Can anyone point me in the right direction of software that would let me remove the music from a track so i can play with the remaining lyrics?

I have only ever used Logic for this http://www.apple.com/logic/

Yes it's expensive but it's the best. I'll see if I can find you a more reasonable alternative.

You can't do it. It's like trying to get the flour back from a baked cake!
You could try a bit of extreme eq'ing, start by rolling off the top and bottom end, aim for a peak aound 3Khz. You'll still get instruments in there but the emphasis will be on the vocals, and depending on how you use it, the new backing track should mask out much of the unwanted bits.

Originally posted by hade
You can't do it. It's like trying to get the flour back from a baked cake!
You could try a bit of extreme eq'ing, start by rolling off the top and bottom end, aim for a peak aound 3Khz. You'll still get instruments in there but the emphasis will be on the vocals, and depending on how you use it, the new backing track should mask out much of the unwanted bits.

There are plugins for Logic that do vocalisation and de-vocalisation.

There's a process called OOPS (out of phase stereo) that can be used to alter the sound of the track, often eliminating instruments or vocals, depending on the recording. I've used it on Beatle tracks but I'm not sure if it would have any effect on more modern recordings. Here's a link anyway
http://www.beatletracks.com/btoops.html