All This Time Lyrics: Verified Songs and Artist Pages
Find verified all this time lyrics, official videos, and credits. Learn how artists and rights holders claim and manage song pages on House of Lyrics.
You search “All This Time lyrics” expecting one song, then land on the wrong artist, an unofficial lyric page, or a video that doesn't match the recording in your head. That confusion isn't your fault. The title belongs to multiple songs from different eras, and lyric databases often treat identical titles as if they were one searchable object.
The practical answer is simple: identify the artist, release, recording, credits, and rights provenance before trusting the text. Fans need the correct words and an authoritative video. Artists and managers need control over how those words, credits, and recordings appear in public catalogs. A reliable lyric library has to serve both needs.
Table of Contents
- The Challenge of Finding the Right Lyrics
- Disambiguating the Hits Across Different Eras
- Sting and the River Motif in The Soul Cages
- Tiffany and the Late-Eighties Pop Crossover
- Why Artist-Approved Texts and Provenance Matter
- How to Claim and Manage Your Song Pages
- Understanding Music Metadata and Lyric Rights
- Quick Reference for Fans and Rights Holders
The Challenge of Finding the Right Lyrics
A title-only search creates a familiar trap. You remember a chorus, type “All This Time lyrics,” and the results give you several versions with similar page titles. One may be Sting's reflective 1991 song, another Tiffany's late-1980s pop ballad, and others may belong to entirely different genres. Without visible artist and release information, even a polished page can send you to the wrong work.
The error becomes more serious when the page copies text without showing who supplied it, which recording it represents, or whether the artist or rights holder reviewed it. A typo changes the meaning of a lyric, while a missing composer or publisher credit weakens the page's value for journalists, playlist editors, fans, and licensing teams.
Why crowd-sourced pages struggle
Crowd contribution can make a database grow quickly, but speed doesn't establish authority. Unreviewed submissions may combine lyrics from a live performance with a studio version, attach a song to the wrong album, or merge artists who share a title. User-uploaded videos create another layer of uncertainty because the visible media may not be an official source.
A better workflow treats every song as a distinct catalog entity. The page should separate:
- Artist identity, so songs with the same title never collapse into one artist bucket.
- Album and release context, so fans can distinguish a single, album cut, or later version.
- Lyric text and credits, so descriptive content stays connected to structured rights information.
- Official audiovisual media, so the listener can verify the recording they're hearing.
House of Lyrics approaches this problem as an artist-run library, pairing artist-approved lyric texts with official video embeds and connected artist, album, and song pages. Its editorial workflow holds updates for review before publication, which gives rights holders a practical checkpoint instead of leaving public catalog information to anonymous edits. Artists dealing with similarly confusing titles can also study the catalog logic behind the “Game Over” lyrics page.
Practical rule: Never trust a lyric page until the artist, release, recording, and source media all point to the same work.
For fans, this means checking the page header before reading or sharing lyrics. For artists, it means claiming the public page before inaccurate text and incomplete credits become the version that search engines repeatedly surface.
Disambiguating the Hits Across Different Eras
A fan types “All This Time” into a search bar and may receive recordings by Sting, Tiffany, Norah Jones, Wayne Wonder, Deorro, The Story So Far, and others, as shown in the song-title search results. Each of these is a separate work with its own artist, sound, release, credits, and audience. A lyric database that merges them creates a discovery problem and can also attach the wrong rights information to the wrong recording.
The title alone gives a search engine too little musical context. A listener seeking Sting needs a page connected to The Soul Cages. A Tiffany search should lead to the late-1980s release from Hold an Old Friend's Hand. Pages that display only the title leave fans to reconstruct the catalog themselves and make accurate verification harder.
The title is not the identity
A reliable result needs an identity chain:
- Title records the words used in the song name.
- Artist identifies the performer or credited act.
- Release places the work in an album or single campaign.
- Recording identifies the specific audio or video version.
- Credits and rights data connect the work to the responsible people and entities.
