Trying to transcribe lyrics as sung by Elton John is not unlike trying to stuff an octopus in a jam jar, but in the name of science I'm prepared to make any saccharine farce necessary:

A nit snow saccharine farce
Jistu simpu, whirr!
At stew hots eleven
Unto suppery twirls
Bird, it snow saccharine farce
No saccharine farce
It's nuts, Acker, a farce
Air doll.

Cocoa hard
Ha! Dunbar year....

Sod it; I give up. Not even the most extreme Dylan howl, Tom Waits growl, Lydon snarl or Hetfield honk could ever compete with this - a mainstream sappy ballad, for crying out loud.

Just listen to Elvis, to Sinatra, to Ella. Listen to Billie Holiday in her cups even, it doesn't matter; you can understand every word they say. Yet - and this is the crux of the matter - they still sound impossibly cool.

Dysfunctional enunciation is all over the shop these days, and I plonk the blame firmly at the door of Le Gran Dwight. So why does he do it? Is it simply the result of a man from Pinner trying and spectacularly failing to convince us that he's from Memphis really, or could there be more sinister forces at work?

If I'm being unfair - my hard can get unreasonably cocoa at times, it's true - and Sir Elton is just continuing an ignoble tradition of serial slurring that was already firmly established, I'm sure you'll put me right.