There is much to be said in favor of a global information network that can liberate knowledge, connect people in all corners of the earth, and so on. But a reliable way to look up song lyrics, and even song lyric meanings? Now that is genius.

I am not as a rule given to shilling for odd corporate entities, certainly not for free. And let it not go unnoticed that genius.com is a mess of pop-up ads and all sorts of gunk that makes web surfing such a trial these days. That said, I tip my hat to them.

I very much dig the ability to figure out what on earth a song means, and in general, genius.com delivers. It’s not particularly revolutionary, but they have a reasonably well-tuned UI for highlighting and commentating on snippets of songs, which can be useful for quirky lines or unusual words. It’s not great for competing interpretations, I should note, but it’s far superior to the default paradigm of comment-on-the-song-as-a-whole.

The content itself - the song interpretations - can definitely be hit or miss. Many is the time I’ve seen purported interpretations that are shallow rewrites of the literal meaning of the words. But the content really shines for better-known, quizzical songs. Looking at you, Stairway to Heaven. The whole thing is crowd-sourced, with all of the drawbacks that entails, but the occasional flashes of brilliance are well worth the forgettable stuff.

I very much wish that the business model for this kind of utility could somehow transcend the ad-driven dreck that is the rule these days, but I’m not holding my breath for that kind of magic. For now allow me to tip my hat to a site that is a really fun browse from time to time.