That chain separates songs that share a name but have no creative or legal relationship. The music metadata guidance from MusicBiz distinguishes the sound recording from the underlying musical work and explains why recordings and music videos require separate recording identifiers. Lyric databases should preserve those distinctions instead of collapsing every result into one title page.
Era is a useful discovery signal
Release era helps fans narrow their intent quickly. Tiffany's version belongs to a late-1980s teen-pop and adult-radio crossover environment. Sting's version belongs to early-1990s confessional songwriting shaped by grief, place, ritual, and the River Tyne. Artist, release, and era together let users verify a result before opening its lyrics.
House of Lyrics connects title, artist, album, and song pages so fans can select the correct work and rights holders can maintain defined catalog entries. Artists facing similar title confusion can review the structure of artist pages and catalog entries. That model keeps lyric text attached to the correct recording rather than allowing near-identical title pages to compete for attention.
Sting and the River Motif in The Soul Cages
Sting's “All This Time” demands careful identification because its title hides a song with a specific emotional and historical foundation. Written in the aftermath of his father Ernest Sumner's death, the song uses a narrative centered on Billy, a son who wants to bury his father at sea rather than follow Catholic funeral rites. That conflict gives the lyric a dramatic frame, but the song's power comes from how it places private grief inside a larger world.
The track appeared as a single in 1991 and on Sting's 1991 album The Soul Cages, a record shaped by mourning and by imagery associated with Wallsend and the River Tyne. Those release details are documented in the background on Sting's “All This Time”). They should appear prominently on any lyric page because they distinguish this song from every other work with the same title.
The river as continuity
The river motif is not decoration. Sting has described the river as a constant symbol of continuity, and the lyric's image of the river flowing endlessly to the sea connects personal loss to a wider natural and historical cycle. The father's death is final, but the river keeps moving. That tension lets the song hold grief and continuity in the same frame.
The setting also gives the narrative cultural texture. Ritual, Catholic funeral tradition, maritime imagery, and the industrial geography of Wallsend all contribute to a song that feels rooted in a particular place while remaining accessible to listeners who have experienced bereavement in very different circumstances.
The official video provides an important reference point for fans trying to confirm the recording and visual context.
Sting's song illustrates why lyrics should never be separated from catalog context. A page that lists only the words misses the relationship between Billy's story, the album's grief, the hometown imagery, and the river's recurring symbolism. A page that identifies the artist, album, release year, and official video lets the reader hear the lyric as part of a deliberate work rather than as an isolated text fragment.
Tiffany and the Late-Eighties Pop Crossover
Tiffany's “All This Time” belongs to a different musical world. MCA Records released it on October 24, 1988, as the lead single from her second studio album, Hold an Old Friend's Hand. The documented release and chart history for Tiffany's song) makes the distinction clear: this isn't Sting's river-centered meditation, but a late-1980s pop release with its own campaign, audience, and commercial identity.
The song reached No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 10 on Billboard's Adult Contemporary chart, according to that release history. Those placements show how a ballad-driven single could reach beyond a teen-pop audience and enter an adult radio format in a major U.S. market.
Why the release context matters
The late-1980s pop environment rewarded clean positioning. A lead single had to introduce an album, work on radio, and carry the artist's public identity through a competitive promotional cycle. Tiffany's release date, its role as the album's lead single, and its chart performance give fans concrete ways to distinguish the track from later songs carrying the same name.
That context also changes how a lyric database should present the song. The page should place the title beside Tiffany, MCA Records, Hold an Old Friend's Hand, and the release date. If a search result displays only “All This Time,” it strips away the information that proves which song the user has found.
Ballad writing needs accurate presentation
A pop ballad relies on phrasing, repetition, and emotional timing. Incorrect lyric text can make a listener question the recording, while a missing version label can cause confusion between official audio, live performance, and fan-uploaded media. The page should therefore connect the approved text to the relevant recording and official audiovisual source.
For fans, the fastest verification method is practical:
- Confirm the artist first: Tiffany should appear in the page title or primary metadata.
- Check the album: Hold an Old Friend's Hand separates this track from Sting's The Soul Cages.
- Review the release details: The late-1980s date signals the correct pop-era recording.
