It’s always somewhat embarrassing when you realise that the lyrics to that catchy pop song you’ve been happily and loudly singing along to actually bear no resemblance to the original and that you have, in fact, totally misheard them. This was brought to mind the other day when I was playing “Pleasant Valley Sunday”, a big hit for the Monkees back in 1967 and a favourite in my collection.

As a naturally unworldly 12 year old I was convinced that Mickey Dolenz (oh yes, a lifelong fan, I can easily name all four members of America’s answer to England’s Fab Four!) was singing about a bloke called Stadder.

“Another Pleasant Valley Sunday, here in Stadder’s simple land”…………. certainly sounded plausible enough to me.

How was I to know, at that age, that the Americans had butchered our language and Dolenz was actually singing “here in status symbol land”! How was I to know, a mere child, that Americans pronounce status with a hard “a” instead of the soft (and correct, of course!) “a” of English pronunciation. Status is pronounced Stay-tus as in Stay-tus Quo not Stat-us Quo – I quite liked that band as well! Sad, I know.

I’m sure we all have our own stories to tell on this subject and another that stands out for me is a song by another excellent American band actually called “America”. They had a big hit in 1971 with a song called “A Horse With No Name” (I’ve got that in my collection as well) although I was convinced, when I first heard the song, that it was called “A Horse With No Mane”! You can see my logic though, every horse has a mane but not every horse has a name so why bother to sing about a horse without a name!

Anyway, going back to the Monkees. That band have mixed memories for me and I can well remember, a few years back, an ex-girlfriend of mine telling me that she was ending our relationship. I asked her why and she said it was because of my obsession with the Monkees. I told her that I didn’t believe her. Then I saw her face………..!