Hey Jeannie,
Here's something that I found to help me immensely in memorizing words. It may sound strange at first, but track with me. When I look at what happens in that very instant when I am forgetting the words, by close inspection I can see that a confusion in the form of a "blankness" happens and it stalls out my thought process. In other words, there is a spot where I feel temporarily "unplugged" from the communication process. Do you feel a similar way?

Okay, now it is a scientific fact that even the tiniest non-comprehension of a word can cause the brain to hesitate. If the brain does not have the FULL comprehension of the word... and I mean FULL...a sort of mental mass shrouds our thought processes and we stall out.

I was having trouble with a lyric that used the word "the" in one sentence and then used the word "that" to start the same sentence again. I realized that I didn't really know the FULL difference between "that" as in "that song" and "the" as in "the song." So, I took the major time and trouble to truly clear up ALL the definitions of those two little words (of which there were numerous for each) and then applied the exact definition for each word as they applied in THAT song (rather than THE song.)

Okay, so you may think that that's going a bit too far. But, I can honestly tell you that ALL confusions, hesitations, etc. with lyrics can stem from this very powerful fact of having a bit of non-comprehension of some of the words themselves. There can be other reasons such as being not totally coherent due to partying or being scared (both of which I've also experienced....)

Now, here's a trick. Go to where you flub the words and just before the actual flub is where you will find the word you need to clear up better. You see, the confusion comes in just after the non-comprehension, thus the flub.

In any event, if you TOTALLY understood the definitions to all the words you were singing, you certainly would have better control over your communication cycle!

Give it a try and see! You'd be surprised how much confusion blows away when you actually do this! It's amazing. I once had a 15 year show run on the Las Vegas strip with two shows per night and only flubbed when I was terrified a few times. That's not too bad in 15 years!

Take good care and best of luck!

"And, in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make." Paul McCartney