iPhone American iDol

We’re more than happy to flick the switch on the 100W bulb and explain how to add lyrics to your iPhone.

Here’s the first trick: while the latest version of the iPhone software does add support for lyrics, those lyrics are pulled directly from the song files’ metadata. If you hop into your iTunes library and select a track, you can hit command-I or control-click and choose “Get Info.” You’ll see a number of tabs, but the only we’re interested at the moment is “Lyrics.” Hitting that will give you a big empty text field. Whatever you put in this field is what will show up on the iPhone, so you’re not required to put the lyrics in—really it could be anything you want:notes, recipes, marriage proposals, whatever. But right now, we’ll assume you want to use lyrics.

To find the lyrics for a song, I recommend a simple Google search: entering the title of the song and lyrics usually yields a number of results. So, for example, if I’m looking for the lyrics to The Rolling Stones classic “Gimmer Shelter,” to which I’ve become addicted, thanks to Rock Band, I’ll fire up a Google search and enter “Gimme Shelter +lyrics” (Lyric Wiki is an excellent collaborative site for lyrics). Once you’ve found the words, copy and paste them into the Lyrics dialog box in the appropriate song in iTunes. You’ll then need to re-sync your computer and your iPhone. Couldn’t be easier.

Well, it could be easier. I mean, who wants to spend all their time finding, copying, and pasting lyrics into iTunes. Pretty much nobody. So instead, check out Gimme Some Tune, an iTunes add-on that can be configured to download lyrics for songs as they play. Combined with Doug Adam’s Needle Drop iTunes script, which lets you play songs for arbitrary amounts of time, you can set it up to automatically retrieve lyrics for all of your songs. That’s pretty darn easy.

But how—I’m sure you’re wondering—do I get such lyrics to show up on the iPhone? Easy enough: when the song comes up, tap on the album art. Usually this brings up additional music controls, but if lyrics are present, it’ll overlay them on the album art. You can even scroll through them with a simple flick, if you’re trying to sing along. We also remind you that singing along to your tunes is an activity usually best left for the privacy of your own.