Talk:List of English signature songs

Nirvana's signature song

DO NOT remove Nirvana from the signature songs list. Smells Like Teen Spirit is undoubtedly their signature song, and I've got a source to prove it. --ndrly 17:16, 14 December 2006

Sharing a signature song....

This is referenced twice, once in the second paragraph of the article and again in an entirely new section. One or the other needs to go.

Split proposal

I propose a split of this article into the following:

• List of signature songs (A–M)
• List of signature songs (N–Z)

If there are no major objections, I will perform this split around late June. zsteve21 (talk) 15:45, 13 June 2026 (UTC)

@Zsteve21: I object partially. The article should be split based on decade, and that is how it should be sorted in the first place, not alphabetically. Here is what that will look like:

• List of signature songs (before 1960)
• List of signature songs (1960–1969)
• List of signature songs (1970–1979)
• List of signature songs (1980–1989)
• List of signature songs (1990–1999)
• List of signature songs (2000–2009)
• List of signature songs (2010–2019)
• List of signature songs (2020–present)

This way the articles will be shorter and it will also be neater. Blubabluba9990 (talk) (contribs) 19:32, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

Hello, long time no see! I agree with your proposal. For the article titles, I would write the decades as 1960s, 2020s, etc. zsteve21 (talk) 20:50, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

I support the split, but I do not think the article should be split by decade. I think it should be split by artist, alphabetically, because the article is already defined and organized in artist-centered terms. The lead defines a signature song as the song an "artist or band is most closely identified with" (emphasis mine), and the examples section is already listed alphabetically by artist. Splitting the page by artist would therefore preserve the article's current logic and make it easier for readers to navigate.

I just think a decade split seems less natural here. Readers are more likely to look for a signature song by simply searching for the artist's name than by going through the hassle of trying to work out what an artist's most popular song(s) is/are and what year(s) it was/were released. That is especially true for artists whose major commercial peaks or defining eras run across more than one decade, such as Madonna, Mariah Carey, Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, Elton John, and Janet Jackson to name a few. For artists like these, a decade-based division can feel arbitrary, while an alphabetical split by artist is straightforward and reader-friendly. _signed, Pat ^talk 11:27, 17 June 2026 (UTC)

Fair enough, but I think we should split by language first, especially since half of the songs are English songs (and that is how I sort anyway whenever I visit this page). So List of English signature songs and List of non-English signature songs. Blubabluba9990 (talk) (contribs) 22:22, 18 June 2026 (UTC)

Actually, I find that more than half (infact almost all) of the songs are English and that some songs have multiple languages (i.e. both English and non-English). That makes it difficult to split by language. I would now say alphabetical split is the best solution to this. zsteve21 (talk) 20:08, 22 June 2026 (UTC)

I didn't mean exactly half. And it doesn't just have to be English and non-English. There are quite a few songs in Tagalog and Japanese as well, for example. Blubabluba9990 (talk) (contribs) 17:10, 25 June 2026 (UTC)

We can always do both. Split by English first, and then split alphabetically. Blubabluba9990 (talk) (contribs) 17:14, 25 June 2026 (UTC)