¤ milky moon ¤

I made a lyrics website for obsessive Joanna Newsom fans: .

You can compare different versions of a song:

You have the choice of seeing the official lyrics for a recording or the "as sung" lyrics. For the official lyrics, I've gone through and made sure they exactly match what's in the booklet.* The "as sung" lyrics are for when you want to sing along — every word is as accurate as I can hear it, nothing left implicit (like "x2" or [chorus]).**

One interesting thing I've noticed so far is that the official lyrics from Milk-Eyed Mender are in many cases closer to what she sings on Yarn and Glue/Walnut Whales than to the Milk-Eyed Mender version.

*No support for italics or special indentation yet.
**I leave out non-verbal sounds like Os, Ohs, and Oohs.

Excellent work, nice compilation
While I know many of these exist in other places on the Net - I know many labels/ASCAP fight against lyric websites.
I would suggest at the least putting the correct publishing/copyright info on each page where any published works appear.

I'd include the oohs and aahs, too, in the sing-along version. Though they're difficult to transcribe. There would have to be some kind of transcription standard... Do you transcribe it as if it were a word (standard for every pronunciation) or as if it were a sound (writing it down phonetically using something like IPA, enPR or SAMPA)? Hmm... IPA could transcribe the sounds in the most detail by far, but 90% of people wouldn't be able to read it, whereas just writing words ("ooh", "oh", etc.) is the vaguest method, but legible to everyone. Obviously in places where "o" actually is a word, and not just a sound, it would need to be recorded as a word in any case.

Wanbli, thanks for the positive feedback! You are definitely right, I will add a notice in the footer.

Jordan~, my reasoning for not including them was that: one, it would complicate the difference view between "official" and "as sung" for a song, and two, it's just too subjective. What if there's a long passage of sounds? What about squeaks or humming? Better to have a clear line and objective rules. I'm open to the possibility, though...

Oh, and, thank you for doing this! It's nice to know it's not weird that I'm obsessive about things like wanting to have the lyrics EXACTLY as written, and then EXACTLY as sung. That stuff is interesting, and useful knowledge, but sometimes it seems like I'm the only one who would sit down and spend time on this stuff (though I've never completed the efforts). This is a really cool resource, thank you thank you thank you.

How did you decide on lyrics for songs which have no official lyrics? I tried transcribing Erin once but there were lines I just wasn't positive on (e.g., "as you chug with your uncle,"). Also, for the last part, I had taken it as given that the last line was, "Twentieth floor balcony / houses what is home to me," rather than it being two sentences with "house is..." But maybe that was presumptuous of me?

OK, yeah, I wondered if you looked around a lot before writing the lyrics or went by your own ear alone. I have such a hard time when songs have no official lyrics because it drives me insane to not know for sure! But it's also like a puzzle. It was lots of fun when she was performing HOOM songs before the album was released. I'm gonna re-listen to Erin. I know before I had decided it was "houses," but I haven't heard that song in a very long time.

Hm, I guess this is merely a difference in interpretations of sounds then? I re-listened and hear a definite z-sound, though it's that soft sort of z one might use in the case of an s being pronounced as a z. The first and second 's' sound identical to me, along with the (second?) "is," which, I think, are all the same s-as-z sound. Maybe my ears aren't sharp enough? There's also the issue of people pronouncing stuff differently anyway. Joanna has some pretty unique pronunciations in some of her songs, and I think she deliberately twists pronunciations to fit the song as well. It's not a huge difference anyway, but I would find it interesting to see what she was intending to sing.

I'm pretty sure "houses" and "house is" are both [ˈhaʊsɨz]. "Is" is almost always pronounced [ɪz], anyway; it's not [ɪs] in any accent I know.

Jordan, I meant the first s (in "house"), not the one in "is".

Ann... it is definitely true about her having unexpected pronunciations sometimes.

I see the line as a response to the idea "a house is not a home"... but the grammar is weird, and I don't know how the balcony fits in. Can definitely see it either way... off to give it another listen.

Ah, right. That's a /s/ and not a /z/ whether it's "houses" or "house is", though, isn't it? In her accent, at least.

Thanks for doing this, btw. It's really cool. And you have a point about recording nonverbal sounds. Though in some songs (the cukooing in In California and Have One On Me) the nonverbal sounds seem too important not to record. I guess there could always be a third version with every sound recorded, even in stage direction format? Karaoke mode?

I think Joanna's unorthodox pronunciations may come about because of the way she skews her mouth off to one side at times. It has been a while since I've really taken enough interest in such things to be sure I remember it correctly. I guess that means watching some of her videos again.

I always heard 'house is'. And I think that makes the most sense in the context.

If you wanted to get even more obsessive, you can add pages for different lyrics sung live.
(like Peach, Plum, Pear's "I am blue and unwell" vs. "I WAS blue and unwell")

Well, for me, 'Erin' is about a friend of Joanna's, which is rather obvious. I think that a lot of the lyrics are in-jokes and stories about what she and Erin did together. '20th floor baclony house is what is home to me' I've always took to be a house that either she and Erin shared or a house that had some significance to the both of them.
I think 'baclony houses, what is home to me' seems strange. But maybe 'baclony houses. What is home to me?' seems a bit more ... logical, I guess. Except that the first part is not really a sentence.

But what do I know, I am just a creepy fan.