Spotify lets you search for songs based on lyrics, but it doesn’t work 100% of the time

Sometimes when I want to look up a song, I would only be able to remember some of the lyrics that have nothing to do with the song title—and even more so if the song title has nothing to do with what the song is about (I’m looking at you, Panic at the Disco). Now, instead of searching for the lyrics on Google, Spotify lets you type it in the app instead to find the song you’re looking for.

Spotify designer Lin Wang tweeted that “now you can find songs by lyrics” on the app. The idea is that you could just type the lyrics you remember through the search bar and songs that match your lyrics will have a “Lyrics match” tag underneath.

I tried looking up songs from whatever lyrics I remember, and there are some hits and misses. Some songs—especially ones that I’ve often listened to on the app—appear rightaway even with pretty generic sounding lyrics.

Pop songs with generic sounding lyrics also appear easily. For example, “It’s Gonna Be Me” by *NSYNC has a catchy start of a chorus. When I typed in “every little thing I do” into the search bar, the song was the fourth option given.

I was even more impressed finding out in Twitter that you can search for some songs even with incorrect lyrics. Typing in “Last night a DJ shaved my wife” will give you “Last night a DJ saved my life”.

However, there are some instances where the search feature doesn’t really work. It’s not completely helpful if all you remember is the “do do do do” part in Suzanne Vega’s Tom’s Diner.

It also sometimes needs you to be a little more specific, but even then it won’t work as well as you’d like. I tried to look for “Another Day In Paradise” by Phil Collins by typing in just the “think twice” lyrics—which arguably is one of the most memorable parts of the song. However, if I added “Oh” before “think twice”, I did kind of find a playlist that matched it—-even if it is the wrong title.

This isn’t a particularly new feature. Apple Music has had the same feature since 2018. Spotify also recently caught up with Apple Music for their “real-time lyrics” feature provided by Musixmatch.

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