Wikipedia talk:Today's featured article/May 16, 2023

The Rolling Stones in 1966

"Paint It Black" is a song by the Rolling Stones (pictured), recorded in 1966 and released as a single in May. Two months later, London Records included it as the opening track on the American version of the band's studio album Aftermath. The song's unconventional instrumentation includes a prominent sitar, a Hammond organ, and castanets. Reviews at the time were mixed. Some music critics believed the sitar was used to attempt to copy the Beatles; others criticised its experimental style and doubted its commercial potential. Retrospectively, however, it is considered a turning point in the band's development; Pitchfork called it "rock's most nihilistic hit to date". It spent 11 weeks (including 2 at number one) on the US Billboard Hot 100, and 10 weeks (including 1 at the top) on the UK Record Retailer chart. A 2007 re-issue spent 11 weeks on the UK Singles Chart. Inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2018, the song is ranked 213th on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list. (Full article...)

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TheSandDoctor, it was admittedly rather difficult for me to get this blurb down to the character limit, so i took some liberties with my rewording that i normally wouldn't have. hopefully, i was successful with keeping all of the details that you wanted, though i apologize if i made anything worse. please feel free to revert anything you disagree with. dying (talk) 22:20, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

@Dying: Looks good to me! I wasn't sure what the character limit was offhand when I made my alterations. TheSandDoctor ^Talk 05:01, 8 May 2023 (UTC)

image

Sheila1988, i am a little concerned about the copyright status of the photo currently being used in the blurb. the user who originally uploaded this file to commons mentioned that it was in the public domain in sweden. (note: "ingen uppgift" means "no information" in swedish.) years later, a separate user added a tag mentioning that the photo was in the public domain in the u.s., but appears to have given no explanation regarding how this was determined. the photo appears to have been taken from here, which states that "ALL PICS TAKEN BY NSV MEMBERS ARE NOT TO BE USED WITHOUT PERMISSION" [bold removed]. another page on the site mentions that nordic stones vikings was established in 2003, so if this was a photo taken by a private party, it seems plausible that the photo was not published earlier than 2003. in fact, the photo does not appear to have been featured on the site in early 2007, so that may be the actual year of publication.

regarding an alternative, the commons category for the rolling stones in 1966 appears to have plenty of photos donated by the dutch national archives that, i assume, would be more appropriate to use. if there is no need to restrict ourselves to 1966, there are obviously a lot more photos to choose from.

courtesy pinging TheSandDoctor (fac nominator) and Gog (tfa coordinator for this month). dying (talk) 07:30, 14 May 2023 (UTC)

Good spot. I have swapped it, but feel free to change gain if there is a better or more appropriate free use image. Gog the Mild (talk) 12:54, 14 May 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I think this is a good call. I think quite a few images of dubious origin have been uploaded to Commons lately and labelled public domain. I'll check the background in future. Sheila1988 (talk) 14:15, 14 May 2023 (UTC)