Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Love Is Embarrassing/archive1

:Nominator(s): NØ 18:16, 23 April 2025 (UTC)

:🎵I give up, give up, but I keep comin' back for more🎵

:This article is about Olivia Rodrigo's song "Love Is Embarrassing". Yet another highlight from 2023's Guts, "Love Is Embarrassing" details Rodrigo's pessimism and, well, embarrassment about a love interest. It has also been a noteworthy performance on the album's soldout world tour, but not always for the best of reasons as you will find out upon reading the article... Thanks a lot to everyone who will take the time to give their feedback here.--NØ 18:16, 23 April 2025 (UTC)

I hope that this review is helpful. Just to be clear, I am looking at [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Love_Is_Embarrassing&oldid=1281976617 this version] of the article. It should be the current version at the time of me posting these comments, but it is better to be safe than sorry. My review is below:

• For this part, Rodrigo's performance, in the lead, I would suggest clarifying this as either "Rodrigo's vocal performance" or as "Rodrigo's vocals" as "performance" by itself could be interpreted in other ways, such as how she expressed the lyrics or if she took on a character for the song.
• I would avoid the following sentence construction, with songwriting and recording consuming the first eight and the final two being used for mixing and fine-tuning, as the "with X verb-ing" phrasing is typically discouraged for a FA. I think that it would be a good idea to double-check the article for any other instances. Another instance is the following, with GQ including the latter in its list of the album's standout and "gutsiest" lyrics.
• I think this part, The following morning, from the "Background and release" section is rather jarring as the last sentence of the previous paragraph was about the 10-month process for making Guts. While the transition does make sense as the reader goes through the sentence, I still think this could be phrased better.
• Do we have any further information on why Nigro thought that including the song was a bad idea? Was it solely because of the timing or was there something else?

:*I believe it was solely because of the timing.

• I believe that a word is missing in this part, but its spirited hooks were enjoyable. Something like "found" could be used.
• I have a comment for this sentence: Some commented on Rodrigo's vocal performance. I would clarify who is meant by "some".
• If possible, I would avoid repeating "relatable" for two sentences in a row in the "Critical reception" section.
• I was initially surprised by this part, despite being set in high school. Is this song explicitly set in a high school? If so, I think that would be useful information for the "Composition" section, unless it is already there and I overlooked it.

:*Though the song mentions that the crush kissed a girl from high school, it is not explicitly revealed as the setting for all of its events. I have more clearly made this an attributed opinion now.

• This is rather nitpick-y, but I think that it would be worth writing out the song's title for this sentence: Rodrigo sang it during her Lollapalooza Chile set in March 2025. The previous sentences were all about reviews regarding the wardrobe malfunction, and even though "it" is clear in context, it would be still be helpful to say it in full.
• Shouldn't Olivia Rodrigo be linked for Citation 15?
• Citation 22 does not have an author attributed, but the article does have a by-line (Yolanda Xiao) so this information should be included.

I hope that this review is helpful. Once everything has been addressed, I will read through the article again to make sure that I have not missed anything. Best of luck with this FAC! Aoba47 (talk) 23:12, 24 April 2025 (UTC)

:Thanks a lot, Aoba. I believe I have addressed this batch of comments, and it should be ready for your second read-through.--NØ 10:11, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

::Thank you for addressing everything. I am just glad that I can help. I will read through the article either later today or tomorrow. Aoba47 (talk) 14:24, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

:::Great work with the article. I have read through the article, and I could not find anything further to add. I support this FAC for promotion. Aoba47 (talk) 16:11, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

• I will take a look at this over the weekend -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 08:02, 25 April 2025 (UTC)
• "Nigro played acoustic guitar, electric guitar, bass, synthesizer, and drum programming" - I don't think you really "play" drum programming. Maybe "and programmed drums".....?
• "that is reminiscent of Dale Bozzio" - could you maybe say "that is reminiscent of Dale Bozzio of the band [whatever band Bozzio is/was in]" as, despite having what I like to think is very wide-ranging music knowledge, I have personally never heard of him/her so don't think he/she is well-known enough to be name-dropped without context
• That's all I got {{smiley}} -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 16:59, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

:*Both done, ChrisTheDude. Thanks a lot for the review!--NØ 19:27, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

• Support. I made a tiny tweak to the Bozzio sentence, I hope you don't mind {{smiley}} -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 07:23, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

Recusing to review.

• "Rodrigo derides her crush". "her" suggests that the crush has already been introduced. Perhaps 'a'? In both the lead and the main article.
• "how much she was attracted to him." "him" being?

