diff --git a/beetsplug/lyrics.py b/beetsplug/lyrics.py
index aa526c870..1bce066c9 100644
--- a/beetsplug/lyrics.py
+++ b/beetsplug/lyrics.py
@@ -503,7 +503,7 @@ class Google(Backend):
         try:
             text = unicodedata.normalize('NFKD', text).encode('ascii',
                                                               'ignore')
-            text = unicode(re.sub('[-\s]+', ' ', text))
+            text = unicode(re.sub('[-\s]+', ' ', text.decode('utf-8')))
         except UnicodeDecodeError:
             self._log.exception(u"Failing to normalize '{0}'", text)
         return text