Template talk:Cat Stevens

Undue weight?

I can see approximately 25 music-related links, with the only non-music links being Cat Stevens, and currently Cat Stevens' comments about Salman Rushdie. And yet it's the non-music links that are undue weight? Andjam (talk) 11:42, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

That's right. Perhaps you are misunderstanding the purpose of the template. This is an incident in the man's life - however important you feel it is - that is properly covered in the text of the article and the appropriate sub-article. It is not appropriate for a template that is 100% about his musical career. Adding this one incident to his musical career template gives it undue weight. It does not belong in the template which appears only on his music sub pages - I've renamed the template to clarify what it is. Tvoz/talk 07:34, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Are you sure that the template appears only on his music sub pages? Andjam (talk) 12:02, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Yes, the template is for his music subpages - the template is only about his recordings/songs. Tvoz/talk 04:17, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

As the template is only about his musical career, I'm removing it from the Cat Stevens page. Andjam (talk) 11:16, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

← I misspoke above - not sure what I was thinking of, but the template does belong on the main bio. The content of the template is indeed only about his music - its purpose is to list all of his recordings - but it is and should be included on the main bio page as well as on the individual song/record pages. Tvoz/talk 04:08, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Religious Albums

The Cat Stevens Discography article lists some additional religious-themed albums that are missing from this template. Those albums are I Have No Cannons that Roar, Bismillah, and Night of Remembrance. Is there any reason that some albums are listed here and some are not? I thought that perhaps the missing albums weren't here because they might be group efforts instead of solo pieces, but some of the ones that are listed here are group efforts. I think there should be some consistent guideline or standard as to whether or not these albums should be included. I would opt for including all of them; (if not, then none of them should be included). Macduff (talk) 01:57, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

I think all of the Yusuf Islam albums should be listed, with the exception of a couple compilation albums- for two reasons: 1) When Cat Stevens left Deram Records for Island Records with a change in his sound that catapulted him into real world-wide stardom, Deram Records hoped to snatch the last crumbs they possibly could capitalize upon, and made some "greatest hits" type albums that had no new material. 2) After Yusuf's conversion to Islam, he donated the Lion's Share of his royalties from his 1970's pop albums to Muslim schools, but in large part, to a number of charities and relief agencies. He too, released some "greatest hits" compilation albums of his own, increasing his income (the assumption is that the extra income also was targeted for charity)- check to see if references bear this out-- I don't think that any of them contained any new material or even different versions of his songs than those already on other albums.

Regarding his Islamic period before returning to pop music, he recorded a children's album, I Look I See (I think that's the title) with nasheeds, and some spoken word records, which should be, in my opinion, included in his banner. I have not listened to the material on the other records, however, all of the album and song pages need to be cleaned up and given references, badly. You know, if someone could walk me through how to put together a good album page, including good sources to look for, and formatting properly, I wouldn't mind working on some. --leahtwosaints (talk) 16:13, 14 July 2009 (UTC)