Look up song lyrics on the fly with Lyrical

Dying to know what that singer is mumbling? Lyrical looks up the lyrics for any song, even the one that's now playing.

Just the other day my daughter was trying to sing along with Coldplay's "Viva La Vida"--but, let's face it, those are some tough lyrics to catch. If only I'd had Lyrical, a new app that looks up song lyrics--for the currently playing song.

That's pretty slick. Just start a song on your iPhone or iPod Touch, then run the app. In a matter of seconds it retrieves the lyrics from crowd-sourced site LyricWiki.org.

Of course, you don't have to play a particular song to get its lyrics: Lyrical also lets you browse your music library, pick a song, and then see the words.

Likewise, you can search for a song, artist, or snippet of lyrics (which is great for those times when you hear a song you like but don't know the name). The search feature is a little hit-and-miss right now, but the developer promises to improve it in a forthcoming update.

Speaking of which, the next version of Lyrical will store previously viewed songs and let you play a song directly from the library-lookup screen.

Best of all, Lyrical is free, though it does have ads. If you want ad-free lyric lookups, check out Lyrical Premium, which costs $1.99. Me, I'm perfectly happy with the free version, which has instantly become one of my all-time favorite apps.