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I search for "[song name] lyrics" and I get a site that has the lyrics. I've never thought it sucked. I don't care how many banners on the side, just that the words are there. And I prefer an "expanded" view with all the [Hook] type stuff replaced with the actual words, rather than the "more correct" RG presentation.

Heck, sometimes I have to click more to get what I'm looking for with RG. After trying a few things, I was able to reproduce this just now with a search for "forgot about dre lyrics" (no quotes). This is the second result I got: something google shows as "rapgenius.com/...dre-forgot-about-dre/Eazy-es-ice-cubes-and-docs-the-s..." that does a redirect to http://rapgenius.com/Dr-dre-forgot-about-dre-lyrics#note-252... which pops up an annotation over the lyrics. That's not what I was looking for.

All that to say: it's not clear to me that RG really sucks less for "[song name] lyrics" queries.



> All that to say: it's not clear to me that RG really sucks less for "[song name] lyrics" queries.

1000x this.

I think Rap Genius is great for "song meaning" queries, but their interface is just as distracting (if not more) than other lyric sites that "suck."


Actually I'd be surprised if Rap Genius is any good for "song meaning" queries. Will it give you information? Probably. Will that information be accurate? I'm skeptical.

I've done a few spot checks on Poetry Genius, at least, and the annotations have consistently been either wrong or irrelevant, even for works that are well documented (e.g. The Waste Land).

My guess would be that if Rap Genius users aren't getting it right when large bodies of secondary literature are available, they can't be doing very well with pop music lyrics either. I could certainly be wrong, though.


They have verified artists program (http://rapgenius.com/verified-artists) where artists pop into explain the lyrics themselves. It might not be perfect, but there are only so many players in the "song meaning" arena & I bet RG is pretty high up there.




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