By Alexandria Jackson
Blog Critics Magazine

The online game of Don’t Forget the Lyrics! is fun for those of us who think we know all the lyrics to our favorite songs but have no energy to try to become a contestant on the TV show.

The TV show Don’t Forget the Lyrics! is a typical game show. Contestants are given nine categories (such as “Pop”, “Country”, or “R&B”) and the contestant chooses one of them. Within the category, they are given the choice of two songs. The band will then play the selected song as the lyrics are displayed karaoke-style. When the music stops, there are several blank lines that must be filled in by the contestant.

Once they fill in the lyrics, the contestant can lock them in or use one of the “back-ups.” The back-ups on the TV show consist of 1) a friend singing with you, 2) two of the blank words being filled in, and 3) three different answers from which to choose the correct set of lyrics. Unfortunately, you can only use each back-up once.

With each correct answer, the contestant accumulates more money up to a song worth $500,000. The million dollar song is a mystery. There is no song title, artist, or genre, it is just a number one hit from one of the nine featured categories. No backups are allowed for this question.

The online game is fairly simple. There are seven categories of music as above. The lyrics and music float by then when the music stops, you must type in the missing lyrics. Once the music stops, you have only 30 seconds to type them in.

The missing lyric lines are the width of the missing characters which provides additional clues. The back-ups consist of 1) two missing words being filled in, 2) three different answers from which to choose the correct set of lyrics, and 3) the lyrics presented in a word scramble (i.e. “ON’TD GRFOET HET CSLRIY”).

It is tricky because it will not accept misspelled words and you must use the apostrophe if indicated. In addition, by the time I realized that I needed help from a back-up, I was already running out of time which made my typing sloppy and kept the pressure on!

After every correct response, the site asks if you’d like to submit an audition video. I found that distracting and annoying. They do this because they will draw a weekly winner from all submitted videos for an 8GB iPhone (the “Prize”). One prize will be awarded each week for 10 weeks.

There is no pseudo-accumulation of money as in most games. In fact, no points of any kind are accumulated in the game. It appears to be more of a “set list” for potential contestants than an actual “game” that allows you to compete against yourself or others.

It was a fun way to pass the time. You can play the same game with the same songs repeatedly too, which makes it a novel way to impress your friends with your lyric memory capabilities. They change the songs/categories each week and this is the second week of the game. At the time of this review, there were only two different games to play.

Wait a few weeks before you try it though, because it became addictive to me and I ran out of game before I was ready to stop!