DOES your mum’s passion for music eclipse her knowledge of lyrics? Here are some songs she loves to sing – in her own inimitable way…
Dancing Queen – ABBA
Her go-to karaoke song, your Mum still gets the lyrics wrong even though they’re appearing, one by one, on a 49-inch plasma screen. Buoyed by the success of this rendition, she’ll massacre Chiquitita.
Sample mum lyric: ‘Dancing Queen, young and sweet with some margarine…’
Anything by Adele
Mum loves Adele. I mean, she drinks and swears too much, but she still loves her. Just not enough to recall any of her actual lyrics.
Sample mum lyric: ‘Should I give up, or should I just keep chasing penguins?’
Also: ‘Sometimes it lasts in love, but sometimes he hurts his leg’
American Pie – Don McClean
Ironically she knows the opening line: ‘A long, long time ago, I can still remember…’ but how many lyrics she remembers in the next eight minutes of Don McClean’s epic is anyone’s guess. This truly is the day the music died.
Sample mum lyric: ‘Drove our Kevin for a bevvy, because Kevin was dry’
Bohemian Rhapsody – Queen
After singing out the first few minutes, Mum stops dead to tell you Freddie Mercury came from Zanzibar, explain what a great singer he was and reaffirm how sad it was when he died. Before somehow picking up the thread of the song for the sad ‘nothing really matters’ bit at the end.
Sample mum lyric: ‘Scary bush, scary bush, was there a triangular?’
Shotgun – George Ezra
An earworm from the relatively recent 2018. George is also the son she never had. This is a great example of Mum only knowing the final word in each line and not bothering to fill in the gaps.
Sample mum lyric: ‘La, la, la, la, Shotgun, La, la, la, la, hot sun, La, la, la, la, someone’
We Didn’t Start the Fire – Billy Joel
In Mum’s defence this song is a real lyrical minefield. But every time it comes on the radio in her car she somehow gets worse.
Sample mum lyric: ‘Harry Truman on the floor, Doris Day she wants a core (?), Liam Neeson, Adil Ray, South Pacific, what a day, Joe Pasquale, Richard Bacon, Danny Baker, television’
The National Anthem – Unknown
Watching the last night of The Proms on telly, waving her miniature Union Jack and half drunk on gin are the perfect conditions for her to belt out her own interpretation of God Save the Queen.
Sample mum lyric: ‘God save our grey, cute Queen, better than other Queens, our… grey… cute Queen’
