This speaker will ensure you never embarrassingly fudge the lyrics to a song again

“We built this city, we built this city on sausage rolls.” You could make an argument that such a song deserves to exist, but as far as we know the Greggs glam rock band is but a daydream. These are, though, the words a lot of people apparently belt out whenever the big-hitting chorus in Starship’s ‘We Built This City’ kicks in. Seriously, look it up. With Cotodama’s Lyric Speaker in your living room, you’ll never mess up the words again. Launched last year in Japan, its USP is a translucent screen that stylishly displays the lyrics to a song as you’re listening to it, hooking up to your mobile device via WiFi. It obviously won’t work for every song ever written, but the speaker draws on Japanese company PetitLyrics’ database of two million, so you’d think most of the classics are covered. At just shy of £3,900, it’s very much a luxury purchase, but you’ll forget all about the price tag when you realise that ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ had nothing to do with containers. 

Matt Tate Contributor

About

I'm fascinated by all things tech, but if you were going to leave me on a desert island, I'd probably ask for my Nintendo Switch, a drone, and a pair of noise-cancelling cans to block out the relentless seagull racket. When I'm not on Stuff duty you'll probably find me subscribing to too many podcasts, playing too many video games, or telling anyone who will listen that Spurs are going to win a trophy this season.

Areas of expertise

Video games, VR, smartwatches, headphones, smart speakers, bizarre Kickstarter campaigns