Paroles, Paroles, Paroles...

October 21, 2006 9:10 AM

LyricsWiki is the place to find reliable lyrics without invasive ads. SongMeanings when you've been wondering what those lyrics mean. The Archive of Misheard Lyrics because sometimes your version is much better than the original.
posted by Sharcho (21 comments total)

They haven't worked out the whole alphabatizing thing on LyricsWiki--individuals are alpha by first name. But nit-picking aside, I could see this becoming a really useful site, until the RIAA goes after it and shuts it down.
posted by I Am Not a Lobster at 9:16 AM on October 21, 2006

I search for the lyrics simply by putting the artist name in the URL (will automatically convert spaces to underscores), e.g. http://lyricwiki.org/Janis_Joplin
posted by Sharcho at 9:20 AM on October 21, 2006

This looks pretty nice. The ads at lyric sites are among the most obnoxious anywhere. I do wonder though whether they have a plan for dealing with the MPA.
posted by caddis at 9:22 AM on October 21, 2006

LyricsWiki is very handy, but SongMeanings is bloody useless, or, rather, the users are after searching for a few songs, I particularly enjoyed such detailed analyses as 'prince is gay. im not. but for some reason i like this song! ITS SO FUCKING GAY' and 'I love this song. So does my mom.'.
posted by jack_mo at 9:26 AM on October 21, 2006

LyricsWiki looks like a good idea, and I hope it works out well. Having said that, I'm looking forward to the inevitable endless editing wars over the true lyrics to mumbled songs (Louie Louie, anyone?), along with a lot of "Scuse me while I kiss this guy" Wikicruft.
posted by sidereal at 9:42 AM on October 21, 2006

I Am Not a Lobster's got it. Unless the RIAA developed a sense of humor while I wasn't looking, they will undoubtedly shut down this site too.

Which is a real pity. User contribution lyric sites are nothing new (in fact, if I recall correctly, lyrics.ch tried using that as a defense against getting shut down: they didn't post any lyrics, their users did.) What is refreshing about this site, as the FPP indicates, is the lack of ads.

Either way, I'll use it while it's here. Thanks Sharcho!
posted by quin at 9:47 AM on October 21, 2006

I have found Lirama to be by far the best ad-free lyrics site out there (and if you don't find what you want, you can request it). It's multi-language, highly accurate, and seems to be run by genuinely nice people.
posted by melissa may at 9:55 AM on October 21, 2006

LyricsWiki is the place to find reliable lyrics without invasive ads.

I didn't realize there was a search box when I first loaded the page, because it had been bumped down below AdSense in the sidebar. I'd say that's pretty fucking "invasive."
posted by cribcage at 10:02 AM on October 21, 2006

EvilLyrics is totally awesome. It automatically hooks into pretty much every popular music player app and downloads the lyrics with no frills for the song you are currently playing, and even has a kareoke mode!

Also, one of the cool features of songmeanings is that gender is shown on comments with the blue/pink line.
posted by Mach5 at 10:18 AM on October 21, 2006

There's long been a need for a lyrics wiki -- but I don't think anyone's made a good one yet. The problem is that they all use MediaWiki (the Wikipedia software), and MediaWiki completely fucking sucks for lyrics, because that's not the problem it was designed to solve.

Writing good wiki software to do this is one of my long-held-but-never-got-around-to projects.
posted by reklaw at 10:19 AM on October 21, 2006

Drat, for a moment I was all excited about your EvilLyrics link, Mach5. Then I found out it doesn't support my player (jetAudio). Oh well, some day.
posted by Stunt at 11:16 AM on October 21, 2006

Actually I think it was the Harry Fox Agency that got the lyrics sites shut down, not the RIAA.
posted by smackfu at 11:57 AM on October 21, 2006

At first inspection, SongMeanings mainly seems to consist of links to pages with no content other than invasive adverts, and when you do find a page containing comments, they're the same juvenile rubbish that infests most of the rest of the internet. "This sucks!" "No you suck!"

The other two sites look more promising, but need content.
posted by nowonmai at 2:35 PM on October 21, 2006

The truth is that after the Harry Fox Agency or the RIAA or David Letterman's mother or whatever shuts down these sites, other sites will rise up to be shut down by the enemies of free lyric sites without annoying ads. The Internet was designed to survive nuclear war. Litigation just causes it to reroute around the trivial crapola. They may turn us all into outlaws, but they can't stop progress. Best they can do is delay it for awhile. For some reason that helps me sleep a little better at night, knowing that tight-suit retards are banging their heads against an impenetrable wall of ...not so retarded... ness...
posted by ZachsMind at 2:51 PM on October 21, 2006 [1 favorite]

Mach5, thanks for that EvilLyrics link. Sweet.
posted by Pigpen at 4:36 PM on October 21, 2006

I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought the Beach Boys were singing about a "little doo scoop". Although now I can't license the name to anybody who develops a new improved doggie pooper scooper.
posted by Quietgal at 5:45 PM on October 21, 2006 [1 favorite]

There's also WikiLyrics, now known as E-Lyrics, run by a Wikipedian (after great contention).

IANALobster: The RIAA doesn't have jurisdiction over song lyrics, only over (surprise!) recordings. Song lyrics are in the hands of a variety of licensing agents of varying pugnaciousness, such as the Harry Fox Agency, who got a number of guitar tabs and lyrics sites shut down some years ago.
posted by dhartung at 5:55 PM on October 21, 2006

Reverend BlueJeans!
posted by squidfartz at 8:56 PM on October 21, 2006

You guys that are referring to it as LyricsWiki should cut it out. lyricswiki.org appears to also be a lyrics site but it is chock full of ads and windows popping up out of nowhere. lyricwiki.org without the 's' is the site under discussion and I'm sure they'd rather not unnecessarily send traffic to the imposter site.

With that aside, I really want to see an explanation of how this site expects to survive without ads. The web has been awash in lyrics site since the beginning, but they all came and went due to lawsuits or running out of funding. To step into in that sort of environment with a stated mission of not having ads seems foolish. The site appears to me to have zero ads whatsoever, but I can't really judge well as I block ads anyway, so if they have non-intrusive ads then I guess that's their business model.
posted by Rhomboid at 9:25 PM on October 21, 2006

Thanks, Sharcho and all commenters who provided extra links. Ad-free lyrics sites, yeah!
posted by flapjax at midnite at 11:29 PM on October 21, 2006

Seconding EvilLyrics. I've used it for years.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 3:02 AM on October 22, 2006