Talk:Charles Aznavour/GA2

GA Review

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Reviewer: Ritchie333 (talk · contribs) 16:12, 1 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It's a shame the previous review was abandoned, but I'm happy to carry on. I have to admit my experience of the man is mainly hearing "She" in various arrangements at weddings, and thinking how unlike Serge Gainsbourg he is, so hopefully I'll learn something en route.

The first thing that strikes me as odd is that the article is only 16K of prose. For a major international star having decades of success, I would have thought the amount of prose to cover his entire career to be more. I think I might need further investigation into this, as I'd expect a ballpark figure to be closer to 25-30K.

Specific comments will follow. Ritchie333 ^(talk) ^(cont) 16:12, 1 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Lead

I assume from the opening sentence that Charles Aznavour is still not his legal name? Although stage names are often not legally changed, as a naturalised Frenchman, there could be cause for him doing so well before he achieved fame.
"Aznavour is known for his unique tenor" - the body, however, says it "is shaded towards the tenor range, but possesses the low range and coloration more typical of a baritone". Although sourced to the New York Times, it may be simpler to drop "tenor"
"clear and ringing in its upper reaches, with gravelly and profound low notes" - this really needs a full explanation in the body to be appropriate for the lead
"and sold well over 100 million records (as of 2001)" - do we have a more up to date figure?
"He is one of" - for new paragraphs I tend to prefer restating the noun again, in this case "Aznavour is one of" (same issue in the next paragraph)
"He is also arguably the most famous Armenian of his time" - I'd recommend removing this, as a quick spin through Lists of Armenians suggests there are lots of "famous" people who may contest that view
"edging out Elvis Presley and Bob Dylan" - "ahead of Elvis Presley and Bob Dylan" sounds better
"with his long-time friend impresario Levon Sayan" - should be a comma between "friend" and "impresario"
"as well as Armenia's permanent delegate to the United Nations at Geneva" - this fact is not in the body
"He started his most recent tour in 2014." - I'd probably leave this out of the lead; it will go out of date if left alone
There doesn't seem to be any basic biographical details in the lead, being more of a general list of accomplishments. I would expect Édith Piaf's influence to be listed somewhere

Life and career

Background

File:Knarazn.jpg is marked as {{PD-US}}, implying it was published before January 1, 1923 - 16 months before Aznavour was born. This needs fixing otherwise the image is at risk of being deleted.
"Aznavour was born with the name" - just "Aznavour was born" will suffice
Using three citations to cite the individual components of his birth name is quite jarring and makes the prose difficult to read. It would be simpler to put the citations at the end of the sentence (the Embassy of the Republic of Armenia in Switzerland source is already there as it is)
What makes musicme.com a reliable source?
billetnet.fr appears to be a wiki, which I assume can be edited by anyone without strict editorial control or fact checking. This source cannot be used.
"Michael Aznavourian sang in restaurants" - just "Michael" will do here, per WP:LASTNAME the family name cannot be used as it is ambiguous, so the first name is used instead
"Caucasian" wikilinking to Peoples of the Caucasus sounds like an odd choice of link
The frimusique.com source citing most of the first paragraph is a dead link. The Embassy source could be used here as it documents some of the claims made.
"His big break came in" - I'm not sure "big break" is a good term to use here, and in any instance it duplicates information in the next section. This sentence should be removed.

Music

Since no other member of his family had the name Aznavour, per WP:LASTNAME, that should be the case here ie : no "Charles"
"Meanwhile, Aznavour wrote his first song" - presumably, given the context, this was his first solo-written song, in which case it should be clarified as such
"Piaf helped Aznavour develop" .. to avoid repetition, "She helped Aznavour develop"
"a distinctive voice that stimulated the best of his abilities" - this claim is a little vague. What was "distinctive" about the voice exactly?
"Sometimes described as "France's Frank Sinatra",[10] Aznavour sings frequently" ... this paragraph seems to read too much like a fan's point of view
The narrative seems to skip from 1950, briefly to 1974 to mention "She" and some events in the 1990s, while the bulk of the biography is concerned with events from 2006 onwards. Per WP:RECENTISM, this doesn't appear to be focused. The 1960s and 1970s, surely when he was enjoying major success, seem to be largely glossed over.

Film

This section is unsourced

Armenia and abroad

This section is unsourced

Politics

This section has some unsourced ends of paragraphs

Dubbing Le Pen "far-right" makes little sense except if you assume the Left Wing approach is correct. She could easily be considered a French populist or nationalist in the sense that she is pro-French culture and against the wave of globalism which swept Europe in its EU fervor. On the other hand, it is true that Wikipedia leans toward the Left and so that is perhaps the reasoning. This all depends on whether Wikipedia aspires to be politically neutral (thus far, it appears not).

Awards and recognition

Not all the claims here are sourced. Also per WP:EMBED (part of the GA criteria), these would be better represented as prose, possibly moving into a breakout List of awards and nominations received by Charles Aznavour article

Filmograpy

This section would benefit from being split into a breakout article, Charles Aznavour filmography

Summary

I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, particularly after you've waited so long for a review, but I see several major problems with this article that I think are going to prevent us from it meeting the GA criteria in a short timespan. Key issues are the lack of breadth of coverage, problems with recentism leading to a lack of focus, some issues with images, and some questionable or missing references.

To do the article justice, I think we need some quality sources that cover Aznavour's career in depth. I can see some coverage in Encyclopedia of Music in the 20th Century and Portraits of Hope: Armenians in the Contemporary World, but without a good biography (and I suspect if there is one, it will be in French), documenting a balanced account of his career would involve undertaking the level of research required for such a biography, and that unfortunately looks to be a really hard sell.

So I think I'm going to have to fail the review at this time. Sorry.Ritchie333 ^(talk) ^(cont) 17:31, 1 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]