Pop loving Brits love nothing more than belting out the Abba classic Dancing Queen but the iconic tune has now topped the charts of the song most commonly sung wrong. The Swedish supergroup group spent six weeks at number one with the 1976 banger and it was given a fresh lease of life after being sung by Meryl Streep in the smash-hit movie Mamma Mia! But despite approaching almost two billion online streams and tens of millions of record sales and being a standard feature of wedding bands and birthday discoes, a study has found many fans muddle up the lyrics to sing “dancing queen, feel the beat from the tangerine”. This is instead of the correct – and more sensible - words “dancing queen, feel the beat from the tambourine”.
Some 70% of participants in the poll revealed they have sung the lines to the biggest hits incorrectly, with a remarkably honest 15% admitting they have done so for more than a decade. Queen's popular anthem We Will Rock You is the second-most misquoted track, with the line “kicking your can all over the place” being swapped to “kicking your cat all over the place”. The survey also found fans of Taylor Swift's Blank Space sing “all the lonely Starbucks lovers” rather than “got a long list of ex-lovers”.
And in what many know only to be a common “dad joke”, the Johnny Cash classic “I Can See Clearly Now” is misquoted with the lyrics “I can see clearly now the rain has gone” changed to “I can see Deirdre now Lorraine .