:*The crush mentioned earlier in the sentence. It's used as a noun.

• "which they also compared to other artists". In what way, and/or to what end? Eg, favourably?

:*Neutrally, I guess; this refers to the second paragraph of the Composition section.

• "The song reached the top 30 in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, and the United States". Just checking that it didn't also make the top 30 in the UK.

:*It didn't place on the main chart published by the Official Charts Company.

• "entered the charts in some other countries". Suggest "some" → 'several'.
• "and entered the charts in some other countries, receiving a gold certification in Australia, Brazil, and Canada." This gives the impression that the gold certification only applies to the "other countries". Suggest a new sentence for the last clause.
• "She conceived the follow-up album, Guts (2023), at the age of 19, while experiencing "lots of confusion, mistakes, awkwardness & good old fashioned teen angst"." The MoS on quotations: "[t]he source must be named in article text if the quotation is an opinion". Emphasis in original.
• "The following morning ..." Starting a new paragraph and a new topic like that jars. A reader thinks 'Following what? The ten months creating Guts?"
• "as the last song for the album in her living room." It's a long sentence and that bit could be phrased better.
• "just five days before Guts was due for submission". Submission to whom?
• "it was included on the album even though he thought it was not a good idea." It sounds like there is - or should be - some more information there, not included in the article. I mean, why would a producer include a song they thought was a bad idea?
• Link bridge.
• "Other artists "Love Is Embarrassing" was compared to ..." I beg to doubt that the song was compared to artists.
• "but its spirited hooks were enjoyable". Maybe 'but that its spirited hooks were enjoyable'?
• "due to their conflicted core." I think either 'due to its conflicted core' or 'due to their conflicted cores.'
• "Ragusa believed the latter was". You don't need to say "the latter" a second time.
• Unlike most of the article, the first few sentences of "Live performances" seem a list of factoids. Is it possible to make them less choppy?
• "similarly to Rodrigo, the dancer also flawlessly completed the high-energy choreography". Needs rephrasing.
• "Sales+streaming". Why the use of "+" and no spaces?

:*This is automatically generated by the template and is the same on all song articles. It might be worth raising a discussion about it on the template talk page later...

Gog the Mild (talk) 18:01, 26 April 2025 (UTC)

:All done, Gog the Mild. Thanks a lot for the review!--NØ 10:11, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

:A cracking little article. Good work. Gog the Mild (talk) 15:06, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

Which of 18 and 25 sources in which Rodrigo derides a crush and feels self-conscious about how much she was attracted to him". Source formatting seems consistent, you are using major sources but I wonder if {{ping|David Fuchs}} has a second opinion on things like HuffPo. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 16:36, 30 April 2025 (UTC)

:Image placement ALT licencing and rationales seem OK to me. Is there a particular reason why :File:Love Is Embarrassing.ogg is the sample used? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 16:56, 30 April 2025 (UTC)

::The first source has "Rodrigo cringes at herself and throws shade at an old flame"; "throws shade at" = deride, and "cringes at herself" = feels self-conscious. Second one shows her deriding the guy by calling him a loser and mentions that the "self-deprecation continues". The sample used is the bridge which received the comparisons to Devo and the part where Rodrigo sounds most vocally similar to Marina and the Diamonds and Kelly Clarkson. Let me know if anything else requires an explanation, Jo-Jo Eumerus.--NØ 09:13, 1 May 2025 (UTC)

:::OK I guess. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 08:22, 3 May 2025 (UTC)

• When not released as a single or even a promotional single, using album release date in the infobox is filler at best that needlessly gives a false impression that the song had its own independent release outside of when the Guts album first came out

:*Excluding the date gives the impression that the song is unreleased. That this is just a song and not a single is prominently demarcated by the use of the word "song" in the type parameter, which results in a blue infobox instead of the yellow one for singles. We have had this discussion way too many times at this point (eg), so I would politely suggest retiring this critique from future reviews as the same explanation will hold.

• The term "crush" is too informal for a professional encyclopedia. You're better off using "love interest" or perhaps "object of affection".
• I'm inclined to say much of the first paragraph of "Background and release" (along with "Vampire" release info) is more relevant for the album page than here. It comes off as a misguided attempt to make the section look fuller (rehashing general album details is a common mistake I've seen on various other song pages when not relating to a particular track). Try to focus more specifically on "Love Is Embarrassing" instead.

:*I think it is more than okay. The song, in this instance, is a direct result of sessions held for this album. This is already a very condensed summary of the large amount of information available about the album's creation, and the removal of anything will make it read incomplete or create an abrupt start to the article.

