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Electronic Highways
Sing along to your favorite song, courtesy of the WWW
You are driving down a long stretch of highway; the windows are down, fresh air is whipping through the car, the radio is cranked to your favorite song and everything is right in the world as you sing along, slightly off-key, as loud as you can. You get to that one line that trips you up every time. Suddenly, the day has lost its luster.
Unknown. Minstrels with a Rebec and a Lute.
13th c. Manasseh Codex. El Escorial, Madrid.
Wouldn't it be great to know your favorite lyrics in their entirety? A search of the Internet is the place to start. There are a number of Web sites that provide the lyrics of your favorite tunes as volunteers, fans and music professors have gone to great lengths to either transcribe, or translate, a host of musical genres from operettas to jazz and everything in-between.
A nice place to start is "Music Moz," http://musicmoz.org/Lyrics/, a directory containing "all things musical." The lyrics page provides links to other Web sites, including such hard-to-find items as shanty and reggae lyrics.
Looking for international folk lyrics? Try "Music Lyrics" http://home.earthlink.net/~jmak/Music/Lyrics.html, a directory of links to specialty items, such as children's songs, Celtic folk music, Swahili songs and Hungarian scout songs, as well as a Jewish song database.
For popular music such as country, hip-hop, rap, pop and rock, go to some of the more comprehensive sites, including "Absolute Lyrics" http://www.absolutelyric.com, "Song Lyrics," http://songlyrics.co.nz/, and "The Song Lyric" http://www.thesonglyrics.com/. "Song-Text.com" http://www.song-text.com/ enables you to purchase songs for MP3 players and provides the lyrics for downloading.
If your taste runs to blues, jazz, and R&B, there are plenty of lyrics out there for you. For old jazz and blues, try "Heptune Classical Jazz and Blues Lyrics" http://www.heptune.com/lyrics.html. This site covers jazz and blues, pre-1950s, and can be browsed by author or title. For modern blues, jazz and R&B, go to "Blues for Peace" http://www.bluesforpeace.com/songlist.htm. Like "Heptune," it is browsable, but only by title.
If you like classical or choral music, try Emily Ezust's collection of choral works and other types of classical vocal pieces, with thousands of translations to English, French and other languages at http://www.recmusic.org/lieder. For even earlier works, go to the "Middle English Lyric Archive" http://www.luminarium.org/medlit/lyrics.htm. This site also provides medieval lyrics links, essays and articles.
Finally, if you are looking for something you and your children can sing to on that long drive, try searching the "Children's Music Archive" http://judyanddavid.com/cma.html or the Sesame Street Workshop http://www.ctw.org/sesamestreet/sitemap/. These sites provide the music and lyrics, as well as children's activities.
Before your next road trip, grab this roadmap and get to your favorite song lyrics!
—Laura Taddeo and Cynthia Tysick, University Libraries