songmeanings.net

Don’t you find it annoying when you want to sing along to your current favourite band’s latest CD, but they’re one of those artists who don’t add lyrics to their case inserts?

Or even more frustrating, the band /record company chooses to list lyrics to only a third of the album, and then stick band photo’s in or something!

www.songmeanings.net may well just come in useful for hunting down lyrics to songs you have just bought, songs that have been around years, and if you ‘think’ you know what the band are singing, it’s worth checking here to find out what the lyrics really are. Save yourself any embarrassment at the next gig!!

Songmeanings is more then just a searchable list of songs from around the world, and the lyrics that belong to the song. It is more of an interactive lyrics forum, and the bulk of the content is created by its members ALA Ciao!

You can use the site without becoming a member, say if you want to just find an odd lyric here and there. To do this simply search in the search box for an artist, song title, or you can also search by Songmeaning member name, that’s if you know other people on there of course.

Your search result will bring up what it’s found and you go from there. Simple really, needs little explanation I feel.

Choose to become a member and this will open up all areas of the site for you. As a member you can add and maintain a profile, add lyrics, comment on other peoples posted lyrics (maybe you feel they have got a line wrong?) and vote on how god or bad a certain track is.

You can check lyrics you have submitted at any time, and you can modify your postings if you change your mind over what XYZ were singing on that certain song.

The site is worldwide and as such on the front page’s statistics page you’ll see that a song by Greenwheel or some other obscure band is the latest posting. That said musical tastes are personal – what’s obscure to one is top of the charts for another!

I have searched for lyrics on a number of bands and most of the time, around 80% I have found what I’m after. If I haven’t found it I have tried to work them out myself and post them up. If there’s a song you cannot find, or a band, then you can have an email alert to notify when someone’s added the lyrics, which is handy.

The site also includes other interactivity levels, namely a link to the site’s IRC chat room, and a number of forums covering the site, music in general, lyrics and anything you care to forum-chat about.

This is a nicely designed site, much more useful than other lyrics site’s I’ve seen before. Of course you can always find any number of official and unofficial fan sites for a particular artist, and more often than not they’ll have lyrics, but as we’re all so used to the Ciao way of life, this site certainly nods to Ciao in its style in some ways. The site does unfortunately suffer slow blips in the evenings (it is US based I think) but the latest news talks of Songmeanings2, sort of a second coming if you like. This ought to bring server improvements along with design modifications, not that there is much wrong with the current style, in my opinion.

Unlike Ciao there is no opportunity for payment, though Songmeanings will be making a few bob themselves due to the pop-up adverts that spew onto the screen with great regularity.

If you need words and want to know more about a song’s meaning then a visit is called for methinks.

Alflavor, Ciao UK, July 2002.