Houston, We (Most Likely) Have A Problem

Okay... My concern is that SHS has not credited songs correctly in a very specific situation, namely when a) music and lyrics are credited separately for a song and b) that song is adapted with completely different and independent lyrics. This issue first came to my attention when I filed the error report below:

https://secondhandsongs.com/case/66693

Examples would be:

Io che non vivo (Senza te) / You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

Romance / Can't Help Falling in Love

Comme d'habitude / My Way

As I just got thru hacking thru the SHS list for "My Way" and my resulting observations resulted in this post, let's use this one to review. First, per Wiki Paul Anka completely rewrote new lyrics and per SHS the original song credits the music and lyrics separately:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Way

Comme d'habitude

Except for instrumentals, in my view this means subsequent adaptions are either translating the original song or "My Way", but not both.

Second, I would assume that the vast majority of adaptions are translations of "My Way", yet I believe every adaption on site currently credits Gilles Thibault (the original's lyricist) but not Anka. Some random examples (tho some may actually be translations of the original):

So leb Dein Leben

Mijn leven

A mi manera

What's specifically interesting about "A mi manera" is that it's coded as an adaption of an adaption, where Roberto Livi (the first translator) gets a credit yet Anka remains missing.

On one hand, I hope I have analyzed the current situation correctly so as to not have wasted the editors' time. On the other, I hope that everything is just peachy keen so as to not trigger a major clean-up project.

If there is a problem, perhaps in these situations each song (i.e. "Comme" and "My Way") should get its own page, with a comment as to its previous history. This would make every subsequent adaption easily identified with the correct "original", though how instrumentals get handled I don't know.

It's been two weeks sans response? Are my observations correct or am I misreading things?

We're working on it! You are not being ignored, and, as Bastien explained, more often than not it's a matter of visualization rather than data accuracy.

If you have suggestions on how you'd like credits to be displayed, feel free to post them. For instance, would you like "original credits" to be hidden, or given more emphasis? Or "new credits" given more or less emphasis?

In My Way's case, it's not only about visualization/data accuracy, but something more metaphysical... If I get your point correctly, you say that Anka should be given credit for each adaptation that was inspired by (or translates) his lyrics.

Imagine I find a Korean adaptation: first of all, I have to compare at least the French and English lyrics with the Korean lyrics, to see if the Korean lyricist drew inspiration from Thibault, Anka, or maybe Nakajima or even Nina Hagen... Which is a problem, but after all, it's our problem, right? Data accuracy...

Let's say the Korean lyricist somehow used Anka's lyrics as a surce of inspiration, and let's say Anka doesn't know Korean and had no control over the Korean adaptation: should Anka be credited for something he had no participation in? Visualization...

I totally see your point and I'm not particularly keen on the way credits are currently displayed. But we need to strike a balance between visualization and data accuracy, if possible, avoiding metaphysical issues.

Perhaps this issue is more art than science than we might like or I originally realized, but I'm still not convinced of the "visualization" explanation. What I see on site just does not reconcile. For instance, when an adaption of "My Way" doesn't note Anka on my screen, something more is amiss.

As for the "inspired by", that phrase is me trying to verbalize the broader translate concept. I would say that, unless we have strong evidence that an adaption uses entirely independent lyrics from the original, all subsequent versions credit the original lyricist (except instrumentals). It would seem to me that a straight-up translation is easier the closer the languages are related. A Korean adaption of an English original may need to use a materially different lyric structure, yet attempt to convey the same/similar message, hence my "inspired".

"Inspired by" is a perfect way to put it, because a song can never be translated the same way novels or poems are.

In fact, an adapter doesn't even have to understand the original lyrics, he just have to write new lyrics that fit the melody. But even when adapters use the original lyrics as a starting point, will they just translate the words, one by one? Unlikely, I say. Will they use the same puns? Highly unlikely. Not to mention metrics, rhymes... In the end, the lyrics inevitably become different, even if the songwriters do their best to keep the same imagery.

Are we sure we're still talking about cover songs? Sounds more like comparative textual analysis to me...

