Sometimes we get so used to the “wrong” version of songs that they almost replace the regular ones in our heads.

Years ago I recorded ‘Who Can It Be Now?’, one of the biggest hits by Australian new wave band Men At Work, on a mixtape of ’80s songs that I made. For some reason I can’t recall, that recording had a little skip/glitch right before the second chorus. I played that mix so much that the skip became part of the song in my head. To this day, every time I hear that song anywhere, it feels almost “weird” not finding that skip. And every time the song ends, I always expect Billy Idol’s ‘Eyes Without A Face’ to start, as it was the following song on that mix.

It’s not the only time something like that has happened. And again, it was with a band from Down Under. I once recorded ‘Hot Chilli Woman’, a song by hard rock band Noiseworks, off the radio. During its bridge, for half a second, you can hear John Lennon singing the words “what have you” from his and Yoko Ono’s song ‘Happy Xmas (War Is Over)’. To this day, I have absolutely no idea how it ended up there. Perhaps I mistakenly pressed record instead of play while Lennon’s song was on the radio. Nevertheless, every time I play Noiseworks’ third album ‘Love Versus Money’, my brain seems almost surprised not to find that little bit there. It literally took me years to realize that the actual words hidden under that part were “burns like fire”.

When thinking about all the ways our experience of music has changed over the years, this probably isn’t one of the most obvious, but it’s something that has indeed been lost along the way. Sure, we can still get used to a specific track sequence through modern playlists, to the point that one song ending makes us expect another one to start, or we can get more used to a live version or a remix than to the original version. But the little imperfections of homemade tapes are mostly gone: skips, glitches, and accidental bits of other recordings no longer have much chance to embed themselves in our memories and become part of the songs. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but try telling that to our brains. At this point, I have probably listened to the “correct” versions of ‘Who Can It Be Now?’ and ‘Hot Chilli Woman’ more than I ever listened to those faulty tapes, yet the personal versions in my head still feature skips and John Lennon on guest vocals…