LyricsGenius: a Python client for the Genius.com API

lyricsgenius provides a simple interface to the song, artist, and lyrics data stored on Genius.com.

The full documentation for lyricsgenius is available online at Read the Docs.

Setup

Before using this package you'll need to sign up for a (free) account that authorizes access to the Genius API. The Genius account provides a access_token that is required by the package. See the Usage section below for examples.

Installation

lyricsgenius requires Python 3.

Use pip to install the package from PyPI:

pip install lyricsgenius

Or, install the latest version of the package from GitHub:

pip install git+https://github.com/johnwmillr/LyricsGenius.git

Usage

Import the package and initiate Genius:

import lyricsgenius
genius = lyricsgenius.Genius(token)

If you don't pass a token to the Genius class, lyricsgenus will look for an environment variable called GENIUS_ACCESS_TOKEN and attempt to use that for authentication.

genius = Genius()

Search for songs by a given artist:

artist = genius.search_artist("Andy Shauf", max_songs=3, sort="title")
print(artist.songs)

By default, the search_artist() only returns songs where the given artist is the primary artist. However, there may be instances where it is desirable to get all of the songs that the artist appears on. You can do this by setting the include_features argument to True.

artist = genius.search_artist("Andy Shauf", max_songs=3, sort="title", include_features=True)
print(artist.songs)

Search for a single song by the same artist:

song = artist.song("To You")
# or:
# song = genius.search_song("To You", artist.name)
print(song.lyrics)

Add the song to the artist object:

artist.add_song(song)
# the Artist object also accepts song names:
# artist.add_song("To You")

Save the artist's songs to a JSON file:

artist.save_lyrics()

Searching for an album and saving it:

album = genius.search_album("The Party", "Andy Shauf")
album.save_lyrics()

There are various options configurable as parameters within the Genius class:

genius.verbose = False # Turn off status messages
genius.remove_section_headers = True # Remove section headers (e.g. [Chorus]) from lyrics when searching
genius.skip_non_songs = False # Include hits thought to be non-songs (e.g. track lists)
genius.excluded_terms = ["(Remix)", "(Live)"] # Exclude songs with these words in their title

You can also call the package from the command line:

export GENIUS_ACCESS_TOKEN="my_access_token_here"
python3 -m lyricsgenius --help

Search for and save lyrics to a given song and album:

python3 -m lyricsgenius song "Begin Again" "Andy Shauf" --save
python3 -m lyricsgenius album "The Party" "Andy Shauf" --save

Search for five songs by 'The Beatles' and save the lyrics:

python3 -m lyricsgenius artist "The Beatles" --max-songs 5 --save

Example projects

• Trucks and Beer: A textual analysis of popular country music
• Neural machine translation: Explaining the Meaning Behind Lyrics
• What makes some blink-182 songs more popular than others?
• Sentiment analysis on hip-hop lyrics
• Does Country Music Drink More Than Other Genres?
• 49 Years of Lyrics: Why So Angry?

Contributing

Please contribute! If you want to fix a bug, suggest improvements, or add new features to the project, just open an issue or send me a pull request.