Meaning Business

Song site opens forums for lyric interpretation

By Brian Truitt

OK, so you’ve figured out that Jimi Hendrix didn’t actually sing, “Excuse me while I kiss this guy,” and found all your favorite lyrics sites on the Internet. Now you have a new problem: What the heck do they mean?

That’s where SongMeanings.net comes in. Thanks to nearly 400,000 of your fellow music nerds chiming in on everything from the Beatles to Beyonce, you can go a long way in trying to decipher the lyrics of musicians both famous and on the cusp. More than 35,000 artists and 415,000 songs are represented on the site, which features a lot of innocuous “I love this song!” comments and random sniping, but also offers some impressive user insight. Queen’s “Fat Bottomed Girls” sort of speaks for itself, but even John Lennon might not have made a connection between Muse’s “Knights of Cydonia” and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

(February 2009)

Tags: lyric, Media, songs, web