Have you listened closely to The Bee Gees classic Stayin’ Alive? I swear, there’s a line that says “there’s a weak old panda on my shoes.” Seriously. Go listen. Your life will never be the same.
As Scott pointed out back in July, Gracenote, the company which supplies the song information that gets download when you rip your CDs, had started acquiring the rights to song lyrics. This after the record labels had begun to crack down on unauthorized sources of lyrics.
Gracenote today announced that they have signed deals with Warner/Chappell Music and EMI, completing their much-envied set of the big five record labels. Could this, as we’ve speculated before, presage lyrics integration into iTunes in the same way that iTunes 7 made cover art a staple?
Aside from the possibility of settling bar bets (did Hendrix say “kiss the sky” or “kiss this guy”?) by having the official lyrics to songs handy, what would this give Apple? I’ll tell you what: karaoke. Just add a little software for the bouncing ball and taking out the vocals and your MacBook is a portable instant humiliation station.
Okay, I admit, I could be wrong about that line from “Stayin’ Alive.” It might say “there’s a week-old panda on my shoes.” Come on, Apple: help me solve this eternal question.
My best misheard line is in the Deep Purple song Smoke On The Water.
The line is,
"Some stupid with a flare gun"
and is about someone firing a flare into the roof of a concert hall during a Frank Zappa concert causing it to burn to the ground and send a pall of smoke out over Lake Geneva. Hence the title of the song.
For a long time I heard,
"Some student with a prayer bun"
I hope the lyrics information they get isn't as shoddy as their album information. Wrong song names (according to Gracenote disc 1 & 2 of Rush's Chronicles compilation album are identical), wrong artists (I'm not sure how Javert, one of the characters in the musical, got to be an artist on the Les Miserables album I have), inconsistent formatting (multi-disc sets will have Disc 1 in brackets, Disc 2 in parentheses).
If they don't came straight from the record companies, chances are those lyrics might include "the weak old panda" line...
Maybe if Apple adds lyric downloads to iTunes, it can update how it handles tracks with multiple artists, especially when it comes to the iPod; I'm tired of seeing 12 entries for the same artist because a few songs had guest artists. Or maybe they can just give the option to use the Album Artist field they added with iTunes 7; that would satisfy my need as well.