Is there a good reference site for looking up the meaning of song lyrics?
Rap “songs”, in particular, seem to be full of little known slang. I can’t figure out the meaning even of stuff I grew up listening to.
On a related note, are there any other musical genres with as much little-known slang?
http://rapgenius.com/ is good for the slang in rap songs.
Try googling: [song name] lyrics meaning
I find SongMeanings to be pretty useful-only issue is that more obscure or forgotten bands get very little action by the users, but that is to be expected I guess.
In my experience (I’d love to have someone prove me wrong), there’s no one site that’s reliable for the OP. Songfacts is probably the best out of the ones above, but none of them are reliable. Most sites either 1) aggregate information from wherever they can (Songfacts does this) with little attention payed to checking facts/sources and a lot of attention paid to filling content on their site or else they 2) allow users to generate content, similar to Wikipedia. The result of the latter is people voicing their opinion of what the song is about with no effort to get the actual answer.
Overall, I’d say all of the above sites are reliable. When it comes to intensely popular songs that have been discussed at length through interviews with and books/movies about the artist, they’ll all give you adequate information. But when it comes to B sides and lesser known artists, take everything with a grain of salt. Actually, take any site that posts articles without an author, editor, or any citation with a big grain of salt.
Let me add that a great way to find out about a song and its meaning is to just use Google. Most of these sites will show up on the first page anyway if I search for “Boombastic Shaggy Meaning”.
Concur.
For rap music term meanings, I drive down to Compton where I can query random individuals who hang out on street corners.