Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Kathleen Brennan

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. There's clearly no consensus to delete this, and as one participant pointed out, the nominator's proposal of "merge and delete" is not something we do anyway. Reminder that you don't need to send an article to AfD to propose a merge, you can do that on article talk. – filelakeshoe (t / c) 🐱 14:35, 4 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Kathleen Brennan

[Hide this box] New to Articles for deletion (AfD)? Read these primers!

(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

Merge with Tom Waits, then delete -- non-notable except as wife and cohort of Tom Waits. MurrayGreshler (talk) 13:11, 27 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Women, Music, Ireland, and Illinois. Spiderone^{(Talk to Spider)} 13:25, 27 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - she is credited as a songwriter for multiple songs by Waits. She does avoid the media, but there are details about her life in the page. I am not well-versed in music, so perhaps someone more versed in music can address how she meets WP:COMPOSER, I suspect this is one option: Has credit for writing or co-writing either lyrics or music for a notable composition. She was honored for songwriting by Song Lyrics of Literary Excellence Awards, though I am not sure if that is adequate to establish notability. DaffodilOcean (talk) 19:49, 28 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I would recommend that the nominator read WP:Merge and delete. I see no reason here why, if it is decided to merge this, the redirect shouldn't be kept rather than have people jump through hoops to maintain the necessary attribution for our copyright licence. Phil Bridger (talk) 21:06, 28 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per WP:BASIC and WP:COMPOSER - sources support her independent notability, e.g. Tom Waits, Wife Kathleen Brennan and John Prine to Be Honored With Songwriting Award (AP/Billboard), Full of Time: The Magical Stories of Tom Waits, Kathleen Brennan, and Robert Wilson (Flood Magazine), How Tom Waits' wife revolutionised his musical style (Far Out Magazine), Broadway World. Also, for e.g. Franks Wild Years: Frank’s Wild Years (Rolling Stone), Behind the Song: Tom Waits, “Frank’s Wild Years” (American Songwriter), (NYT), she is credited as a co-writer, similar to Blood Money and Alice, e.g. NPR, Rolling Stone, and generally described as an influence e.g. Paste, Quietus, NPR. Beccaynr (talk) 21:07, 28 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Beccaynr -- I respect your opinion but she is irretrievably linked to Waits and I still believe she should be a redirect to his page with any salient info unique to her page manually added to Waits' article. MurrayGreshler (talk) 21:25, 28 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The doctrine of coverture does not apply to notability - the support for WP:BASIC and WP:COMPOSER notability in independent and reliable sources over time are not discounted simply because she is married to Waits. While a relationship alone does not confer notability, we can keep a standalone article for Brennan because significant coverage exists, e.g. multiple reviews of multiple works per WP:CREATIVE, WP:BASIC coverage including WP:SECONDARY commentary and context over time, and WP:COMPOSER notability noted above for her co-writing of multiple notable works. Beccaynr (talk) 21:32, 28 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Coverture? Really? I am not a chauvinist who believes a woman is her husband's chattel. I am merely suggesting that, for the purposes of Wikipedia, Brennan is not sufficiently independently notable of her husband to merit her own article. Let's try to assume good faith. MurrayGreshler (talk) 22:20, 28 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

My reference to coverture was intended as a rhetorical response to the phrase "irretrievably linked" and the merger suggestion, particularly after sources were identified to support her notability according to multiple guidelines. This article can be further developed (sources in my comment are examples, not complete results from a search, and I have not checked the Wikipedia Library, and in GBooks, e.g. there are 21 hits for her name in Lowside of the Road: A Life of Tom Waits). There is sufficent information about her and her notable career for there to be WP:NOMERGE for this subject. Beccaynr (talk) 23:05, 28 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Keep She meets two of the criteria of WP:COMPOSER - 1) Has credit for writing or co-writing either lyrics or music for a notable composition. (and she has that for more than one, so it's pretty strong) and 4) Has written a composition that has won (or in some cases been given a second or other place) in a major music competition not established expressly for newcomers. For how collaboration is treated, the case of Lerner and Loewe is a model. Lerner did not create any works on his own but is considered notable even though all of the (non obit) articles are about the two of them. This case is different because one collaborator is also the performer and therefore more visible, but in general songwriters and lyricists are not as visible as performers. It is a shame that she does not get more credit on her own. We've spend decades now recovering the "wives" of science of the past centuries; it seems to be time to turn to current times and the arts. Lamona (talk) 17:05, 30 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.