There are a million and one lyrics sites for “mainstream” songs and even for bands/artists that aren’t mainstream. However, when it comes to techno (and it’s subgenres), there’s nary a site to be found, even for the most popular of artists.
And yes, a high number of techno songs don’t even have lyrics or are so horribly repetitive of just a few that a site for lyrics shouldn’t be required. But what about songs like Stay by Joey Riot, Time To Let Go by MC Keyes, or Keep On Trying by Fade and Alchemist?
Now I realize most of those artists are not super popular or even that well known, but Joey Riot is indeed quite well known and even Stay I have yet to find anything resembling lyrics for.
I always thought those sites are mostly user-created content, kind of like a lyric wiki.
Sometimes musicians include the “official” lyrics in the the album sleeve/art, of course, but not always. I wouldn’t know, but perhaps there’s a bias to not include any “lyrics” in an art form that’s main focus is on the beats, structures and soundscapes? Then not much of a community to attemp to bother at interpretations?
There may also be a difficulty in that a good number of techno “lyrics” are from samples of other songs from other artists. Perhaps the people listening are confident that other listeners will recognize the originals and know the titles to look for those lyrics over there?
Otherwise, I’m with **cmyk **- I bet most people are more interested in the structures and the sounds involved in the creations rather than in the specific words used.
Yeah, I would say 99% of the lyrics sites out there are user generated. Those videos you posted only have a few hundred views. So if there isn’t a fan out there will to write down the lyrics, they’ll never pop up on the internet. There’s plenty of little indie rock bands with only a few hundred hits on YouTube with no lyric pages out there (unless the artists put them out themselves).
Good question. One of the first sites that a Google search spits out when you do a search for Joey Riot is a myspace profile. Le sigh. Nothing resembling a lyrics section for his Myspace page.
Yeah, I suppose it comes with the territory in a genre where the focus is indeed as you describe.
Yeah I hadn’t thought of this, that the vocals in techno songs are frequently samples from other songs. Good call on that one. Though in the linked songs the spoken lyrics are unique to those songs, a good point none-the-less though.
Yeah, it would seem that’s how it goes.
Thanks all for pointing out the (now) obvious reasons that would go into why techno lyrics pages are nigh impossible to find.
I think your main problem is that you’re listening to shitty breakbeat DJs.
…Just kidding. But I think it’s like others have said, electronic music is notorious for being spread out over a million sub-genres, so even the most popular new age-electro-house-dubstep-screamcore-disco-breakbeat DJ will have a relatively limited following, and the songs rarely derive much “meaning” from the lyrics - the spoken portions are usually treated as just another layer of sound.
