In the grand spirit of web 2.0 everything gets wikified. Whatever website you used to like there is a new one that anyone can edit. Like a most of web 2.0 a lot of these sites fall on their faces. Sometimes adding AJAX just makes a crappy site with AJAX, but sometimes web 2.0 is exactly what you need. Thus enter LyricWiki.org! If ever their was an idea just waiting to happen this is it and it’s fantastic. Most lyrics websites are awful and mostly exist for the sole purpose of ad revenue from the unholy amount of animated banners (thank heavens for AdBlock). In fact, the web seems to be pretty much a wasteland in the realm of lyrics. Usually in any endeavor there is at least one fantastic site and then a whole bunch of crappy clones of some bootleg version. With lyrics there are just the clones and there is nothing in the way of “indie” lyrics either. You will find Decemberists lyrics but God help you if you want to find even a single stanza of Wooden Wand anything. So when you stumble across something this excellent its time to write a review/hype it.

LyricWiki seems to have gone live in April of this year. Their goal is to have a comprehensive list of lyrics done in the MediaWiki format. Most of their additions so far seem to have come from an automated bot they made to populate the site. However, the potential for a community driven site is massive. I am not really sure what their end goal is but I envision them being absorbed by the Wikipedia, which it seems they might not be opposed to.

I also have some hope that it will evolve into a kind of lyric annotation site. One of my favorite music websites of all time is The Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics by David Dodd. The only problem is that no one has made a similar website for other bands as far as I can tell. What sets Dodd’s site apart from wretched places like SongMeanings.com is that SongMeanings is worthless for actually finding anything out about the cultural context and allusions in lyrics (OMG! this song is so pretty!!111one). Dodd’s site on the other hand is well researched and fantastic, if not dirtily hippieish. Maybe LyricsWiki has no intention of going that way but the potential is definitely there.

The drawbacks are mostly related to the youth of the site. Wikis like this need a strong community to build and maintain content. They are still trying to recruit that community so tell your friends because I would really like for this project to work. There are some organizational problems that need to be ironed out but the WikiMedia site is nice and clean as always. What they really need is more contributors… so click away, sign up, and get to work. I definitely plan on getting involved in this one and have already posted my inaugural lyrics. These are lyrics that you won’t find anywhere else on the internet… I know I have looked. So go check out “Dead Sue by Wooden Wand and the Sky High Band.