A well-known example in Italy is "If I Had a Hammer". The original song is about love, freedom, peace, protest, civil rights and so on. The Italian adaptation is "Datemi un martello" (Give me a hammer) and it's about a girl who want to use the hammer to beat up another girl, who's more popular with boys than she is, and then the couples who want to dance slow numbers instead of rock'n'roll songs, and then the telephone so that her parents won't call her to tell her she has to go home, and finally whoever doesn't agree with her and spoils the party...

But it's still about using a hammer...

Sheesh, sounds like we might have more independent lyric adaptions than I had imagined.

Your Italian example seems to be a strange evolution from "If I Had A Hammer" to "Maxwell's Silver Hammer"

Looking to clean up my credits for Feelings .., and reviewed the wiki, which seems to suggest that Morris Albert created completely new lyrics for existing music. If correct, this would mean that this is another example for this lingering thread.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feelings_(Morris_Albert_song)

I changed some adaptations in the 'Feelings' tree; the reasoning behind it: these cover songs wouldn't exist without the Morris Albert song. One could say the same of instrumentals of course, but there is a difference, though hard to explain.

Does the adaptation tree look good to you now?

Last edit: 2017-05-31 11:43:41 UTC by walt

Quote from walt

I changed some adaptations in the 'Feelings' tree; the reasoning behind it: these cover songs wouldn't exist without the Morris Albert song. One could say the same of instrumentals of course, but there is a difference, though hard to explain.

Does the adaptation tree look good to you now?

The tree is less of a concern, tho I suppose helpful. My issue is with crediting the original lyricist when the adaption creates new lyrics entirely (with no inspiration).

Feelings

Written by Morris Albert

Original music written by Louis Gasté

Original lyrics written by Marie-Hélène Bourquin, Albert Simonin

Feelings by Morris Albert

Written by Morris Albert, Louis Gasté, Marie-Hélène Bourquin, Albert Simonin

Why are Marie-Hélène Bourquin and Albert Simonin credited all all here?

Oh I see, that's strange indeed.

Mathieu, can this be solved please? following the work, every 'Feelings' performance contains the original lyricists of 'Pour toi', which is not OK, I think.

Here's a related, but slightly different example of messed up credits. Management keeps blaming "presentation", so now I think something is lost in translation between us. The most likely culprit is how the site is coded to automatically credit and sort songs based on release dates, etc.

https://secondhandsongs.com/case/71098

The automatic sorting likely works just peachy for most situations, but needs an override option for odd situations like these.

A while ago, Bastien and I started to think of how to structure these 'overrides', but sadly it slipped out of our mind. See https://secondhandsongs.com/topic/62113 (it's already outdated, but we should have a look at it again).

I happened to return to You Don't Have to Say You Love Me ..., which still seems to credit the lyricist of the root work, but who had no effect on this derivative work:

Lyrics written by Vicki Wickham, Simon Napier-Bell

Original music written by Pino Donaggio

Original lyrics written by Vito Pallavicini

Language English

Adapted from Io che non vivo (Senza te) written by Vito Pallavicini, Pino Donaggio

This got me curious as to the status of this matter....

My return also has me begging the question..., are all the Italian performances under the root work Io che non vivo (Senza te) covers of this original or are some Italian adaptions of the English adaption by Dusty Springfield?

Another example of this issue appears to be:

Дорогой длинною {Dorogoi dlinnoyu} / Those Were the Days

https://secondhandsongs.com/case/72870

Came across this Mary Roos compilation:

https://www.discogs.com/Mary-Roos-Mary-Meine-Songs/release/12013786

What interested me about the album related to this discussion is that this artist apparently considers (based on the song's sub-title) So leb' dein Leben a cover of the adaption My Way rather than the root Comme d'habitude …, yet that is not how this work is setup on site. I will acknowledge that the Discogs credits do not include Paul Anka …. This issue remains a concern for me if not anyone else.

I will also note the likely Sie lieben dich (so wie ich) on the compilation. It's currently in my listening queue, but I was unable to track to an earlier release. Autogen suggests ~1972....