Official Lyrics

[lotte]

There have been a number of times when we've been trying to work out what the specific lyrics to a song were but have just not been able to agree by listening alone. No problem: hop onto the internet and look up the lyrics. Trouble is, there occasionally seems to be disagreement between the sites and it seems to be just a consensus formed by the majority of users of each site.

 

I realise that they are probably 99% correct but it occured to me that the lyrics of a song must constitute part of the copyright and so will have to be written down somewhere as official lyrics (actually the official lyrics not just a website claiming them to be official.)

 

I think there must be a few people on this site that have recorded and copyrighted their own material and so will have gone through the process making the lyrics of a song 'legally' their own. My question then is: where do these copyrighted lyrics live? Surely, they have to be public in some sense otherwise there would be a million 'gotcha' lawsuits. If I wake up tomorrow with 'Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away...' in my head and decide to turn it into a song for commercial release, there must be a process I can go through to not end up on the wrong side of McCartney's lawyers.

[Mediocre Polymath]

I've found myself pondering this as well a few times, because there are a few songs where I'm almost certain the commonly posted lyrics (the ones that come up on Spotify, etc.) are wrong.

 

I believe you do have to copyright lyrics somewhere, as part of that publishing company arrangement that recording artists have. But I think those lyrics are often written down after the fact, either by a singer who doesn't clearly remember exactly what they said on the final take, or by some record company legal intern who is just trying to decipher the recording like everyone else.

 

Also, a difference of a word or two isn't going to change much if a legal challenge is brought, so I don't think those official lyrics have to be entirely correct either, so long as they get the general gist.

 

There are a few examples I've encountered over the years (can't think of any off the top of my head, annoyingly) where the lyrics in the liner notes (an allusion that I've just realised makes me sound old) make sense and are very neat, but don't actually scan. And the actual lyrics sung on the recording have some sort of half-slurred fudge in place of the offending phrase.

 

There's also cases like "Tourettes" off In Utero which I'm certain is just Kurt screaming pure gibberish, despite the song having a full set of lyrics on paper. I think that was just one of those weird sarcastic Kurt jokes.

[Mykesbass]

Lyrics on album artwork (remember those...) and even official publisher's sheet music often have discrepancies to what is actually sung on original recordings, so I'd not expect any internet sources to be fully accurate. 

 

Pretty sure from my record company days that a recording will be enough to copyright the lyrics. I don't think anyone has ever tried to get away with copyright infringement based on these discrepancies. 

[Munurmunuh]

If I write you a letter, you own the physical paper and I own the copyright. Everything from this point on is just additional proof. And people taking cuts.

[Cliff Edge]

Back in the dark ages we had to continually stop and start records in order to get lyrics. I had a singer who would just listen once or twice and then sing what he thought he heard and swear blind it was correct.  His versions of Me and Bobby McGee and Gentle on My Mind, which I have recordings of, are a wonderful comedy of errors. 

[tauzero]

On the copyright front, if you create an original work then you automatically have copyright. The issue is proving that you created it first - traditionally you would record the song and put the cassette/CD into an envelope which you would seal and send to yourself through the post which would result in a postmark with the date on it finishing up on the envelope. I suppose nowadays you'd just video yourself doing it and put it on Youtube.

[AMV001]

I've had a couple of record and publishing deals and have never officially filed any lyrics at any point. Have never been asked to either. This was pre-digital though so maybe, with the existence of the internet, that's changed in the recent past.

[Franticsmurf]

On 01/09/2024 at 20:05, tauzero said:

On the copyright front, if you create an original work then you automatically have copyright. The issue is proving that you created it first - traditionally you would record the song and put the cassette/CD into an envelope which you would seal and send to yourself through the post which would result in a postmark with the date on it finishing up on the envelope. I suppose nowadays you'd just video yourself doing it and put it on Youtube.

This is what we did in my first band, way back in the cassette days. And every time we wrote new songs, we'd collect them all on another cassette, add the original mailed envelope into a new one and repeat the process. Of course, we could have mailed separate envelopes, which would have been the logical thing to do. But we were rock rebels rejecting 'The Man' and his logical ways. 🤣

[MichaelDean]

We self published on CD Baby. At no point was there even an option to upload lyrics. It just isn't a thing.