'Bad woo, this could die/ Ah-choo, this could die'

Franz Ferdinand frontman Alex Kapranos: Photograph: Danny Lawson/PA

If you're like 90% of the population, you'll feel that reading the lyrics to a song gives you - to quote a survey conducted by the National Year of Reading - "a full appreciation of the music".

The survey goes on to say that it's harder to come by printed lyrics than it used to be - fewer CDs feature lyric sheets now, and what you find on websites is often inaccurate. So that amounts to millions of people being frustrated in their desire to know exactly what's being sung. But have they never considered that they might actually be better off remaining ignorant?

How many songs are actually enhanced by a full understanding of the words? Not as many as you'd think. That's because most songwriters are constrained by the demands of rhythm, scansion and their own abilities as a writer. Obviously, there are some who were born with a flair for language that elevates them above their contemporaries and fills acolytes with wonder: Laura Nyro, Ron Mael, Tom Waits, Morrissey, Jarvis Cocker, Nick Cave, Alex Turner, Patti Smith, possibly Bjork.

You could profitably spend time reading their lyrics without even needing to hear the music (though that's no excuse for some people publishing books of poetry that might as well be titled Even More Gifted than You Thought).

These are exceptional lyricists, though, and most pop stars are not. Competent and capable, maybe, but some distance from being described as poetic colossi.

Anyway, that's why I'm among the 10% of people who don't hunker down over lyric sheets or check websites for the correct wordage. If I can't make out the words, I figure that I'm probably not missing much, and just substitute words of my own. So I have my own romanticised versions of songs that, I'll wager, are better than whatever is actually being sung.

For instance I've always thought that the three words Morrissey howls at the end of The Smiths' What Difference Does it Make are "My shaken vow" - and what a strange picture that paints. "My shaken vow" means nothing, but then, it could actually be related to his ambivalence (in 1983, when it was written) about sex and his supposed celibacy. Today I finally looked up the real lyric. It seems that, in fact, he sings "My sacred one." I think "shaken vow" is far more colourful.

Another favourite is Amy Winehouse's You Know I'm No Good. My hearing of the end of the first verse is: "Hand me your stellaran fries/ By the time I'm out the door, you tear me down like Roger Moore." It doesn't make sense, but that's why I like it, because it approximates whatever swirling madness is happening in her head.

Franz Ferdinand's Take Me Out also gets the benefit of my special treatment. It goes: "Bad woo, this could die/ Ah-choo, this could die/I want you to take-a me out." I never hear it without conjuring a pleasant mental picture of Alex Kapranos sneezing. I'm not sure what "bad woo" signifies, but it has to be better than the real words, whatever they might be. And I don't want to know the truth. I'm happy in my own world of customised songs. I could provide more examples, but at this point I'd rather hear yours.