The Music Machine is Begging You for Bird Seed!

Did you know that three quarters of people sing the wrong words to popular songs?

A staple of radio for decades has been a feature of Misheard Lyrics, where you think that the vocalists are singing different words to those which are correct, often leading to comical results. But genuinely, many people think the nonsense lyrics are the correct ones.

But contrary to popular belief, this is not a topic purely for radio. Studies and surveys have been carried out on the subject, books have been written about it, and comedian Peter Kay even delivered a hilarious comic sketch about it. And it's not surprising. We've all misheard song lyrics from time to time so it's really interesting and quite funny to see what the most common ones are. People might even argue that some of the misheard lyrics in the results are actually better than the originals. A quarter of UK adults have argued over misheard lyrics while around two thirds have checked the internet to find out what the actual lyrics are. After all, we can't get enough of singing - with 85 per cent of UK adults regularly crooning along to their favourite songs.

For example, some people might say that in Johnny Nash's 1972 hit "I Can See Clearly Now the Rain Has Gone", he sings "I Can See Clearly Now Lorraine Has Gone". Chaka Kahn's "I'm Every Woman' has been misheard as ~"I'm Terry Wogan". I do think you'd have to stretch your imagination quite far to imagine she sang that.

During the second hour of the Music Machine this week on Team-FM, www.team-fm.com, we'll have a giggle at some of the most popular misheard lyrics. If you have suggestions, do email them to brian@team-fm.com.

In hour 1, anything goes, so if there's a song you would like to hear from any decade, do let me know. We will have a vinyl countdown this week, played directly from one of my records, this time from January 1988, and lots of other good songs too.

So it's a fun Music Machine this Saturday. I hope you can join me. Now do excuse me as I must go away and staple the vicar.

Brian Hartgen