The Top 5 Sites to Find Song Lyrics Online
By Brad Owens on 10th June, 2009 | The Internet | 23 Comments
Let me set the scene for you. You're at a Bon Jovi concert and you're lucky enough to be in the front row! The band starts up playing "Living On A Prayer" and the arena erupts with excitement. The whole crowd is belting out the lyrics when it comes time for the chorus. All together the crowd goes "WWWOOOOOAAAAHH" then Jon sticks the mic out for the crowd to join in and it happens to be in front of your face. You scream "We're almost there!" BBUUUZZZZ, Wrong! The crowd dies down, the band stops and you realize that you've just killed the concert.
I've scanned the internet to save you from ever having to encounter this and found the 5 best sites on the net for song lyrics. I evaluated them for a vast library of Pop, Oldies, Indie and everything in between. The sites need to be easy to navigate, the design should lend itself well to lyric browsing and the search function should be prominent without too many ads getting in your way (let's face it, they have to make money somehow).
So, here we go, top sites to find song lyrics online - counting down to number one.
Started back in 2000, LyricsPlanet has had some time to collect thousands of lyrics for you. A quick search for Bon Jovi returned 66 songs for a band that had 10 total albums. That means almost every song they've produced has been covered.
After a bit more snooping, I noticed that they have the Billboard top songs on the homepage but those songs looked like they were the top songs end of last year. It hasn't been updated in a few months. LyricsPlanet uses a simple design that makes the search prominent on the front page but that is really the only usable function on the front page. The only other things visible are ads, links to other sites and the un-clickable, and dated BIllboard top songs. Using LyricsPlanet to find older, popular songs works well but for the newer and lesser known lyrics, I'd try any other of the 4 sites below.
In a huge leap forward, MetroLyrics stands heads and tails above LyricsPlanet. Upon visiting this site, you are presented with lots of valuable information about the music world. You are shown upcoming hot releases, the real current top hits and a nice and neat search bar.
One nice feature about their search is that you can type just the parts of lyrics that you remember and it will find you that song. (Similar to sites Lyrster and Lyricsfly) Remember that time you were humming a tune and wondered what on earth that was from? MetroLyrics can tell you.
Navigating the site was quite easy but the way the search results were presented threw me off a little. The results are presented with the Artist and Song Title highlighted on different sides of the column and then partial lyrics displayed below which confused me. All in all, I'd say they have a large selection, easy enough navigation, great search capability and some good features, like a handy iTunes plugin and a forum that distinguish it from the rest. It is worth your time to check out.
Next in my roundup is LyricsMode. This site caught my attention with their simple layout. The search option is clearly visible on top along with the top 100 songs at that time.
The main feature of the homepage is newly added songs. After a few days of watching this list, I can tell you that it is a great way to discover some cool music you never knew about (Besides these ways we shared with you earlier). Other than the usual criteria of having a vast collection of songs, nice layout, a fair amount of ads that bordered on too many here and an easy search function, I found that the sense of a community is more prominent on this site and I liked that.
There's no better way to find good music than to listen to your friends and this site expands that to all your friends on the internet too. Due to this community, you'll find that the lyrics on this site are very accurate because everyone has the option to submit a correction.
One feature that set this site apart was the "Meanings" section. Here the community can write their thoughts on what the Artist was trying to get across in writing the song. I read through a few of these and some of them are entertaining, others are just, for lack of a better word, dumb. Either way, I think this site is certainly worth your time.
LetsSingIt is where the lines start to blur between music discovery site and lyrics site which works extremely well. They have an extremely powerful search box prominent on the homepage that made it simple to find any song, artist or lyrics you're looking for. I got creative and decided to look up MC Hammer on this site. Of course, I went for "You Can't Touch This".
As you'd expect I was presented with the correct lyrics for the song but LetsSingIt gives you so much more. There is an artist bio, discography, top songs, pictures, fan pages and the feature that really made the site stand out, a YouTube video of the song embedded in the page. These videos are embedded by the users of the site and are all correctable by other users in case one of the links dies. The video feature made it fun to read along with the lyrics while you rock out to you're old pal, MC Hammer.
I was torn between the top two sites in this roundup. LetsSingIt fell to #2 due to their design. I think they tried to pack too much into their pages and it makes it seem cluttered. The information is great and visible but in the sidebars, you can get lost.
If you're looking for lyrics online, I say that there's no better place to go besides Lyrics.com and with a domain name like that, they'd better be good. All of the features from the previous sites are combined into one and then made even better by the folks at Lyrics. You are presented with a clean, impressive design with minimal ads.
There is great information such as new releases, top hits and most popular songs displayed right on the homepage. A powerful search bar resides on the top that allows you to search for lyrics, songs and artists. Results are displayed in a clean, easy to read way. There is a great community built around the music with many people for you to interact with.
Lyrics pages present you with not only the lyrics but also with a video to rock out http://feignedgatherin94.postbit.com/visit-the-homes-of-the-heavens-on-your-own-next-palm-springs-vacation.html - frank sinatra - to as you scream the lyrics at the top of your lungs. One feature that set this site apart was the dedication section. Those of you love birds out there will like this section to share meaningful songs with your special someone.
Out of all the sites I tried out for this round up, Lyrics.com impressed me the most. It is certainly the best place on the internet to find song lyrics.
Do you use a site that has not been mentioned in this article? Do you think above picks for top sites to find song lyrics are completely wrong? Let us hear about it in the comments.
Photo credit: Samira Khan.
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