Unknown Song Lyrics Search

This past weekend, I went to see several newer movies out in theaters, a luxury I normally don't get to do, since babysitting is involved. As I was waiting for I Love You, Man (2009) to get started, one of the pre-show ads (before the trailers started) was for Rachel Getting Married (2008), starring Anne Hathaway. Rachel is coming out on DVD and Blu-Ray* disc very soon. The previous night, when I saw Liam Neeson in Taken (2009), they showed an ad for the Daniel Craig Casino Royale (2008) for the same reason.

* And don't you think that Sony is thrilled to finally win a format war, all these years after losing the VHS - Betamax battle? Sadly, Sony wins right at the moment when consumers are pulling back from buying a lot of discretionary purchases (AKA, 'stuff'), including DVDs and other entertainment. Rather than buying a lot of discs that take up space and need to be stored at home (we have a whole trunk sitting in our living room full of old DVDs gathering dust; it never gets opened except in extreme circumstances), many people would rather rent a movie online, either through Netflix or iTunes, or simply catch whatever free content exists on websites like Hulu.com or YouTube.

Ah, but I digress. During the ad for Rachel Getting Married, they played a cover of a song I used to know fairly well. The song had been slowed way down, and I couldn't pick out the melody, but I recognized the lyrics as being familiar. The question then arises: how do I find a song that I barely remember, when I can't even remember all the lyrics?

I should note that the only words I could remember from the ad by the time I returned home were the keywords "faster roller coaster." I couldn't search with those three words in quotes, because they were not an exact phrase from the song. I was a little stuck, thanks to my lousy memory!

The first step was to find a song lyrics search website that is worth something. Since I don't search for song lyrics very often, I don't have a good source site bookmarked the way I have IMDB for movie searches. When I googled for "lyrics search website," it returned 77,500,000 hits. The first one (and it doesn't appear to be a paid ad, although it sits at the very top of the search results, a spot usually reserved for paid ads on Google) promised to search for lyrics by keyword. However, it's a terrible website, and not recommended. In fact, most of the sites found on the first page of the Google results didn't search for individual song lyrics as much as they searched for song titles (one notable result that kept getting returned: "Roller Coaster" by the Partridge Family -- that's not it!) and/or band names. Songs and bands were not what I was searching for.

Fortunately, about halfway down the list of hits was the Yahoo! Music lyrics search website. On Yahoo! Music, the first few hits for my keyword search were the songs "Roller Coaster" by Blood, Sweat & Tears (say, did the Partridges just cover the B,S&T song?) and "Get Off" by Republica. I clearly knew that the song I was thinking of was neither of those two hits.

However, the next few hits were for a song called "Everyday." The first version offered up by Yahoo! was done by James Taylor, and I knew that wasn't right, either. But the very next version was performed by Buddy Holly and the Crickets. A-HA!!! That's it!!! That is the song I knew I remembered from hearing the song lyrics being used in the movie ad. I'm including an MP3 link for the song at the top right of this blog; you should be able to hear the song simply by clicking on the play button. I'm also including the html for an MP3 of the song here:

Everyday - Buddy Holly

Mojo and George

Truth be told, I wasn't quite sure whether I should post this entry, either here or on another blog. It's not that I am not interested in the topic; rather, I don't know too many others who would be.

See, a coworker of mine recently asked me a question. He heard a song playing from my iPod, and he asked simply, "Is that George Thorogood?" No, my friend. Not George. Mojo!

Mojo, as in Mojo Nixon. I've been a huge fan of his work ever since I first saw the video for "Elvis is Everywhere," which still ranks as his biggest hit. For the uninitiated, Mojo's sound is actually not all that dissimilar to the musical sounds of George Thorogood and the Delaware Destroyers, once you control for lyrics and the odd Skid Roper melody. The two singers even look somewhat similar, as evidenced by the pics below:



So, I thought it would be interesting to post a blog entry with the two singers side-by-side, just to show how they do look like each other. When searching for images, of course, Google offers the fantastic ability to enter a search query and then switch between 'web,' 'images,' 'news,' 'maps,' and 'video.' To get the pics of the two singers, I simply searched on the names in any Google search window, then selected 'images,' and then picked two pictures that would look as much alike as possible.

Normally, when I enter a search on a specific person's name, I like to put that name in quotation marks. That means I get results that only return what is inside the quotation marks, a neat trick that would keep me (in this case) from getting any hits related to our nation's 37th President.

One thing I learned right away that I didn't know about Mojo before I did this search was his real name. Thank you, Wikipedia! I also had no idea people could categorize Mojo's music in any one genre, but they did. Somehow, I feel like much less of a Mojo fan for simply not knowing either of those details. And I absolutely LOVE the Johnny Cash song from which the punkers in The Cramps lifted the term 'psychobilly!' Johnny Cash did a ton of great music, but "One Piece at a Time" has to be one of my all-time favorite songs of his. It always brings a smile when I hear it!

In the end, I knew I had to post this entry if for no other reason than to spread the word on Psychobilly music. Long live Mojo! I do have to say that my brother, sister, and I went to see Mojo perform live one Christmas break at some dive in Dayton, OH. We almost wound up not going to the show, as it was late and we were all somewhat past our youthful clubbing days. Having seen Mojo perform live, I can say there is nothing else quite like it! My favorite performers are all ones who pour every last ounce of their passion and energy into a live performance, and Mojo did that in spades! He must have lost about 20 lbs in sweat that night. But boy, did he put on a show!