Sing me a song, yellow piano man

There are some songs whose lyrics I often mess up and my friends don’t tell me I’ve messed them up, just so they get a good laugh every time I sing it.

But of course, even­tu­ally I find out Billy Joel didn’t ask the ‘Yel­low Piano Man’ to sing him a song; and The Black Crowes didn’t sing ‘Hey baby let me light your chem­i­cals cos I’m sure to hananah mess around’, in the song ‘Hard to han­dle’, but actu­ally ‘Hey lit­tle thing let me light your can­dle ‘Cause mama I’m sure hard to han­dle, now, gets around’.

It didn’t mat­ter if the title was ‘Hard to Han­dle’, and not ‘Hananah’, what­ever ‘han­nanah’ was (some sort of chem­i­cal?). I’d still sing the wrong slur­rics.

Then there are peo­ple who mis­in­ter­pret lyrics. Now, that’s pretty com­mon, you might think, and not that funny. But I know this guy who loves the theme song from ‘Fame’. He’d sing it all the time. Then one day, he sings it, and then mut­ters, ‘What kind of name is ‘Fame’?’

He’d thought the song was about a per­son named ‘Fame’, and quite heat­edly argued that it was because the cho­rus went ‘Remem­ber my name: Fame! I wanna live for­ever!’, and why would she ask peo­ple to remem­ber her name — fame, because I would also say that what, you know? remem­ber my name — John!’ if I wanted peo­ple to remem­ber my name is John…’

I’m not entirely sure if he’s been con­vinced of the truth yet, but in any case, he’s a great singer.

Then this morn­ing, they played a Cliff Richard song on the radio which I like very much. Only thing is, for years, I never knew the real title of the song, and always thought it was a nice love song ded­i­cated to some woman named ‘Shan­deep’.

‘Cos y’know, Cliff sings, all torch-song like, so pow­er­fully: ‘Ooohh Shan­deeeeeep, I’m so afraid to show my feel­ings, I have sailed a mil­lion ceilings…’

“Miss Kaur always felt a spe­cial, per­sonal affin­ity for Sir Cliff’s works and would always feel as if he were singing to her”

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