Lyrics

Some lyrics are abstract, almost unintelligible, and, in such cases, their explication emphasizes form, articulation, meter, and symmetry of expression.

[5] Stainer and Barrett used the word as a singular substantive: "Lyric, poetry or blank verse intended to be set to music and sung".

[1] The singular form "lyric" is still used to mean the complete words to a song by authorities such as Alec Wilder,[6] Robert Gottlieb,[7] and Stephen Sondheim.

The differences between poem and song may become less meaningful where verse is set to music, to the point that any distinction becomes untenable.

[9] For example: In the lyrics of popular music a "shifter"[10] is a word, often a pronoun, "where reference varies according to who is speaking, when and where",[11] such as "I", "you", "my", "our".

The MPA's president, Lauren Keiser, said the free lyrics web sites are "completely illegal" and wanted some website operators jailed.

[14] In an attempt to crack down unlicensed lyrics web sites, a U.S. federal court has ordered LiveUniverse, a network of websites run by MySpace co-founder Brad Greenspan, to cease operating four sites offering unlicensed song lyrics.

Former Oxford Professor of Poetry Christopher Ricks famously published Dylan's Visions of Sin, an in-depth and characteristically Ricksian analysis of the lyrics of Bob Dylan; Ricks gives the caveat that to have studied the poetry of the lyrics in tandem with the music would have made for a much more complicated critical feat.

[16] Beginning in late 2014, Google changed its search results pages to include song lyrics.