When Don McClean sings “And the jester sang for the king and queen” in “American Pie,” what is he talking about? How, precisely, does one “pop some tags” per Macklemore’s “Thrift Shop”? What the hell is going on in “Louie, Louie” anyway?
Enter Genius.com, which not only has lyrics (without the obnoxious popups), but annotations and explanations as well.
It’s crowdsourced, which means it has the same basic strengths and weaknesses Wikipedia – and I do like me some Wikipedia. In fact, Genius is taking this a step further and launching a projects to annotate the entire Web. You can write line-by-line notes on any web page, and other people can read them, via a Chrome extension. I haven’t tried it, but it’s an intriguing thought.
Have an intriguing weekend!
Brian D. Buckley 
These things can be unpredictable, of course, but one that’s very useful indeed (if you’re a Pynchom fanatic) is the Pynchon Wiki: http://pynchonwiki.com/. When I was reading Inherent Vice I was posting one or two things a day there. When PT Anderson was preparing to film the book, I wondered if maybe he was reading some of my thoughts there in preparation.
(Based on the movie, apparently not, but that’s a different story, 🙂 )
Cool. I love specialized wikis like this. It amazes me how many there are, on almost every conceivable topic or fandom, and how in-depth they can be. Just shows you how excited the fans are.