Rockers Who Forgot Lyrics To The Songs That Made Them Famous

Each band has hardcore fans who know every word and note from every track on every album. But to songwriters and singers, the experience of composing and remembering a song is quite different. They've got to construct the song, collaborate with band members, practice in the studio, record, sleep on buses between gigs, and somehow focus on stage amidst a flood of noise, lights, and cheering faces, night after night after night. It's impossible for even the most well-practiced veteran to not mess up now and then, even for some of rock's biggest names and biggest songs.

Lyrics present their own unique challenges, too, ones that start with writing and remembering. Tatiana Shmayluk of Ukrainian metal band Jinjer sometimes doesn't write lyrics until two hours before a recording session, as she said in a recent interview, and has to actively try to remember the lyrics later. Kurt Cobain wrote similarly last-minute, saying in a 1993 interview that he tossed out "pieces of poetry" and "garbage ... that would just spew out of me." Mega-rocker James Hetfield of Metallica, meanwhile, sometimes has no idea what to say and composes riffs separately from lyrics. 

Clearly, no matter how precious lyrics are to a fan, they can be much easier for a musician to forget them. In some cases, that means even hit songs. Ozzy Osbourne once forgot the lyrics to "War Pigs," Cobain forgot the lyrics (and music) to "Polly," Noel Gallagher forgot the lyrics to "Wonderwall," Thom Yorke forgot the lyrics to "Karma Police," and Matt Bellamy forgot the lyrics to lots of songs, including "Kill or Be Killed."

It really shouldn't come as a surprise that the late and much-loved Prince of Darkness dropped the ball on lyrics now and then. He even forgot them when he was joking around, like during a 2001 appearance on "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" — unless the whole bit was staged. Maybe it was simple absent-mindedness (not hard to imagine for Ozzy), maybe it was all the drugs, maybe it was both, or maybe Ozzy just wanted to clown around. But at least in one instance back in 1983, he legit forgot the lyrics to "War Pigs," one of Black Sabbath's biggest songs. Then he made up some new ones.

Sadly, we don't have footage of this comical blunder, but we do have guitarist Jake E. Lee's testimony, who joined Ozzy's solo project from 1982 to 1987. Naturally, Ozzy didn't just perform his own tracks while venturing into solo territory, he covered Sabbath tracks as well. During the Speak of the Devil tour (1982 to 1983), Lee recalled Ozzy completely forgetting the lyrics to the first verse of "War Pigs." As he told Guitar World in 2025, Ozzy turned to him in the middle of the famous "Generals gathered in their masses" verse and lipped, "What are the words?" 

At that point, rather than stop singing, Lee said that Ozzy started doing a rendition of "Old MacDonald." The lyrics to Ozzy's rendition went something like, "Old MacDonald haaaad a faaarm, he had some pigs with an oink oink here, and an oink oink therrrrrre." Folks in the front row looked extremely confused, but definitely had a story to tell for years to come. 

Let's be honest: There's a reason why Weird Al framed his entire "Smells Like Teen Spirit" parody, "Smells Like Nirvana," around not understanding a single word that Kurt Cobain was saying. Or rather, he framed it around Cobain not understanding what in the world he was singing about. But, playing and singing rough and dirty was all part of the Seattle scene's post-post-punk approach to music. Even so, Cobain did get sloppy and needed some assistance sometimes. This is especially true when it came to one song, for whatever reason: "Polly."

Dating to some unknown time that must have followed the release of "Nevermind" in 1991, there is footage of Cobain totally bombing the lyrics to "Polly." Or at least, it seems that way. He improvs a chorus line, "Hollywood smoke isn't smoke" (or something like that), and then degrades into rambling mumbles while smirking. That smirk, perhaps, is why some folks think he was faking the whole thing. Nirvana fans will remember that the chorus for "Polly" features Dave Grohl singing harmony, and Cobain might have gone off-script in a live show just to screw around with Grohl, who was singing "Polly's" actual lyrics. Knowing the prankster spirit that ran through the band, it's certainly not outside the realm of possibility. 

