When I read the first post above, my reaction was that I always sing a given song the same.

And then, as I read other posts, and thought back to performances that had particularly gone well, I realized that that first answer was, to put it more or less politely, "full of fecal matter".

Though I'll sing the same version, tunewise and wordwise, each time, there are times when the point of the song carries me away, or a good funny line tickles me in a new way, and I'll hold this note longer, or maybe essentially speak rather than sing that line, or unthinkingly insert a sort of half-chuckle on the punchline. Those things happen almost by themselves.

If the result is pleasing to me and/or the audience, I may well adopt that variation as a standard bit in my way of singing the song. Not what I'd considered a cold-blooded, designed "interpretation", though.

Dave Oesterreich