- Use canonical media: The video or audio embed should correspond to the identified release.
Tiffany's version proves that disambiguation isn't just a technical issue for databases. It protects music history. A title shared across decades can describe very different songwriting traditions, production choices, and listener memories. The catalog page has to preserve those differences.
Why Artist-Approved Texts and Provenance Matter
Lyrics are creative works, not disposable captions. The words belong to the underlying musical composition, while the recorded performance belongs to the master recording. When a page publishes text without clear provenance, it creates uncertainty for fans and for the people responsible for the song.
Crowd-sourced lyric pages often prioritize availability over accountability. That model can produce missing lines, accidental merges, unattributed corrections, and conflicting versions. A newer discovery surface may place lyrics, videos, and metadata together, but combining those elements doesn't automatically verify any of them.
Verification changes the editorial standard
Artist-approved text provides a clear answer to the most important question: who authorized this version? It doesn't eliminate the need for rights management, but it gives the page an accountable source and a review path. That matters when artists release alternate recordings, revise credits, or need to correct a lyric that has circulated inaccurately.
A controlled editorial workflow should answer four questions before publication:
- Who supplied the text? The contributor should be an artist, manager, label, publisher, or other verified rights holder.
- Which work does it describe? The page should identify the artist, release, and recording.
- What changed? Editors need a visible update trail or review process.
- Where does the listener watch or hear it? The media source should point to an official or authoritative channel.
Rights control is part of user experience
Fans don't want to investigate ownership disputes before reading a song. They want the correct words, the correct artist, and a trustworthy media source in one place. Artists don't want to repeatedly chase inaccurate pages across unrelated platforms. A page designed around verification addresses both needs without treating them as separate problems.
Artist pages on House of Lyrics are one example of a catalog model that limits contributions and page claims to verified artists and rights holders. The important principle is broader than any one platform: lyric discovery should preserve provenance from contributor to published page.
Editorial standard: If nobody can explain where the lyric text came from, the page isn't ready to present it as authoritative.
That standard protects the listener's trust and gives the rights holder a defensible basis for corrections. It also reduces the chance that an unofficial edit becomes the version repeated by search engines, social posts, and fan communities.
How to Claim and Manage Your Song Pages
Artists lose catalog control when nobody has a clear process for proving ownership and approving changes. An unclaimed page can display incomplete credits, the wrong release, or lyric text that the artist never reviewed. Managers and labels face the same problem at a larger scale because a fragmented catalog creates repeated correction work.
A sound claiming process should verify identity first, then connect the owner to the right artist, album, and song pages. Social-bio verification is useful because it asks the claimant to demonstrate control of a public artist channel rather than relying only on an email address that may not prove authority.
A practical four-step workflow
Confirm artist or manager status. Start with the artist identity and the catalog you're authorized to manage. Gather the public profiles and release information that establish the relationship.
Place the one-time code in an X or SoundCloud bio. The code confirms control of the social profile associated with the artist or management team. Once verified, remove the code if the platform's process permits it.
Claim the relevant pages and edit the catalog. Use the full-page editor to update lyric text, credits, release context, and metadata. Keep artist, album, and song relationships consistent so fans can browse the catalog without ambiguity.
Submit changes for review, then monitor the live page. An approval step keeps edits from appearing publicly before they're checked. After publication, review the page as a fan would, confirm the media embed, and flag anything that no longer matches the official release.
What to standardize first
Start with identity and credits, not promotional copy. The artist name should match the public catalog, album titles should be consistent, and each song should connect to the correct release. Then review the lyrics line by line against the approved source and attach the appropriate official video.
A useful internal checklist includes:
- Artist spelling and identity: Match the name used across official channels.
- Album relationship: Confirm whether the song belongs to an album, single, or another release.
- Contributor credits: Preserve composer, producer, and other structured credits where available.
- Recording distinction: Separate studio audio, live recordings, remixes, and music videos.
- Media source: Use the official video or an authoritative audiovisual reference.
