They are some of the most potent keys to our heart and our emotions.
They have the power to make you laugh, cry, smile and want to smash the system.
Their writers sometimes struggle for months to pen the perfect line.
Song lyrics play a powerful part in our everyday lives.
Whether it’s a song from your teens that brings back a good memory, a song from a bad time that makes you teary or simply a song with a line that you find so cringeworthy you have to switch the radio off, we all have lyrics we love and hate.
And there are lyrics we mishear.
I bring up this subject because as I was driving in the car the other night I misheard a well-known ditty and almost swerved off the road laughing
Roy Orbison's I Drove All Night came on and I could have sworn that the Big O threatened to make a mess in his beloved's house.
It turns out the line is “I drove all night, crept in your room.”
But in our house we have a tradition of mishearing lyrics.
My partner loves her music, but sometimes she appears to have no idea what's being said.
Take for example Derek and the Dominos’ Layla. Eric Clapton’s voice gives the track plenty of oomph as he sounds his desperate urges.
It's inspired by an old Persian love story where a man goes insane after being denied the chance to marry his love.
In my partner's head the word Layla becomes strangelove – and had apparently been for more than a decade until I asked what on earth she was on about.
I suppose you could sort of forgive that as in a certain ear it may sound similar.
My dad, on the other hand, could never seek forgiveness for the most random misinterpretation of a lyric ever.
Once when an Elton John track was playing he asked why he was singing about the bloke in 1970s’ American TV sitcom Taxi.
Non-plussed I asked him what he meant.
He replied why’s he singing “Hold Me Closer Tony Danza”.
After picking myself up from the floor I corrected him, “It's ‘Hold Me Closer, Tiny Dancer’”.
“Mine makes more sense,” he said.
I suppose he had a point.
