I have filled in many substitute lyrics over the years, sometimes based on what I *think* is being sung - and sometimes based on what I think *should* be sung.

However, one of my brothers has weird habit of genuinely missing the point of song lyrics - he swears he doesn't do it on purpose.

Two examples -
1. "She loves him, yeah yeah yeah"
2. "It always happens to me, it always happens to me..."

The title of the No. 2 song is "Never Never" and he knows that this is what the song is called.

Is she White?
Is she promised to the night?
And her head has no room...

That's all the lyric I can remember from that song. Which is pretty typical. I'm piss poor at titles too.

I have the lyrics for pretty much everything I've ever heard wedged in my brain, from the Beatles back catalogue, to the Brady Bunch theme tune to the Um Bongo commercial and everything in between.

My (male) friend Eyal, however, knows the first four words to pretty much anything you'd care to mention. From that point in he either LA LA LAs, or comes up with some ridiculous lyric that he genuinely believes is the real thing.

I can remember all the lyrics to lots of songs I listened to as a youth, from Cool For Cats to all 18 minutes of Grendel by Marillion (I know this because I played it for the first time in over two decades last year), but I struggle to get beyond the first lines of most of the songs I listen to repeatedly today. I think my brain got filled up early doors.

it's been at least two for me too. What occasion prompted that? It can't have turned up on shuffle, surely?

A mate of mine doesn't hear them at all. I've always thought that may be aprtly because he is a guitarist. We were once talking about Richard Thompson's Rumor and Sigh album; he said that he had always enjoyed it because it has plenty of rocky, upbeat songs. I pointed out that the opening stretch of songs are about, in order, an inexperienced boy sexually assaulting his girlfiend, a criminal delighting in being freed so he start hurting people again, a man who has misread the signs a realises that the light of his life doesn't feel the same way about him, a man who has his beloved locked up in an asylum, and so on and so on. All of this came as news to him because he just hadn't listened to the words.
Oddly the same man doesn't liek opera or 'world' music because he dislikes music which isn't in English as he can't understand the titles.

I reckon I could sing along accurately to every Smiths song. Pity You Bet isn't on anymore.

my head so full of lyrics over the years that I cannot remember most of my life.
I can tell you every word of La Bamba or It's A Sin from over twenty years ago but I cannot tell you where I was when I celebrated my 11th birthday (roughly the time these songs came out).

...when I had to scrimp and save to buy them, or wait for birthdays and Christmas, I'd pore over the sleeves, read the lyrics, put single tracks on repeat, really *listen*.

These days, with a whole album an inexpensive click away, the pPod doesn't even gets glanced at as I'm listening to it. COnsequently, I know not the track's name or number and lyrics get overlooked.

I can remember the words to all songs I owned before about 1990,

After that, it's a blur. I can listen to a song a thousand times these days and it doesn't go in. Too many other things to think about I suppose. Plus brain is fried.

a near-photographic memory - I can remember things near photographs. All right, I've got my coat.

I can remember things like Doncaster rovers away in 1993 (3-1, Adekola 2, Stevens) but can't remember Chesterfield away last season.

when he repeatedly misquoted an REM lyric. Fair to say he bit my head off. I've never corrected anybody since. About anything.

if that, yet seems to know the lyrics to every chart song post 1985, whereas I have hundreds of CDs and can only remember fragments of the words I hear. I can't even use the 'I only listen to the overall sound' excuse, because I'm a great admirer of literate songs.