Get Lyrical Review (iTunes Add-On Application)

Written by Rob Nichols on December 21, 2009 · Filed under Review, Software 

Get Lyrical is a useful app for those of us who like to sing along to songs no matter whether they are our favourites or not. There are some songs you can sing with your eyes closed and there are those that you can’t. But Get Lyrical is an app for OS X that can provide lyrics to all of the songs in your iTunes library.

Gathering the information from lyrics.wikia.com, the lyrics are not always 100% accurate in the same way that Wikipedia isn’t. Therefore it makes sense for the developer of this app to add in an editor which allows you to easily alter the lyrics that it places upon your tracks. This is a good feature, although in the short time I have used the app for my library, I have not come across any obvious mistakes with the lyrics.

It is a lightweight application which fits in with the typical Mac OS X interface with a semi-transparent background and standard white text which is clear and easy to read.
Not only is it useful and fairly stable, it is very quite functional too. It can acquire lyrics to even some obscure songs that you perhaps wouldn’t expect to find so easily.

There are several modes of operation which differ slightly. Firstly, you can manually choose which songs to gather lyrics for, simply by highlighting the songs and sending the instruction, or you can do each track individually (I’m not sure why you would but you can). Also, you can turn on active tagging which is the most efficient mode. This basically provides lyrics for each song as and when you add them to your library or play them.

Overall it is a great application that is popular with me as well as many other users. However, there are some negatives. For example, some users have reported stalling and sluggishness with the app if, when using active tagging, it cannot find the correct lyrics. This is a bug that I would expect will be fixed with an update if it is a widespread problem, although I can say that I have as yet, not encountered the problem at all. However, I do not recall any instance where it could not find the correct lyrics. That’s not to say that I only listen to mainstream music, it’s just that the app is very capable and its resources are reliable.

Get Lyrical is a very simplistic app that seems in the past to have been difficult to master with developers, however this app really works for me and I am happy with it. I can’t say I use it too often as I’m not the greatest fan of karaoke, but when it is called upon it is responsive, effective and extremely useful (unlike FluidTunes). I would definitely recommend it to anyone who enjoys either learning lyrics or simply singing along to unknown tracks.

Get Lyrical is available as a free download from the downloads’ section of the official Apple website.