as the beer goes down around me so does the tempo, and I'm trying to move on to the next verse while the audience is still on the last line of the chorus

"If you want to come in on the refrains, please do, but I'm not hanging around so don't drag them out"
- me, the other night

Mind you, that was among friends - in a bigger or more mixed crowd I would probably just put up with the dreaded* Choral Dirge Effect.

*Not invariably dreaded, I have to say - there are songs where a kind of slow-motion pileup of voices, in a spirit of never mind the tempo, feel the harmonies, is just what you want. But a lot of the time it's just down to people taking their cue from each other, so that everyone slows everyone else down.