The SongTyping Difficulty Index

Every song in the catalogue carries a number: how fast you would have to type to keep up with the singer. It comes from the song's own synced lyrics, the words in each line divided by the time the singer takes over them, so it is a measurement rather than an opinion, and it is the same measurement applied to every track.

This page is the whole set: 1,061 songs across 538 artists, slowest first. There are no lyrics on this page, only timings.

What the number means

A song rated 60 WPM asks you to type sixty words a minute for as long as the words keep coming. It is the sustained rate while lines are on screen, not an average over the whole track, so an intro, a solo and an outro do not flatter it. That is deliberate: the instrumental break is not the part you have to keep up with. If you want the longer version of how words per minute are counted at all, and why gross and net WPM disagree, there is a whole article on it.

Most of the catalogue is faster than most people type

The median song here runs at 100 WPM. An average typist is somewhere around 40 words a minute, and 60 to 70 is already a good, practised speed. Lined up against the distribution, that comparison is blunt:

• At 40 WPM, 33 of 1,061 songs are at or below your speed.
• At 60 WPM, 136.
• At 80 WPM, faster than most people ever get, 329 - still not half of them.

None of that is a fault in the catalogue. It is what sung words are: they arrive faster than read ones, and the gap between a comfortable reading pace and a sung line is most of the reason typing along to music is practice at all rather than transcription. But it does mean that picking a song at random is usually picking one you cannot keep up with, and that is worth knowing before you conclude the problem is you.

What to do with it

• Start at the top of the table. It is sorted slowest first on purpose, and the 168 songs under 65 WPM are the part of the catalogue most people can actually keep up with today.
• Find out your own number first. The typing test takes a minute and gives you the figure to compare these against. Without it you are guessing at which half of the table you belong in.
• Use Easy mode on anything near your limit. It drops capitals and punctuation, which takes a real bite out of the effective rate without changing the words you are practising.
• Slow the video down. A 120 WPM song at 0.75 speed is a 90 WPM song, and the timings follow the playback rate, so the lyrics stay in sync.
• Aim slightly above your comfort zone, not far above it. That is the argument in how to choose songs for practice, which covers the criteria this table cannot measure.

What the number does not tell you

Speed is the largest part of how hard a song is to type, and it is the part that can be measured. Three things it misses, all of which can move a song a tier in either direction:

• Repetition. A fast song with four passes of the same chorus is much easier than its rating suggests, because you are re-typing words your hands have already learned.
• Vocabulary. Proper nouns, invented words and unusual spellings cost more per word than common English does, whatever the pace.
• Phrasing. Words crammed against the beat, or lines that land early, break the rhythm you would otherwise be typing to.

There are also 45 songs in the catalogue with no measurement here at all, usually because their lyrics are not yet synced line by line. They are playable, they are just not rateable, and leaving them out of the table is more honest than guessing at a number for them.