Language Learning & Technology
http://llt.msu.edu/vol5num3/onthenet
September 2001, Vol. 5, Num. 3
pp. 4-6
Copyright ª  2001, ISSN 1094-3501 4
ON THE NET
Finding Song Lyrics Online
Jean W. LeLoup
SUNY Cortland
Robert Ponterio
SUNY Cortland
Most foreign language teachers enjoy studying song lyrics as authentic text in their classes. Songs can be
used at all levels and for a wide variety of activities and purposes such as comprehension, vocabulary
introduction, illustration or recognition of grammar structures, and reinforcement of topics. Traditional or
new children's songs, musical classics, or the latest pop hits are all fair game. The rhythm and melody of
songs can make the words and expressions easier to remember and more enjoyable for students than other
sorts of texts. But providing written support for the lyrics can sometimes be a problem. Photocopying the
lyrics from the album cover might not meet the needs of a specific activity if some modification, such as
blanking out some words or adding definitions, is required. Retyping or transcribing the lyrics takes time
that the teacher might not be able to spare, though, of course, transcribing lyrics is a good listening
activity for us teachers as well as for our students. The Internet has become a useful source of song lyrics
that can be copied into a word processor and transformed into an activity for class use.
Sometimes these lyrics can be easy to find, but teachers often ask us for help locating songs that they have
searched for in vain. We will explore some of the kinds of sites where song lyrics may be found and
describe some techniques that can help teachers use WWW search engines to locate the lyrics to a
particular song more quickly.
When searching for song lyrics, one needs to think a bit differently from the way one might approach
searching for other kinds of information online. Many teachers begin by looking for a good Web site for
song lyrics. Although there are some sites that do present a selection of lyrics as a corpus, in most cases
this is not a productive search strategy because the songs are generally not collected in one place but
rather distributed around the Internet in millions of different sites.
Where can one find these songs? Record labels often have official Web sites for their artists that provide a
variety of information about their activities and usually add a "discography" and/or "lyrics" section that
might include song lyrics. This site for Patricia Kaas is managed by Sony Music:
http://www.sonymusic.fr/kaas/
Some companies seem to be very protective of their control of the lyrics and have even closed down
private sites that put lyrics online. Official and unofficial fan club sites sometimes duplicate or replace the
function of record label in promoting the artist. For example, discography and lyrics pages for Mecano
can be found at the MecanoWeb site:
http://www.geocities.com/~mecanoweb/LETRAS.html
http://www.geocities.com/mecanoweb/DISCOGRAFIAmecano.html
Other private sites by individual music fans are another option, and these might be located anywhere in
the world.
http://members.es.tripod.de/Ananta/letras/mecano.htm
Many individuals might have a reason to include the text of a particular song on a Web page. If you need
the lyrics for all of the songs on an album, the most efficient search strategy will likely be different than if
you simply need to find a particular song.
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Language Learning & Technology 5
There are many search engines for the Web whose results will be similar, so it is not necessary to use any
particular site. Some people have a preference for a certain search engine, and this is fine. A few favorites
are Altavista.com, Google.com, Snap.com, Yahoo.com, Lycos.com. Many search engines allow the user
to specify sites in a particular language, but this is generally not useful as few Web sites bother to label
their language. So including a language in the search might even prevent finding the pages you need.
The most important feature to use when searching for songs is using quotation marks to identify a string
of words that go together. "Twinkle, twinkle little star" should locate the title that we intend to find, but
without the quotation marks we might also find "The little star will twinkle brightly." Careful use of
quotation marks will eliminate false hits -- pages that match the search criteria even though they are not
what we want. The more false hits we get, the harder it is and the longer it takes to track down what we
really need. But quoting strings that are too long can have the opposite result if some small difference in
the text makes the string in the Web page slightly different from the search string. For example, if the title
in the Web page appears on two separate lines:
Twinkle, Twinkle
Little Star
Our search might miss the very page we are looking for.
Every search is a matter of narrowing or widening the search parameters depending on whether we are
getting too many false hits or not enough good hits. Quoting strings tends to narrow the search, so use
fewer quotes if the search results seem too narrow, more quotes if the results seem too wide.
