As I was riding my moped to work this morning I was singing away to myself as per usual, when I suddenly realised that I was mangling the lyrics.
I was singing “Michelle” by the Beatles. I was a mad Beatle fan when I was at school. A friend and I used to play the albums over and over again to work out the lyrics, a painfully slow process. Luckily the band’s accents were much less pronounced when they were singing compared with their speaking voices. The Liverpudlian accents were adorable, don’t get me wrong, they were just quite impenetrable to a couple of kiwi girls. Anyway, we didn’t bother with the French bits out of Michelle, so just used to sing them phonetically, and I realised that was what I was doing this morning. It was only as I heard myself I realised what the actual French words were. It wasn’t “song lay mong key vong tray ben on song” but rather “sont les mots qui vont très bien ensemble”, a direct translation of the English words that come just before (Doh!) don’t ask me why this realisation took forty years, just be grateful I was still able to pay attention to the traffic.
Of course, I’m not the only one discovering they’ve been singing the wrong words to songs for years. Here are some classic mistaken lyrics you might recognise:
”I can see clearly now, Lorraine is gone”
”Don’t go Jason Waterfalls”
”Hold me closer, Tony Danza”
”Dancing Queen, feel the beat from the tangerine”
”There’s nothing that a hundred men on Mars could ever do”
”Give me the Beach Boys and free my soul”
and my personal favourite
”Excuse me while I kiss this guy”.