Song lyrics can be interpreted in a number of ways, with amusing consequences.

We’ve all been there. On the dancefloor surrounded by people dancing awkwardly, forcing your reluctant body to perform a series of well rehearsed moves that even your arms and legs are bored of.  That’s precisely when it’ll get you. That song comes on, the song of the moment, the one you heard in Dixons that made you buy a Blu Ray player even though you can’t afford to pay your electricity bill.

It’s the song that always conjures, for some reason, a look of shock on the nearest group of girl’s faces. A look that says “OMG I actually cannot believe they’re playing this song!!!”. Sometimes it even comes with a hand clamped to the mouth to emphasise how shocked they are to hear this incredibly popular song. These are the songs that contain the most, as I like to call them, rewrites.

A rewrite is when you hear someone, usually drunk, rewriting the lyrics to a popular song, live in the room. Take Rihanna’s Te Amo for example, who’s to say that the lyrics aren’t:

Te Amo then she put her ham around me face, told her no she cracked,

Te Amo wrapped a torn banana round me waist, let me go.

I am one of the worse culprits of rewrites just because it’s so much fun. The greatest part is you can nearly always get away with it. I discovered this when I was in my late teens and Faith Evan’s Love Like This Before came on at an under eighteen’s night. This was at the height of the UK garage scene and I was loving it (Who wasn’t?).

I never knew there was a bye bye biscuit boy

I sung it out at the top of my lungs. No one noticed. There’s me, a pale skinny kid, drinking fanta and considering the emotional ramifications of a gingerbread child leaving home for the first time. Only years later did I actually learn the correct lyrics.

A friend of mine sung Macy Gray’s I Try for years inserting this line among others:

I wear goggles when you are not near

Another friend’s Dad would blast out Kasabian single Shoot The Runner, embracing the songs nautical themes by confidently singing:

ship to rudder ship ship to rudder

Since that day I’ve been collecting peoples rewrites and I’ve compiled a few of my favourites into the clip above. We also want to know yours, so get in touch!