Then again, Cobain also had trouble remembering how to play "Polly." In another piece of footage from that era, Cobain messes around with his fretboard at a show, trying to recall the chord progression for "Polly." He stops, turns to bassist Krist Novoselic and says, "I got 'em mixed up, now." Novoselic proceeds to tutor Cobain about how to play the song, and then the show carries on, smirks and all.

We all know the words to the globe's most annoying karaoke song, right? Oasis' "Wonderwall" is dominated by one very long, very nasal note that goes, "Because maybeeeeeeee," which makes it easier to sing. It ought to be easy to remember the rest of the lyrics, too, especially since they're pretty simple. They're simple enough to make you forget that you don't know what a "wonderwall" is. Sorry, we're getting off track, which is exactly what might have happened to Noel Gallagher's mind during a performance in Yokohama, Japan, in 2000.

To be fair, the Gallagher brothers had probably played "Wonderwall" a kajillion times by then and had taken to thinking about the next late-night kebab while performing. Oasis absolutely exploded onto the music scene in 1994 with its debut album "Definitely Maybe," which was extremely well-received right off the bat and sold 100,000 copies within the first four days of its release. The band rapidly followed it up with "(What's the Story?) Morning Glory" in 1995, an album that's gone on to sell 22 million copies. That second album spawned six singles, the biggest of which has since served as every aspiring guitarist's first song: "Wonderwall," which in 2025 has over 2.5 billion listens on Spotify; pretty danged impressive for a 30-year-old song.

But even back when Noel flubbed the song — the "I don't believe that anybody" line in verse 1 – he'd already been singing "Wonderwall" for five years. That's a lot of times singing that one, long note.

Early Muse diehards — the kind that got on board in the band's "Showbiz" (1999), "Origin of Symmetry" (2001), and "Absolution" (2003) days — know how prolific and gifted of a songwriter Matt Bellamy is. An explosive guitar player, exquisite pianist, soaring vocalist, and sometimes-theramin player (at least on "Uprising"), Bellamy is the band's chief songwriter. He's written so much that he told Kerrang! in 2018 that fans probably know Muse's music better than him. Muse's music incorporates piano parts that are sometimes so neoclassically complex that Bellamy forgets them, as seen during a 2009 performance of "United States of Eurasia (+Collateral Damage)." And lyrics? Yeah, he forgets those, too.

Judging by discussions on Reddit, it's not terribly uncommon for Bellamy to mess up lyrics. There are reports of him forgetting lines to "Reapers," "Darkshines" (an OG 2001 track), "Verona," and "Panic Station" (which was caught on video), to name a few. He also forgot the lyrics to "Kill or Be Killed," a newer song off of 2022's "Will of the People," at a show in 2023. In that case, he might have forgotten the lyrics not because he'd sung it thousands of times before, but because he hadn't. But really, with nine albums – seven of which have reached number one — under Muse's belt, and a somewhat whacky creative person at their head, some words are going to slip through the falsetto-laden cracks. 

Thom Yorke has become something of an unwilling icon of all things incomprehensibly auteur. His evolution happened lockstep with Radiohead's, who have gone leagues and fathoms beyond their initial, mid-Grunge-era, "Pablo Honey" (1993) days — which some still regard as the band's best album. Now, Radiohead is basically the world's most revered non-indie indie-sounding band, with over 43 million monthly listeners on Spotify. They don't do shows very often; 2018 was their last tour, with a 2025 one coming up. And even when they do, those shows might be closed and private, like their superb 2008 From the Basement set following the release of "In Rainbows." So, maybe it's understandable if Thom Yorke fumbles a song now and then. But "Karma Police"? To a Radiohead superfan, it might be heretical to not recall every word of the track. But if Yorke does it, it's funny. 

This is exactly what happened in 2012 at a show in St. Louis. Yorke forgot practically every line of the first verse of "Karma Police," but rather than anyone getting upset, it was all in good fun. It's true that Yorke might have long-since developed "Karma Police" overload, as it wound up being one of the most popular tracks from 1997's "Ok, Computer." But at the concert in question, Yorke kept in good spirits and ad-libbed the song's bridge to poke fun at himself, crooning, "When you forget the words," instead of, "When you mess with us." The crowd, knowing every one of those words, knew exactly where Yorke was going and immediately started laughing. Indeed, for a minute there, Yorke lost himself.