Saved lyrics, in order

Build a lyrics playlist and press play

A playlist on AskLyrics is a folder of saved songs that plays straight through in one window. The lyric follows the recording line by line, and the queue, shuffle and repeat controls sit where you would expect them on a music player.

What it costs: Free; No advertising of ours, ever
Where it plays: Over this page; One panel for the whole queue
The lyric: Line by line; Where a reviewed timing exists
Who can see it: Only you; Never published, never indexed

Free · no ads from us · no password

Start a playlist

Save songs as you read them, then press play once. The whole queue runs in a panel over the page, with the lyric following the recording line by line — shuffle, repeat and a queue you control, and no advertising of ours between the tracks.

Continue with Google

Google only confirms your email address. AskLyrics stores no password, and your playlists stay private to your account.

Four steps, start to finish

1
Save a song

Every song page carries a ♡ Save control. One press stores the song in your library, before you have decided where it belongs.
2
File it in a playlist

A panel opens with your playlists and a field for a new one. Pick one and the song moves without a page reload. Skip it and the song waits in Unfiled.
3
Press play once

Play from your account page or from the list above. The player opens over whatever you were reading and runs the whole queue there.
4
Set the running order

Each song in a playlist has up and down buttons on your account page. That order is the order the player uses.

Tip. Build the playlist first and fill it later, or save as you read and sort afterwards — both work. Songs you never file are not lost: they collect under Unfiled, where a bulk selector moves several into a playlist at once.

What the player looks like

Anatomy of the panel

The player is one window. It opens centred on a desktop screen, sits at the foot of a phone screen, and shrinks to a bar in the corner when you minimise it. Nothing behind it moves, and it never takes you to another page on its own.

1 The official video for the recording, playing in place.
2 Elapsed time, a seek bar you can drag, and the track length.
3 Shuffle, previous, play or pause, next and repeat, with volume below.
4 The lyric, with the sung line lit and the pane scrolling itself.
5 The queue tab: every track, the current one marked, click to jump.
6 Minimise to a corner bar, or close and return to your page.

Every control, and what it does

The transport row, left to right

Player controls and the behaviour behind each one
Control	What it does	Worth knowing
Shuffle	Reorders the queue for this listening session.	Your saved order is never rewritten. Switch shuffle off and the filed order comes back.
Previous	Steps back a track, or restarts this one.	In the first three seconds it goes to the previous track; after that it returns to the top of the current one.
Play and pause	Starts and stops the recording.	The lyric stops with it and picks up from the same line.
Next	Moves to the following track.	Pressed at the end of a queue it wraps to the first track, whatever repeat is set to.
Repeat	Cycles off, then the whole playlist, then this track.	A badge on the button reads ALL or 1, so the mode is never a guess.
Volume and mute	Sets the level, or silences it.	The level is remembered the next time you open a playlist.
Queue tab	Lists every track in the playlist.	The playing track is marked; click any other to jump straight to it.
Minimise	Shrinks the panel to a bar in the corner.	Playback carries on. Press it again to bring the lyric back.
Close	Ends the queue and clears the panel.	The `Esc` key does the same thing.

Tip. Every line of the lyric is also a seek control. Click the line you want to hear and the recording jumps to that moment and plays — the fastest way to replay a verse you are trying to catch.

Shuffle and repeat, precisely

What each setting does when a track ends

Repeat has three states rather than two, and the button says which one you are in instead of leaving it to memory. Shuffle is a separate switch, and the two combine freely.

Repeat and shuffle: what happens when a track, or a whole queue, ends
Setting	On the button	When a track ends	When the queue ends
Repeat off	unlit	The next track starts.	Playback stops.
Repeat all	lit, badge ALL	The next track starts.	It returns to the first track and keeps going.
Repeat one	lit, badge 1	The same track starts again.	It never reaches the end.
Shuffle on	lit	The next track in the shuffled order starts.	With repeat all, the queue is reshuffled and runs again.

