with data, which is often not the case. There are also examples of collaborations with a lot more than two nationalities, and this where a dual nationality system would start to break down.

Re: Nationality of artists

Hayden — Sun, 8 May 2022 10:46:43 GMT

Author: Hayden

Posted: 05/08/2022 14:46

Just tossing it out there—

We have the (somewhat new) 'Individual/Collaboration' option (which, I still don't quite understand the point of unfortunately). How about if the artist falls under the 'Collaboration' category, a second nationality becomes available? This new collaboration—

Thumbnail. Click to enlarge.

Re: Nationality of artists

albummaster — Sun, 8 May 2022 04:22:12 GMT

Author: albummaster

Posted: 05/08/2022 08:22

Thanks for a great post ForegroundNoise (and for comments on admin pages). I think the idea of using the majority of members might be quite a good compromise (especially in smaller setups) and might yield a better result in the cases where 'Mixed' might otherwise be used (Arcade Fire a case in point). Completely my fault for drafting a set of guidelines that yield unexpected results, but I think it would be more useful if there were less artists listed as 'Mixed' especially in terms of providing aggregate country charts and compositional analysis within charts. I kind of rebutted (to myself) the need for adding dual nationality in a previous post as it doesn't really solve the problem (there will still be cases where this is not enough). Which leaves the problem unsolved without reverting to simplifying/changing the rules so they don't tie us in so many knots (maybe using country of formation and/or majority of members of a single nationality as extra tests in the case where Mixed might otherwise be used).