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May 30

Beatles song genre

Our article on Don't Pass Me By tells me that it is country rock. The source is dead. I see neither country nor rock in the song. Country rock is supposed to involve "country themes, vocal styles, and additional instrumentation, most characteristically pedal steel guitars." There are no pedal steel guitars. Must we say "country rock"? HiLo48 (talk) 05:50, 30 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Personally I have no problem with calling the song country rock. The critical reception song lists several sources which describe it as a countryish song. And the country rock article refers to the song in the "expansion" section. What genre would you describe it as? --Viennese Waltz 06:27, 30 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

None of the common ones. Is it required that a song have a genre? HiLo48 (talk) 07:03, 30 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If you mean is it required for the infobox, then I don't know - speak to the people in charge of that infobox. If you mean in general, yes - it's possible to assign a genre to every piece of music. --Viennese Waltz 07:16, 30 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That's a pretty absolute claim. Got a source for it? HiLo48 (talk) 07:25, 30 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The genre is "no genre"....196.50.199.218 (talk) 08:44, 30 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Obviously you can give any item (song) a classification (genre). But some classifications will be pretty limited, possibly only a single item will be included. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 12:26, 30 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That means you'd have to come up with a name for this putative genre, and if it contained only one example it would hardly be a recognised genre, would it now? Just because some piece can't be neatly slotted into any existing genre doesn't mean it's in a genre of its own. It's simply unclassifiable. If you can find 50 pieces of unclassifiable music, they wouldn't form an "unclassified" genre. No, each would be uniquely unclassifiable, and none of them would get a genre name. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:32, 31 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Why wouldn't they? I see no problem with a single piece being its own genre. Every genre starts with only a single example. Some become massively popular, inspiring a host of others. Some have more modest followings. And others remain singletons. That doesn't make them any less distinct. Maybe that comes from my bio background. There are many single species genera and even single species families. All that matters is their distinction from other genera or families. The idea of single piece genres seems perfectly fine to me. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 00:07, 2 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe it works in scientific nomenclature. And in mathematics there's the empty set (some non-mathematicians might say it's not a set at all). Not so with creative arts. Types of music only become a genre when there's a critical-enough mass of them for people to notice the similarities. John Cage is famous for his "4′33″", which consists of a pianist sitting at the piano and playing literally nothing, for 4 minutes and 33 seconds. That could never possibly become a genre, because the idea has exactly one possible manifestation. Anyone writing 9 minutes and 17 seconds of silent music ("Variations on a Theme by John Cage", perhaps?) would be laughed out of town as a musical plagiarist par excellence. A concert of music of this putative genre would consist of John Cage's piece played 20 times, because that's the sole piece of that type, and there will never be another. For the same reason, Wikipedia does not permit categories to be created that contain only one article. Categories and genres consist of multiple things of the same type. No multiples means no genres and no categories. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:15, 2 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

maybe the audio equivalent of "watching paint dry"? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:20, 2 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

1) I would say that 7 minutes and 54 seconds of someone not playing a saxophone would be a different piece from the 4 minutes 33 seconds of not playing a piano that you mention, but both would be in the same genre. 2) Not being allowed to create a category within the Wikipedia system is not the same as the category not existing in the real world. 3) I do wonder, though, if you would disagree with dividing the world into the categories "me" and "not me".--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 20:39, 5 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

How would that differ from playing a brand-new blank tape? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:06, 5 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Jack was mistaken about the instrumentation of 4'33". It is for any number and combination of instruments. Mike Batt staged a publicity stunt for one of his records by including a track "A One Minute Silence", saying in one minute what Cage took 4'33" to say. Personally I think Cage plagiarised remembrance services. DuncanHill (talk) 22:26, 5 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I stand corrected about the instrumentation, but in this case it really is a distinction without a difference. Silences at remembrance services are not about absence of music per se. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 23:42, 6 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the Music Genome Project in this discussion. --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇} 04:08, 7 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sure I've been to such services where the "minute of silence"occurred with instrumental musical accompaniment. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 18:30, 8 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

On the "The Beatles" website (maintained by Apple Corps, so it can hardly get more official), the infobox on their page for "Don't Pass Me By" has "Genre Country rock". ‑‑Lambiam 09:05, 30 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Official. Maybe. But I don't understand it. HiLo48 (talk) 09:39, 30 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Many of the songs that Ringo sang for the Beatles, and in his subsequent solo career, have a country style to them. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 10:38, 30 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I've seen an interview with Paul where he says Ringo introduced the rest of the band to country music when he joined, he had loads of albums they'd never heard of. DuncanHill (talk) 21:34, 2 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There's a very country style to the fiddle playing in it. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 12:29, 30 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There's that, there's the chorus's final "don't pass me by" (after "I hate to see you go") which can remind one of "because you're mine" in "I Walk the Line" ... the verses can remind one of folky ballad stanzas as heard, for example, in "The Yellow Rose of Texas". Personally, I think country rock is fitting enough (and I'm not a huge fan of genre categorization). ---Sluzzelin talk 21:55, 30 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

And the western saloon piano. DuncanHill (talk) 21:34, 2 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]