Tip for learning a song. Set repeat to 1 and the track holds indefinitely while the lyric keeps following. Press next when you are ready to move on: a pressed button always beats the repeat setting, so you never have to switch the mode off to escape it.

The lyric follows the recording

Timed cues, with an honest fallback

Where a song holds an ordered set of lyric timestamps and a reviewed video match, the player lights the active line as it is sung and scrolls the pane to keep it in view. Scroll the lyric yourself and the follow steps aside for a few seconds so you can read ahead, then picks the line back up. Clicking any line seeks the recording to that moment. Where a timing is missing, the player shows the readable lyric and says that follow-along is unavailable for that track. It does not invent a timing. The same rule governs the individual chart song pages, so a playlist behaves exactly like the pages it was built from.

What the lyric pane shows, depending on what has been verified
What the song has	What you get in the player
A timed lyric and a reviewed video	Line-by-line follow: the sung line lit, the pane scrolling itself, every line clickable as a seek.
A lyric but no timing	The full readable lyric, plus a note saying follow-along is not available for this recording.
No published lyric yet	A plain line saying so. The track still plays.

The queue follows you

Across tabs, and across pages

A playlist is not tied to the page you started it on. Keep reading, open another song, switch to a different tab entirely: the queue carries on and the panel comes back with the same track, the same position in it and the same lyric.

What happens to a running queue when you move around
What you do	What the queue does
Open another page in the same tab	The player reopens on the new page at the same track and second. There is a short gap while the page loads, because the sound is playing inside the page you are leaving.
Switch to another tab or window	Keeps playing, uninterrupted, on a desktop browser. Most phone browsers pause video as soon as you switch away.
Minimise the player	Keeps playing. The corner bar holds the title and the transport buttons.
Close the player, or press `Esc`	Ends the queue. Closing is the deliberate way to stop, and nothing is resumed afterwards.
Close the tab	Ends the queue. A queue belongs to the tab it was started in, so a second tab can run a different playlist.

Tip. A browser will not always let a fresh page start audio by itself. If the panel comes back paused after you change page, it says so and one press of play picks the queue up exactly where it left off. To avoid the gap altogether, open the next page in a new tab: middle-click, or hold Ctrl or ⌘ while clicking.

When a video stops working

Skipped, explained, and replaced

A song is matched to an upload on YouTube, and uploads do not last forever: they are deleted, made private, or have embedding switched off by whoever posted them. AskLyrics treats that as a fault to fix rather than something for you to discover.

Your player reports it. The moment an embed refuses to play, the song is flagged. One failure is only a suspicion — an ad-blocker or a patchy connection looks identical from inside the page — so nothing is acted on until it is confirmed.
Confirmed faults are skipped. A song with no working video is left out of the queue instead of stalling it, and the player names the tracks it left out rather than quietly playing a shorter playlist.
The song page says so. Where the video used to be, the page explains that the upload is gone and that playlists are skipping the track. The lyric, the credits and the notes are unaffected.
A replacement is searched for nightly. There is rarely only one upload of a song, so a job looks for another one and adopts it if it passes the same checks a first match has to pass: public, embeddable, plausible length, and an official or artist channel wherever possible.

Tip. A song whose video has died is still worth saving. It stays in your library and on your account page, marked no video, and rejoins the queue by itself once a working upload is found.

Order is playback order

Reordering a playlist

A playlist plays top to bottom, so the order you file songs in is the order you hear them. On your account page every song in a playlist carries a pair of buttons.

Up moves the song one place earlier in the playlist.
Down moves it one place later.
The row hops as you press, and the new order is saved as it does. There is no separate save step and no page reload.
Shuffle never overwrites what you set here: it reorders only for the session you are listening in.
Each row also has its own play button, which starts the playlist on that song rather than at the top — quicker than pressing play all and skipping down to it.

