David Bowie’s “1984/Dodo”

I have made an edit batch to rename our current 1984 / Dodo to 1984/Dodo.

This track is IMO a fusion between two songs, not really a medley, as Wikipedia calls it, nor two consecutive songs performed the one after the other.

In fact it goes back and forth between the two songs and that mashup makes up a whole new interesting song, super consistently printed either as 1984/Dodo or as 1984/DODO on all the releases I could visually check, including two in hands.
I have checked all tracklists visually and except one that I could not find, I have never seen it printed with spaces, never ever.

As it is not really either a medley nor two recordings in sequence, I don’t think it is appropriate to force alter it into either MedleyStyle or MultipleTitleStyle in this case.

Original edit notes:

It’s slightly redundant but…
My point is that I think there are some special cases where guidelines should not be applied too boldly.

@rossetyler does prefer that we apply the guidelines anyway, and what about you?

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I am not sure I keep changing my mind. At the moment I am slightly siding with you. But I don’t know the tracks at all.

However what I would say is that this is a about musicbrainz style " / " vs “/” and not what the cover art says. What the cover art says is irrelevant here.

MultipleTitleStyle says it’s for when a track contains “a track includes two or more songs”; by that wording it applies.
I follow your reasoning, but then that style guideline should perhaps be amended to “a track includes two or more songs consecutively”.

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Release tracklists are the most valuable to me, in general, why wouldn’t they be?
And « A seeming error may be considered evidence of artist intent if it is consistently found on all of an artist’s official releases. » — from ArtistIntent

I thought it was obvious that it meant to list titles in order. :slight_smile:

Another instance of 2 songs being interwined is
Scarborough Fair / Canticle by Simon and Garfunkel. And the work is listed as a version of Scarborough Fair. Which seems just wrong.

You can add the Canticle song, version linked to the composite work.
It is not really wrong, it has yet to be completed, isn’t it?
Sometimes relationships have to look like that, at least temporarily, because the missing half is not yet in MB.

What I meant was that we have style rules are capitalization, different bracket and words fro remixes, etc, etc) The split track " / " is one of these.

In general IMHO we need a lot of evidence to have artist intent. Generally something coming the artist itself is needenot just the cover case type.

This is an attractive and yet dangerous interpretation.
I will try to apply it responsibly. :innocent:

I am more enclined to think that we need a lot of evidence to show when there is no artist intent.

I mean, in this case, it seems that every single prints, booklets, back covers, and even digital and even bootlegs are consistent, except MB.

Even if we were to find exceptions for this song somewhere, it would be just an exception because I have already gone through all the major editions.

I think it would be fair to consider “1984/Dodo” the actual name of the resulting work of splicing the two songs. At some point a “medley” switches over into being a new unique work, IMO, and from the description here, I’d say that it sounds like that’s happened.

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Thanks @Freso.
We already do have this work.
The issue is more about the actual name of the work/recording/tracks — “1984 / Dodo” → “1984/Dodo” — that goes against all of our guidelines and language specific “rules”:

And I’m arguing it doesn’t go against any guidelines. “Multiple titles / Split” say “When […] a track includes two or more songs […]” - my argument is that it only contains the one song/work, “1984/Dodo”, even if that one song/work is the result of mixing parts from other songs/works.

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I won’t comment on this specific case, but I will inform you that Style/Principle/Error correction and artist states that the burden of proof lies on whoever claims artist intent.

If you want to claim that some deviation from the Style Guidelines should be considered artist intent, the burden of proof lies on you.

… which is then immediately followed by a classic way of spotting artist intent, exactly our case:

:wink:

And I think I took the burden quite seriously by linking to each and every scans, exempt one I did not find. :wink: :wink: