Do you know the lyrics?

r/

A billionaire wants to hear you sing a song of your choice. You don’t have to hit the pitch, they are more interested in long and diversified lyrics.

For each first hit occurrence of a word in the lyrics, you‘ll get 1000€. For each further occurrence, you‘ll get 100€. Of course you need to hit the correct words of the real song for it to count. There are no negative consequences in missing a word or singing the wrong word. You just don’t get the money for the word then. Contractions („don’t“) count as one word. Articles („a“, „the“, …) and Non-lexical vocals count as normal words („la la la“ = 3x la = 1200€ or 300€).

To decide and prepare, you may listen to any number of songs, but only once per song, in full without pausing songs. Songs count as different if the lyrics are less than 90% equal (thinking about mashups and remixes). Max song duration=10min. Language: any.

You may not look up lyrics – neither for preparation, nor for submitting. You are alone, there is nobody to help you. You may practice (without the music if you already listened to the song once). You have 2 hours to decide and practice. When submitting and singing it for the billionaire, you get accompanied by the songs karaoke-version without lyrics.

which song do you pick—and how much do you think you could earn?

Hint: maybe this interesting post by u/mulligantt can help you estimating and deciding.

Comments

  1. AutoModerator Avatar

    Copy of the original post in case of edits: A billionaire wants to hear you sing a song of your choice. You don’t have to hit the pitch, they are more interested in long and diversified lyrics.

    For each first hit occurrence of a word in the lyrics, you‘ll get 1000€. For each further occurrence, you‘ll get 100€. Of course you need to hit the correct words of the real song for it to count. There are no negative consequences in missing a word or singing the wrong word. You just don’t get the money for the word then. Contractions („don’t“) count as one word. Articles („a“, „the“, …) and Non-lexical vocals count as normal words („la la la“ = 3x la = 1200€ or 300€).

    To decide and prepare, you may listen to any number of songs, but only once per song, in full without pausing songs. Songs count as different if the lyrics are less than 90% equal (thinking about mashups and remixes). Max song duration=10min. Language: any.

    You may not look up lyrics – neither for preparation, nor for submitting. You are alone, there is nobody to help you. You may practice (without the music if you already listened to the song once). You have 2 hours to decide and practice. When submitting and singing it for the billionaire, you get accompanied by the songs karaoke-version without lyrics.

    which song do you pick—and how much do you think you could earn?

    Hint: maybe this interesting post by u/mulligantt can help you estimating and deciding.

    I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

  2. AJM_1987 Avatar

    My quick pic would be Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody. The opera section would up the ante I’m guessing.

  3. Crochet-panther Avatar

    I mean it’s a hard decision as I sing in a choir where we don’t use music so I know a lot of lyrics. But I feel logically I’d have to go for American Pie. One of the longest songs (think it held a record for some time) and one I already know enough to sing along with the recording without the words, so it wouldn’t take too much to have it learned to sing without anything.

    Google informs me the lyrics are 2779 words long. A quiz informs me there are 868 unique words in there, which means if I got it word for word I could earn 1,059,100€.

    Realistically I imagine I’d miss a few but I would be confident about getting above the 900,000 mark fairly easily.

  4. jusno-z Avatar

    Do speaking parts count? If so, I’m doing Miss You by Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes. That song is 8 minutes long

  5. JeffSergeant Avatar

    House of the rising sun i the only one I know consistently, and would net me 87K

    Calculator here!

    https://jeffsergeant.github.io/wordcounts.htm

  6. ehbowen Avatar

    My go-to on short notice would be Arlo Guthrie’s version of City of New Orleans. I have that one down cold.

  7. Personal_Conflict_49 Avatar

    Tupac-Wonda why they call U

  8. _Volly Avatar

    Easy.

    Alice’s Restaurant.