Ever searched for that infuriating song lyric you couldn't quite make out? If the music industry gets its way, you had better sort it out while you still can.

"OK - let's make this the big one, frubmlub."

Trying to figure out that last word, the opening line from John Otway's classic 1975 song Beware of the Flowers (Cos I'm Sure They're Gonna Get You, Yeh) nearly drove me mad for 20 years.

I must have listened to the first few seconds of the record thousands of times but I could never quite make out what "frubmlub" really was.

Then one day in 1996, on a small website set up by Otway himself, I came across his e-mail address.

So I sent him a message asking him what the word that sounded like "frubmlub" really was, and, amazingly, a few days later back came an e-mail from the one-hit-wonder himself (his "Cor Baby That's Really Free" reached number 27 in the charts in 1977) with the answer I'd been seeking all these years.

It turns out that I'm not alone in becoming obsessed with hard-to-make-out lyrics - millions of people around the world have wasted thousands of man-hours pondering over the exact wording of songs, probably ever since the invention of the record player.

Full Article:
BBC News