The song-page claiming process is designed around this ownership-first approach. For an independent artist, the benefit is control over a public reference point. For a manager or label, the benefit is a repeatable way to keep a catalog coherent as releases and credits change.
Understanding Music Metadata and Lyric Rights
A lyric page must connect two distinct layers. Descriptive lyric text shows what listeners read and sing. Rights metadata identifies the musical work, sound recording, contributors, copyright holder, and identifiers needed to route usage information to the correct account.
Store the copyright year and holder name with the release record. Keep ISRC attached to a specific sound recording or music video recording, while ISWC identifies the underlying musical work. Those separate identifiers help databases distinguish a recording from its composition and prevent an identical title from pointing to the wrong rights record. Audio and video versions can therefore require different recording identifiers.
Composition and master rights
Composition copyright covers the musical work, including its lyrics. Master rights cover the recorded performance. One song can involve several connected rights records, so a lyric database must not treat visible text as the entire rights picture.
That separation directly affects royalty administration. Readers seeking a plain-language explanation can review what are music royalties from Coto & Waddington, Attorneys at Law. Accurate credits and identifiers give usage data a clear route to the correct rightsholders, rather than leaving it attached to an unresolved or ambiguous account.
Disambiguation belongs at the page level. House of Lyrics should connect the lyric to the verified artist, release, recording, and rights context before presenting it as the answer to a search. Fans get the intended text. Artists and managers gain a defensible public record.
Metadata should support discovery
Digital music files can include fields for composers, artists, album, year, genre, producer, sound engineer, and sometimes lyrics, according to the metadata research on digital music files. Preserve those fields in structured catalog data instead of hiding them in promotional prose.
Artists should prepare metadata before distribution. Confirm the title, artist credit, contributors, copyright holder, recording identifiers, and lyric text within one release checklist. The guide to how to release music supports that preparation. The governing rule is simple: the page must identify both what the listener sees and which rights-bearing work sits behind it. Verification turns a lyric database from a text index into a reliable discovery and catalog-management system.
Quick Reference for Fans and Rights Holders
Fans need a fast way to identify the correct “All This Time” before reading lyrics or sharing a video. Rights holders need a clear path from public discovery to verified catalog management. The table below separates those experiences from the assumptions built into generic lyric pages.
| Feature | House of Lyrics | Standard Lyric Sites |
|---|---|---|
| Artist identity | Artist, album, and song pages are structured as connected catalog entities | Titles may appear in broad, mixed result buckets |
| Lyric provenance | Text is supplied by verified artists or rights holders and reviewed before publication | Contribution and review standards vary |
| Credits and metadata | Structured credits and release context can sit beside the lyric text | Credits may be incomplete or inconsistently displayed |
| Video source | Official video embeds are paired with the song page | Media may include user-uploaded or unofficial sources |
| Ownership control | Verified owners can claim pages and submit updates | Public pages may lack a clear rights-holder workflow |
| Disambiguation | Artist and release context helps separate identical song titles | Users may need to identify the correct version themselves |
Fan checklist
Before trusting an “All This Time” result, check the artist name, album, release context, and video source. If the page doesn't make those details visible, keep searching rather than assuming the first matching lyric is correct.
Use the song's sound and era as additional clues, but treat them as confirmation rather than proof. Sting's song connects to The Soul Cages, Wallsend, grief, and the River Tyne. Tiffany's belongs to Hold an Old Friend's Hand and the late-1980s pop market. Those details make disambiguation practical, not academic.
Rights-holder checklist
Artists and managers should claim pages under the correct identity, verify the catalog relationships, review lyric text, standardize credits, and approve changes before publication. Keep official media aligned with the exact recording, especially when a song has live versions, remixes, or separate music videos.
The strongest public page does more than display words. It gives fans a reliable route from title to artist, release, recording, lyrics, credits, and official media. That is the standard every search for “All This Time lyrics” should meet.
House of Lyrics offers artist-approved lyrics, connected artist and song pages, rights-holder verification, editorial review, and official video embeds for clearer music discovery. Visit House of Lyrics to find the correct song or start managing your catalog from an authoritative page.