Talk:Babymetal

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Metal band versus idol groups

Despite BM's origins being the idol industry, they are currently not an idol group. They perform at metal and rock festivals, they get interviewed by magazines focusing on the metal genre, they cater almost exclusively to a metal audience, and their albums are included in rock/metal charts. The openers for their shows both domestically and internationally are all from the rock or metal genre. Conversely, they have almost no interaction with the Japanese idol industry anymore. And even if Japan still considers them an idol group, the band themselves operates globally and they are considered a metal band by virtually every major media outlet outside of Japan. DragonFury (talk) 11:00, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

Agreed. Binksternet (talk) 14:34, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

Look at your wester deffinition and differences between a boys/girls band and a rock/metal band. Read it and think for yourself if you can. You don't like the idol group terminollogy,fine then use your own labels for them:girls band!

"They’re usually auditioned rather than generated organically. Boy/Girl Bands often come about because a producer or executive needs a boy/girl band so they hold auditions for young artists who are chosen on their looks as much as their musical ability.

They have no control over their own musical direction. Their music is written by professional songwriters, the instruments are played by sessions musicians and producers make all the decisions.

They have stylists and choreographers who control their look and image.

A band like Metallica doesn’t fulfill those criteria . They write their own music and control their production and image. They were formed by people who wanted to play together and then found a manager rather than the other way around." Errorys123 (talk) 16:51, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

We are not here to try and decide for ourselves by evaluating their music and style. Instead, we are here to tell the reader a summary of what has been published about the band. Take a look at the published material: you will see things such as Chicago Tribune's "Everything about Babymetal is metal" and Louder Sound's description of kawai metal evolving to "global metal" with a bit of Japanese idol in the management style. There's also Kerrang's feature that describes a wider range of influences added to the metal foundation. Interview magazine expresses a different take, calling them "a hard rock group" that mixes other elements. So don't remove metal and rock genres just because you don't like them. Binksternet (talk) 17:31, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

If you feel strongly about this, then you should be able to gather reliable sources that support your belief and present it here for everyone to consider. Every sentence in this article is supported by one or more reliable references, which are listed at the bottom of the page (there are 212 when I'm writing this). What we do here is not writing based on our "opinion", but gathering reliable sources and summarizing them, and even any disagreements should be based on existing sources. PetéWarrior (talk) 22:43, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

I don't think they can be called an "idol group" even in Japan. I think they are called an "idol unit". That's what these small subgroups of large idol groups are called. (Yes, I know they aren't a subgroup of Sakura Gakuin anymore. But still, an idol group is typically a large group with many members.) --Moscow Connection (talk) 23:04, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

I looked at the Japanese Wikipedia article earlier today in the course of looking at some other things, and the article there says "metal dance unit", actually. Most places I could find with Babymetal itself providing an English description, the word "band" is used in the English writing, at least. (The Japanese writing for the same information appears to use "artist".) - Purplewowies (talk) 03:56, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

This is a little WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS but I snooped around some J-Pop articles and even some that are firmly idols (even high quality articles) use "band" interchangeably with "group" or "unit".- Purplewowies (talk) 03:56, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

• Are you talking about the disambiguating words or phrases in parentheses? That's because a few years ago some people on Wikipedia strongly insisted that all band articles be disambiguated using the word "band" and not "group". If they saw an article having "(group)" appended on the end of the title, they renamed it to "(band)". They would insist that these are all called bands in English and it doesn't matter whether the members play instruments or not. (I don't know if those people are still around, cause I'm not currently into Japanese band articles.) --Moscow Connection (talk) 12:16, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
  • Interestingly, in Kpop articles the exact opposite happened a while back and those use group almost exclusively. Though I don't think this matters for the Babymetal article since almost all sources I see use band exclusively.DragonFury (talk) 13:07, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
    • Those people renamed K-pop articles too. Probably they aren't around anymore, so their actions were reversed and no one has noticed and/or cared. --Moscow Connection (talk) 16:12, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
    • Now I see what happened: Talk:4L (group)#Requested move 29 November 2018. I didn't know. (I looked at the guideline's page history. Until a few years ago it stated that disambiguation should be done using "(band)". See this version from 2016.
      "I don't think this matters for the Babymetal article". — I agree. --Moscow Connection (talk) 16:38, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

No. When I say "interchangeably" I mean in the article text. The example that I feel like I remember doing it most (since I wasn't taking notes) was Momoiro Clover Z but... yeah. (I specifically did not count disambiguation via title for anything.) - Purplewowies (talk) 12:45, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

I don't know how did you even got in the position of tolking about this subject,when obviously, you don't know much obout it,and only accept what fits in your book. Idol groups have from 2 to 100s members,there are even solo idols. Is not a rule about how many members they have to be an idol group. Idol group means that the members just sing and dance,and that is all. The genre of music,the number of members,how they promote ,have nothing to do with this.

From all the idol groups i follow and all the wiki i readed about them,this,the Babymetal one is cringe,subjectiv,full of misliding,own interpretation and have close to zero respect for Japanese culture. Strongwhite (talk) 10:49, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

Hey, I'm not a frequent editor of this page and I'm not getting involved in this larger discussion, but I saw you made your account to say this. If you mention some specific segments of the article you consider to be subjective or misleading, we could work to improve them, as Wikipedia has a strong WP:NEUTRALITY policy. I hope this helps in any way, as quickly looking over it I couldn't see any massive problems. Issan Sumisu (talk) 12:49, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

This isn't really an accusation (if it was, I'd go to SPI), but the writing style on this account (namely the line breaks and comma placement) gives me a touch of wondering if it's sockpuppetry. A more firm declaration which I don't think I need to say out loud: the argument from this person is not based in WP policy/guidelines or reliable sources. - Purplewowies (talk) 02:05, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

Babymetal said at many show "we are metal dance unit " not a band or idol group. Dony176 (talk) 21:27, 31 December 2020 (UTC)