You heard it in a café, in a video, in the back of someone's car. Now the chorus won't leave your head, and you don't know what it's called. The good news: a few words of lyrics are almost always enough to find a song. The trick is knowing which words to search for.
The fastest way: a lyrics song finder
Type the words you remember into our free song finder. It looks for songs with those words in their lyrics, then checks each result against the actual lyrics, so a match with a tick really contains what you typed. It copes with misheard lines, works in English, Spanish, Portuguese, French and German, and needs no account.
If you'd rather use a search engine, the same tips below make your search far more likely to work.
Which words to search for
Not every line is equally useful. In order of how well they work:
- The chorus. It repeats, so it's the part you're most likely to remember correctly, and it's the part lyric sites and search engines index first.
- An unusual phrase. "left my umbrella in your brother's car" narrows things down; "I love you baby" matches ten thousand songs. Pick the strangest four to ten words you remember.
- A name, place or object. Songs about "Jolene", "Galway" or "a red Corvette" are easy to find because the specific word narrows everything down.
Avoid searching for the first line of a verse unless you're sure of it. Verses change; choruses don't.
When you misheard the lyrics
Misheard lyrics are so common they have a name, mondegreens. "Hold me closer, Tony Danza" (it's "tiny dancer") is the classic. A few ways around them:
- Leave out the word you're unsure of. Three correct words beat six where one is wrong.
- Search the sound, not the spelling. If you heard "kiss the sky" but it might be "kiss this guy", try both.
- Add the genre or decade. "80s rock song chorus about a highway at midnight" narrows the results a lot.
Our song finder is built for this: it matches lyrics that are close to what you typed, then shows which results were confirmed against the real lyrics and which are only possible matches.
Search engine tricks that still work
If you use Google or Bing directly:
- Put the exact phrase in quotes:
"dancing on the kitchen floor at midnight". - Add the word lyrics to the end:
summer rain on the window lyrics. - Use an asterisk for a word you don't know:
"I left my * in the city". - Search on a lyrics site with
site:, for examplesite:genius.com "lyrics you remember".
No words at all? Use the melody
If all you have is the tune, a lyrics search won't help. Use a music recognition app instead: most can identify a song that's playing near you, and some can recognise humming or whistling. Phone assistants can do this too: ask "what's this song?" while it plays.
Found it? Here's what to do next
- Save it. Add it to a playlist straight away; earworms have a way of disappearing when you finally have the title.
- Learn the real words. Read the full lyrics so you stop singing the misheard version.
- Make your own. If a line is stuck in your head but no song actually has it, it might be the start of yours. Write the rest with the lyrics generator, then hear it sung with lyrics to song.
FAQ
Can I find a song by lyrics for free? Yes. The song finder is free and needs no sign-up, and so does a normal web search.
How many words do I need? Four to ten words is ideal. Fewer than three usually matches too many songs; long, half-remembered lines are more likely to contain a mistake.
Can it find songs in other languages? Yes. Type the lyrics in the language they were sung in: Spanish, Portuguese, French and German work just like English.
What if the song has no lyrics? For instrumentals, use a music recognition app while the song plays, or describe it on a forum like r/NameThatSong with where and when you heard it.