Song analysis websites?

June 1, 2006 2:08 PM

Are there any websites out there dedicated to analyzing the lyrics of popular music?

To get this out of the way, I'm not looking for CD review sites, croon-over-your-favorite-artist forums or religious censorship campaigns.

What I am looking for is a website that lists the names of songs that were popular or charted over the last few decades, and has links to users' interpretations/discussions of what the lyrics of the songs mean.

In particular I'm interested in finding out the story behind Seal's "Crazy," but ideally I'd like to see something that I could browse for fun and read about the meaning behind other songs I like.

Thanks :)

posted by Ziggy Zaga to media & arts (10 comments total)

Songmeanings.net does this.
posted by amarynth at 2:15 PM on June 1, 2006

YES, YES... thank you for asking this question. I have been asking myself "it would be nice if there was a website" about this for quite awhile.
posted by rolypolyman at 2:58 PM on June 1, 2006

I really like the song-lyric-trivia from Slang City, but they have no Seal's songs....
posted by nomisxid at 3:07 PM on June 1, 2006

From a five-minute glance through some of my favorite songs, songmeanings.net looks like a "croon-over-your-favorite-artist forum" to me. LOTS of teenagers.
posted by clh at 3:31 PM on June 1, 2006

Strange coincidence - I just wondered the same thing and somehow found songmeanings.net. Yeah it could use more people and more insightful replies, and the noise to signal ratio is kind of high, but there is insight on some songs. I had no idea 'Cadmium' by Superchunk was referring to cigarette smoke, for instance. There were a couple other interesting discussions of Wilco songs too.

It seems like the site provides a simple, easy to navigate interface. It just needs a critical mass to start visiting it and making good contributions.
posted by skechada at 3:47 PM on June 1, 2006

From a five-minute glance through some of my favorite songs, songmeanings.net looks like a "croon-over-your-favorite-artist forum" to me. LOTS of teenagers.
posted by clh

Yeah it could use more people and more insightful replies, and the noise to signal ratio is kind of high, but there is insight on some songs.
posted by skechada

I got the same impressions too, but this is actually pretty close to what I had hoped to find. There are quite a few gems of wisdom to be found there though, so it's fine by me.

Thanks for the lead, amarynth. Searching for "song meanings" I found a couple mediocre sites, but yours is probably the best I've seen so far.
posted by Ziggy Zaga at 4:19 PM on June 1, 2006

It's not quite analysis, per se, but Wikipedia often contains a lot of information (including context) on songs. For example, here is the wikipedia page on Crazy, by Seal.
posted by JMOZ at 9:50 PM on June 1, 2006

songfacts.com has a "facts" section and then a section for user comments (which, on the whole, seem to be the meaningful sort and not the "croon-over-your-favorite-artist" sort.) It doesn't have Seal's "Crazy," though.
posted by needs more cowbell at 9:55 PM on June 1, 2006

Usenet can be pretty good for this, many bands have alt.music categories where the minutiae of thier lyrics are interpreted endlessly. Google the band and click the Groups link to see if they're included.
posted by Scoo at 6:51 AM on June 2, 2006

songmeanings.net is great... i know someone already mentioned it. Get an account. They have everything.
posted by notswedish at 11:44 AM on June 11, 2006