Most online databases of music lyrics are illegal--they reproduce copyrighted material without payment. Worse than that, they're bad. Oftentimes, when I look up a song--usually by plugging a snippet of it into Google--I'm led to sloppy transcriptions that are rife with gibberish of the 'Scuse Me While I Kiss This Guy ilk.
Today, Yahoo Music has added a legit lyrics database--licensed from music data kingpin Gracenote--and while it's not the lyrics resource of my dreams, it's certainly a step in the right direction.
Yahoo says it contains over 400,000 songs, so nobody's going to sample more than a small percentage of them. If you're me--and last time I checked, I was--most of them will be for stuff from the 1960s. The database clearly isn't anywhere near comprehensive--I saw the lyrics for only five Doors songs, for instance. But for most artists I searched for, there were anywhere from a few lyrics to lots of them, and they're all integrated with Yahoo Music's other features. (You can look up a lyric, then buy the song if it's available.)
Other than browsing around to see what lyrics were available, I was mostly curious about whether the lyrics were more accurate than those at other databases. (After all, one of the main reasons to look up lyrics is if you can't understand 'em yourself from a recording.) Many of the songs I checked out looked flawless, and none were repeatedly nonsensical in the way that online lyrics can be.
But not every lyric was spot on. Yahoo's version of The Ronettes' "You, Baby", for instance, has Ronnie Spector singing "Baby, baby now you're gonna know/All the ways I've had to throw you so." Which makes no sense--she really says "All the ways I plan to thrill you so." It has a version of Dusty Springfield's "Just One Smile" that has her asking for "Just one kiss, girl," which is not something that many female singers would have requested, at least back in 1969.
Actually, that version of "Just One Smile" is one of two in the Yahoo database. (The other one gets that line right, but fumbles others.) I think it's possible that the first one I mentioned is derived from a recording of the song by a male singer, but it's provided for Dusty. (For another Springfield song, "Am I the Same Girl?," Yahoo seems to give the lyrics as performed in a much later recording of the song by Swing Out Sister.)
In other cases, you get multiple-but-identical copies of a song's lyrics--for songs which are available on multiple compilations sold by Yahoo, you have to scroll past the same song repeatedly in the song list. It's kinda clunky, as is the Yahoo Music interface in general. (The lyric list is in a little scrolling box that only lets you see a few songs at a time, and tonight, at least, it takes a while for lyrics to come up once you request them.)
Where did Yahoo get its imperfect lyrics? The Yahoo Music Blog is vague on the details of where these versions of the lyrics originated, but it may not have been with the music publishers who Gracenote has properly licensed rights from. (Or maybe music publishers' versions of their own lyrics are sometimes a bit off--could be.) I notice that the Yahoo blog post says that rogue lyric sites sometimes have incorrect transcriptions, but calls its own lyrics "consistent." Which is not quite the same thing as saying they're accurate.
Still, I feel guilty being picky about this whole enterprise, since my gripes are minor and it's so clearly a great big improvement over most of what's out there. I hope Gracenote works out similar deals with other music companies. Rumor has it it's talking to Apple--and I'm probably utterly alone here, but if my iTunes album downloads came with lyrics, I'd be almost as excited as if they came without DRM.
(Speaking of DRM, one other note: You can't cut-and-paste the lyrics.)
Who wrote this? You should fire the editor! actually everyone gos online and gets lyrics and chords, that tend to be very precise, most lyrics online are out before the song is out and i hate yahoo. Again a world run by yahoo would be a sad one for that microsoft for that matter! These dorky Editors understand nothing of the nature of the information age and attempt to always focus there pin prick knowledge of it in a misguilded/advertising attempt to drum up interest or make it look like they know what there on about, Truth is they no nothing and tend to think they do (Which i add is the taught method in meda journalism courses of the us and uk, for instance i downloaded the lyrics and free mp3's of artist Shem Booth and im so glad hes another great unsigned artist that in the spiret of things sums up the internet! and just if u cant sum it up for yrself,
Internet=free information
u cant go aginst the very function of the intertnet, that is to free information wether it be lyrics, e
Why did you delete my previous comments? Though you fixed the typos I mentioned, my opinion is still valid. If you can't take criticism from readers, then you shouldn't be a blogger.
One of the aspects of those illegal lyric sites which should be mentioned is their propensity for trying to install malware on unpatched/unprotected machines.
Not all of them, of course, but they've had a bad reputation for that sort of thing in the past and it's a good reason to be careful about which lyric site you choose to visit.
Maybe the term should be, "Internet=Free Infection" in the case of some lyrics sites.
NIce to see that some of our comments are still allowed. But of course the comments on the original two versions of this column seem to have disappeared. Obviously he doesn't write his own columns, the writing style is totally different