Before I go to the trouble of adding the missing discs, what would you all do with the artist credits on this release?
As you can see here, the artists are credited as “Made famous by”, they are not the performers or even necessarily the composers (and I don’t think being instrumental guitar music is enough to qualify this for CSG). I can’t find any indication of an artist. AllMusic mentions “4am” which it lists as the label.
Should I leave the artists as credited, use “unknown” with an artist credit… ? (And also is it really a VA release or compilation? Seems like one person or group did all of this.)
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Tricky one. I guess you don’t have a box or booklet for it to find who the real performer was.
One problem I see with the data as it currently has been entered means it now pops up as a Track Recorded by George Michael (etc) on their artist pages. Which is not technically correct. These are covers by “[unknown]”.
If these “made famous by” names need to go in somewhere I would be tempted to butcher the track titles. It is likely they are written like that on the cover if Amazon have listed them like that. So it would be “Careless Whisper by George Michael” and then the artist “Unknown” (until someone gets hold of a copy of the actual booklet)
The reasoning behind this naming is you can almost hear the guitar player announcing each track in this manner when they are sitting in the high street busking.
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Yeah, I don’t have a physical copy. I stumbled on it while messing with Bryan Adams recordings.
I’m not sure adding it to the title is ideal, although I see what you mean about that. This is another case where a lead join phrase would be helpful.
I added the recording comments for now, to at least clarify that this isn’t a performance by that artist, but I’m still inclined to change them all, and the album artist, to unknown.
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It’s an instrumental cover album.
Like many similar cover albums (including Ed Starink stuff) disguised as if they were VA compilations of famous stuff to trick the supermarket consumer.
Sometimes the performer is written in very small letters, sometimes even not at all.
It’s not as frequent as it used to be, now that music records are not bought that much anymore (unfortunately).
You should change all artists to unknown right away to stop the treachery. 
I queued the https://musicbrainz.org/edit/65905364 already, after checking that all recordings were linked to appropriate works, you can review it.
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What do you think @psychoadept of the following track names and artists? I think it would be nice:
%tracknumber%. %title% - %artist% (%length%)
1. Baker Street (made famous by Gerry Rafferty) - [unknown] (4:35)
2. Being With You (made famous by Smokey Robinson) - [unknown] (3:55)
3. Bette Davis Eyes (made famous by Kim Carnes) - [unknown] (3:36)
4. Careless Whisper (made famous by George Michael) - [unknown] (4:45)
5. The Sweetest Taboo (made famous by Sade) - [unknown] (3:56)
6. (Everything I Do) I Do It for You (made famous by Bryan Adams) - [unknown] (4:09)
7. The Girl From Ipanema (made famous by Stan Getz & Astrud) - [unknown] (2:58)
8. Head Over Heels (made famous by Tears for Fears) - [unknown] (4:14)
9. Heartbreaker (made famous by Dionne Warwick) - [unknown] (4:19)
10. Hotel California (made famous by Eagles) - [unknown] (5:43)
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Yeah - this ^^^ what @jesus2099 suggests. Dump the disambugeration texts and put it into the titles. Covers all bases then.
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I don’t know why we would put it in the title when we can just enter it as an artist credit for unknown.
You can’t credit George Michael for performing the track when it is some unknown guitar player. This is not a normal compilation, it is a cover album. The artist is the person doing the covers.
You can’t really say that “[unknown] is performing as George Michael” as the artist will still be using their own name and never pretends to be George. Just performs his work.
I would also agree that this is NOT a VA or a compilation. It is a single release of one [unknown] artist.
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I’m not saying the artist should be George Michael, I’m saying put unknown (which is already done) with an AC of “made famous by George Michael” (or whoever)
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It could be misunderstood and fixed to full George Michael later on by another editor, I think.
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If the join phrase it there, I don’t think there’s any more risk than by putting it in the title. It’s just like what we do with bootlegs that are incorrectly attributed.
I think this is something you may need to do at your own tagging level. I can’t see anywhere that a claim is made on the artist of the track being “George Michael”. An alias or AC is not logical as the [unknown] artist is clearly playing everything and that is how it is shown on the release cover too.
They are not pretending to be George, and by reading the comments on this release they certainly don’t sound like him. And no where on the cover is “artist intent” hinting at it being George. They are just a cover artist playing cover versions of famous tracks.
Look at it from the other angle. If you are digging through George’s tracks would you want to find this painful version?
If you found it under the [unknown] artist it would again be misleading to use an AC here as [unknown] is always consistently [unknown] on this album playing in their own way.
(Yes I am picking on George as a single example. Feel free to swap him for Sade and anyone else on the cover album)
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And again, this is not what I’m suggesting. Using an ac would not cause these tracks to appear under that artist’s recordings. I agree we don’t want that.
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But people with no user CSS revealing AC will think it’s a George Michael track.
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How is that different from bootlegs with wrongly attributed tracks?
Those have to be fixed as well, don’t they?
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I thought it was pretty typical to put “unknown” with an ac for the attribution on the release. Is that not the case?
If the AC of what is printed is informational on the nature of the artist, yes, but if it is misleading to another artist like here, probably not:
Informational: The woman with red T-Shirt at the metro exit number 2.
Misleading: George Michael.
What do you think?
It’s just an opinion, nothing official.
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You are selectively misreading. I also covered the [unknown] AC case.
This a is very different to a bootleg with wrongly attributed tracks. The cover does not attempt to fake anything.
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There are already a few good examples of the confusion edits like this can cause.
Look what happened to the “recording” of the [unknown] cover of the Gerry Rafferty track…
Yep… sure enough, someone trying to quickly attach a compilation to a recording has selected this dodgy cover instead of the real one.
It is a problem when people are tying to add massive compilations, making errors in all those recordings links is common. Especially if one if wading through connecting five CDs of recordings in a compilation I can see how the checking can slip.
This is why these need to be as clear as is physically possible that they are nothing to do with the Rafferty version (or any other of these tracks)
Edit to partially correct that error:
https://musicbrainz.org/edit/65940881
ARGH! I’ve looked at more of them. Bete Davis Eyes has also been incorrectly linked by a random editor…
And he Bete Davis fix is here:
https://beta.musicbrainz.org/edit/65941449
This is why Guidelines are written the way they are. Not everyone checks what they are doing - especially those messy compilations!
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