Tip. Order matters most at the top. Put the song that sets the mood first, since that is the one a queue opens on every time you press play.

Nothing interrupts the queue

What is, and is not, ad-supported

AskLyrics runs no advertising of its own. There are no banners beside the lyric, no popups, no cookie-wall, and nothing wedged between one track and the next. When a song ends the queue moves straight on to the following one. Playback uses each recording's official video, so YouTube can still run its own advert on some of them. That part belongs to YouTube rather than to us, and it is the only advertising you will meet here.

Where a playlist lives

Private to your account

Folders and playlists are personal organising tools. They are not published, not indexed and not shown to other readers. Deleting a folder returns its songs to Unfiled rather than throwing them away, and deleting your account removes the whole library. The privacy notice records what is stored and how to request its removal.

Building a playlist worth replaying

Three ways to fill one

The quickest way to fill a playlist is to work through one shelf at a time rather than hunting song by song.

By genre. Open a genre page and save the tracks you want to sit with. Good for a mood you can name.
By artist. Follow an artist through their catalogue and keep the songs whose words repay a close read. Good for hearing a writer develop.
By chart. Work down the Hot 100 and save whatever catches you. Good for a snapshot of a week you will want back later.

If you are reading for craft rather than mood, the guide to reading song lyrics closely pairs well with a short, repeated queue: six or seven songs, repeat on, the same words coming round until the structure shows itself.

Common questions about playlists

Do I need an account to make a playlist?

Yes. A playlist is saved to your account, so it needs a sign-in. AskLyrics uses Google sign-in only and stores no password. Reading lyrics needs no account at all.

Does the player leave the page I am on?

No. Pressing play opens the player over the current page and keeps it there for the whole queue. Track changes swap the video and the lyric inside that window, so nothing you were reading is lost.

Are there ads when a playlist plays?

None from AskLyrics. The site runs no advertising of its own, so there are no banners, no popups and nothing between one track and the next. Songs play through each recording's official video, so YouTube can still show its own advert on some of them; that is outside our control.

Can a playlist repeat or shuffle?

Both. Repeat has three states: off, repeat the whole queue, and repeat one track. Shuffle reorders the queue for this listening session and leaves the saved order untouched.

Can I switch to another tab while a playlist plays?

Yes, on a desktop browser. The queue keeps playing while you work in another tab or another window, and the panel is still there, lyric still following, when you come back. Phone browsers are stricter and usually pause video the moment you leave the tab.

Does the playlist survive moving to another page?

Yes. Open another song, artist or article in the same tab and the player reopens on the new page with the same queue, the same track and the same position. There is a short gap while the new page loads, because the audio lives in the page you are leaving. Closing the player, rather than navigating, is what ends a queue.

Can I start a playlist on one particular song?

Yes. Every song in a playlist on your account page has its own play button, which opens the queue on that track instead of at the top. Shuffle, repeat and the rest of the queue behave exactly as they would from the start.

What happens when a song's video stops working?

Uploads get deleted, made private or have embedding switched off. When a player meets one it reports it, and once the failure is confirmed the song is skipped in playlists, the player names the tracks it skipped, and the song page says the video is unavailable rather than showing a dead frame. A nightly job then searches for another upload of the same song and adopts it when one passes the same checks a first match has to pass.

Can I change the order of a playlist?

Yes. Each song in a playlist on your account page has up and down buttons beside it. The order you set there is the order the player uses, and shuffle never overwrites it.

What happens to a song with no timed lyric?

It still plays. The player shows the readable lyric instead of the line-by-line follow, and says so, rather than pretending a timing exists.

Are my playlists public?

No. Saved songs, folders and playlists are private organisational tools tied to your account, they are never indexed, and you can delete any of them at any time.

Continue through the AskLyrics catalog

Learn how AskLyrics connects lyrics, credits and karaoke, or review the editorial sourcing policy that decides when a song is ready to publish.