• Is it known when recording began? The prose doesn't exactly make clear how long this was after the songwriting break following Sour concluded.

:*Just that it was when Rodrigo was aged 19, as is already mentioned in the article

• Unless you have a ref discussing overall reception, it violates WP:SYNTH to have an unsourced claim of "positive reviews from music critics". It would be overly presumptuous to jump to conclusions based solely on what the Wikipedia article already uses as that can fail to account for other stances.
• What is "an intimate sound" (from reviews) supposed to be?

:*Switched this out for a direct quote. To be quite honest, the critic did not articulate well.

• Common terms like "liner notes" don't need linking per WP:OVERLINK.

Those comments are just from a glance. I'll look at this again later and might leave more input. SNUGGUMS (talk / edits) 22:15, 16 May 2025 (UTC)

Now to continue:

• Other common term per WP:OVERLINK that you can safely unlink are "gold certification" and "set list"
• Even after listening to the audio sample, I'm not sure what the "lively" description for guitars is supposed to convey

:*I can't think of any good article to wikilink to explain the term lively, unfortunately. But this is indeed the description offered by professional music journalists.

• "Several" is a stretch to describe three, and such a vague term is best avoided anyway, especially when specific counts are known
• Out of curiosity, how many reviews were you able to find that weren't just for the parent album or overall career rankings? The page appears to heavily rely on the former type when not talking about the wardrobe malfunction.

:*This page is comprehensive. I would definitely not proceed with FA nominating an incomplete article.

• Does it not feel repetitive to link publications more than once within citations (e.g. refs 9 and 13 both link Variety while 14 and 16 each link Billboard)? I somehow can't remember for sure whether the standard has shifted from "link first instance only" to "link this term in all refs that use the publication".

:*Yes, I think the standard shifted somewhere around 2021. I have done it here the same way I have done it on any FACs I have nominated since.

• The display for :File:OlivaRO2150524 (38) (53727178601) (cropped).jpg seems unnecessarily large. Try reducing that somewhat.

Overall, a decent looking page that could plausibly hope to reach FA-level soon. SNUGGUMS (talk / edits) 04:53, 17 May 2025 (UTC)

:I really appreciate the review after the multiple dry weeks for this nomination. Thanks a lot, SNUGGUMS.--NØ 15:19, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

::Sure thing, and after looking through again, it would help to specify that "lyricism had become more precise" bit from Slant Magazine refers to [https://www.slantmagazine.com/music/olivia-rodrigo-guts-album-review/ Guts as a whole being compared to the lyrics on Sour]. As for "Background and release", I definitely would remove the redundant "(2021)" bit from the latter album when you already note outside of parentheses how it came out that May. To give readers a better sense of when production took place, it might help to add there how Olivia was 18 that month given how you talk about conceiving a follow-up at age 19. The WP:SYNTH issue with reviews either way still hasn't been resolved (although now has more to do with production instead of whether they overall liked the song). SNUGGUMS (talk / edits) 18:18, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

:::All done. No parts of the article violate SYNTH according to me, so I am going to have to rely on a more specific X → Y suggestion from you to understand how and what you want revised. I am not going to eliminate the topic statements, i.e. #2 on WP:RECEPTION.--NØ 15:58, 19 May 2025 (UTC)

::::In that case, I should've specified how the presentation used for the "highlighted its production" part makes it seem like this was the main thing praised, which I doubt is the case with how the lyrics get two paragraphs of focus instead of one. It thus would make more sense to dedicate more attention to that than anything else when summing up reviews within that section and the lead. Regardless, just having "received reviews from music critics" before the production part feels clunky. SNUGGUMS (talk / edits) 17:21, 19 May 2025 (UTC)

:::::I think I was able to understand what you are saying better and addressed it with this edit. Really hope this is good to go now, SNUGGUMS.--NØ 01:03, 22 May 2025 (UTC)

::::::🎵 Promotin' this might… be a Bad Idea Right? 🎵 Just kidding :P, I wholeheartedly support the nomination now! SNUGGUMS (talk / edits) 12:29, 22 May 2025 (UTC)

{{@FAC}} Apologies for the ping. I was just curious if I could get a status update on this nomination. I just do not want it to get lost as more nominations are being added and this one is pushed further down the list. I hope you all had a great weekend!--NØ 18:39, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

:I reviewed - and supported - so can't comment as a coordinator. But I am sure that one of my colleagues will be along by and by to comment on the situation. Gog the Mild (talk) 18:59, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

{{FACClosed|promoted}} FrB.TG (talk) 12:13, 27 May 2025 (UTC){{Fa bottom}}