But just what should we be searching for? A problem for many novice Web searchers is that they begin
by searching for words that identify the topic rather than words that will appear on the pages they hope to
find. For example, very few pages of song lyrics include the word "lyrics," so do not use the word "lyrics"
in the search for the words of a particular song. However, the word "lyrics" might be effective in looking
for a collection of lyrics of many songs. Of course, a page in Spanish will probably use the word "letras"
rather than "lyrics," so don't forget to consider the various possibilities in the languages that you use.
Most song lyrics pages include the name of the artist and the song title, but not all of them do. In addition,
the artist name and song title are the elements most likely to be present in some fancy format that might
prevent the search engine from seeing them correctly.
Clearly, the words that will always be on any page containing the lyrics of a song are the words of the
song itself, and these are invariably the most effective search parameters. The words "Twinkle, twinkle
little star" are in the song but are also the title, so that search will bring up many pages that include only
the titles of songs and not the lyrics. The search string "how I wonder what you are" will be more likely to
find only pages with the lyrics of the song. Be sure to consider how common an expression is when
selecting search criteria. For instance, "what you are" is a string that we can expect to find in many
contexts other than this song. Less common expressions from the song will be more effective: "above the
world," "diamond in the sky." Some songs also have different versions whose lyrics may vary. This is
something to consider depending on whether one is looking for a particular version or all versions of a
song.
A search for
Twinkle "how I wonder" "above the world" diamond
is likely to locate the pages we want very effectively. The addition of words from other stanzas might
help us eliminate pages that only include the first stanza. In short, the best search strategy is to include
only words and short phrases that must appear in the pages we hope to find.
To locate sites that provide the lyrics of many songs -- for example, all the songs on a particular album --
a different approach is required. In this case one might find either a page with a list of song titles and links
Jean LeLoup and Robert Ponterio On the Net
Language Learning & Technology 6
to the words of each song, or a long page with the lyrics of many songs. In the first case a search for a
couple of titles might work; in the second case, expressions from the lyrics of several songs will be more
effective. The problem with searching for titles is that far too many pages will be found that list titles
without providing the lyrics. In this case, adding the search term "lyrics" or an appropriate substitute in
the targeted language might help.
One example of a useful collection of lyrics is the "comptines" page of the "Premiers pas sur Internet" site
for French children: http://www.momes.net/comptines/index.html, including the words and often the
music for hundreds of children's songs.
There are times, though, when the list of titles can be of use. Some sites that sell CDs online also provide
audio excerpts of individual songs. This can be a useful tool for the language teacher in search of new
music in the target language, especially for teachers who do not often get to travel to countries where the
language is spoken.
A caveat: once you find the lyrics, check them out carefully before using them. Many Web pages contain
errors and misspellings. The lyrics on many pages will require corrections before they are shared with
students. Copy and paste them into your favorite word processor; read them carefully while listening to
the song, and use the spell check.
Now that we've discovered how to find these lyrics, what can we do with them in the FL classroom? As
was previously noted, many FL teachers like to use songs as authentic materials in their curriculum.
Songs can be used in a variety of ways for FL instruction. A search of the FLTEACH archives from
January 1, 1999 to the present using the keywords "song lyrics" yields at least 146 hits, ranging from
postings that are requesting aid in finding lyrics and using them to detailed messages describing grammar
and other language lessons that are enhanced by the use of songs and their lyrics. One example of a lesson
that uses lyrics for literacy in the L2 was profiled in a previous column: Literacy: Reading on the Net. A
sample message by Kathy White from the FLTEACH archives offers nearly 40 suggestions for activities
using music and songs in the FL classroom.
Another FLTEACH post by Claudia Irigoin offers song activities from a workshop presentation given in
Argentina. The purpose of the workshop was to help teachers motivate students in writing in English (an
L2 there). You might also wish to expand repeated portions of songs to make it easier for students to
follow along. For listening comprehension, some words or phrases may be replaced by underlining to
allow students to fill in the blanks: a cloze task. Definitions or translations of phrases may be added in the
margins or footers. Grammatical elements may be highlighted. The text, thus modified, can become a
useful tool for language study.
Using songs is a wonderful way to make the target language accessible to language learners. It is a
universal medium, and speaks volumes about cultural origin, language patterns, and usage. The power
that songs contain is underscored by George Jellinek (WQXR-FM): "The history of a people is found in
its songs." On a more basic level, music and songs are simply the stuff that life is made of: "Give me a
laundry list and I'll set it to music" (Gioacchino Antonio Rossini).