Name: Lyreach
URL: http://www.lyreach.com

If you love music as much as I do, the ultimate aggravation is listening to a terrific song and not being able to find out who is the performer afterwards. Personally, it makes me go madder than the squirrel from “Ice Age” whenever something happens to its dearly beloved nut.

That is why a site like this one sounds promising. Basically, it is a search engine for lyrics. In theory, it should produce satisfactory results even if you have only a couple of words from the actual line to throw at it. Once you have typed the words in, it will show you all the possible matches with links to MetroLyrics for you to dig deeper and see if that is indeed the song you were after.

Well, let’s take it for a test drive.

First try:

Song: “My Generation” by The Who
Words I will use: “talking”, “generation”, “baby”

Results:

talking gentleman I’d like to

talking get down through the

talking get em baby Nicki

talking get in the game

talking get on dis motorcycle

talking get on down mothafuckas

talking get that shit that

talking get the fuck off

Mmmh.. let’s try again.

Second try:

Song: “My Generation” by The Who (again)
Words I will use: “talking about my generation baby” (that is, the exact lyric)

Results:

talking about my Generation hope

talking about my Generation Injected

talking about my Generation talking

talking about my girl my

talking about my girl on

talking about my girl talking

talking about my girl that’s

talking about my grandma like

talking about my hair but

There it is. The third link directs to The Who’s classic. But shouldn’t such a classic top the list?

Let’s carry on…

Third try:

Song: “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” by Elton John
Words I will use: “goodbye yellow brick road”

Results:

goodbye Yellow brick road When

goodbye Yellow brick road where

goodbye Yes it s time

OK, it got it right this time. Both the top tiers were taken by a lyric from the John/Taupin song.

Right, this is the final try:

Song: “Mayor Of Simpleton” by XTC
Words I will use: “mayor of simpleton”

Results:

mayor of simpleton but I

mayor of simpleton or get

mayor of simpleton Please be

mayor of simpleton Then I’m

mayor of simpleton you’ll be

mayor of some small town

Excellent, the first five slots link to XTC’s song.
I was afraid it would fail because it couldn’t handle a notably more popular song like “My Generation” that smoothly. But Lyreach did quite fine in the end.

One definitive suggestion would be adding a bookmarklet. That is not hard, and it makes thing so much easier on everybody. Other than that, Lyreach does its bit good enough.