The alphabet song?
Yeah, you know the one, it goes “A B C D E F G, H I J K L-M-N-O-P, Q R S, T U V, W, X, Y and Z…” 
I had never heard of the Alphabet Song until I visited the US.
I grew up in Buffalo and I used to watch Canadian TV all the time (we had one of those supersized antenna on the roof, Dad was too cheap for cable but he did like his hockey). I could have sworn I remember that they sang the alphabet song from A to Zed on the childrens shows, but maybe the tune was different? Canadian dopers, is my memory playing tricks on me? Perhaps I’m mushing all those shows together.
That was exactly how we sang it at school in New Zealand.
“Zed” is the preferred term in Australia, but “Zee” is also popular- as has already been mentioned- thanks to American TV programming.
Incidentally, I’m seeing a lot more instances of US English spelling in letters and E-mails here in Australia, doubtless because most people can’t be bothered or aren’t smart enough to change their spell-checking language settings…
The almost universal tune for the alphabet song is the same as “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” (which of course doesn’t help if you don’t know that one). “Almost” only because children as often as not sing it to their own variation on the tune.
If you’re trying to figure out the meter, each letter matches up with one sung syllable in Twinkle Twinkle, hyphenated letters divide up the note evenly, ellipsis means hold :
A B C D E F G
H I J K L-M N-O P
Q R S… T U V
(doub-le U) X… Y [and] Z[ee]
(endings vary, this one is common:)
Now I know my A B C’s
next time won’t you sing with me
When sung with ‘zed’ is the ending normally different?
But the alphabet song is meant to rhyme:
ABCDEF GEE
HIJKLMNO PEE
QRSTU VEE
WXY AND ZEE
Now I’ve said my ABCs
Tell me what you think of mez. (Ok. Almost rhyme.)
How do you compensate for this total lack of rhyme if you say zed? Didn’t you intuit that something was terribly, terribly wrong?
And, poor, dear, Mr. Floppy, how did you ever learn the whole alphabet in order without that song? I still use it!
Hey, I have a random question: If it’s called “Double-U”, why does it look like two V’s? Shouldn’t it be “Doublevee”?
Proud Toddler: “… Double-U, X, Y and Zed.
Now I know my ABC’s…”
Frustrated Parent Who’s Heard the Same Doggerel 228 Times Already Today:
“Shut up, kid, and go to bed.”
Most of my company’s clients are from outside the U.S., and a fair share come from Britain. Some time back I was spelling out the address of our company web page (which has one occurrence of the letter “z”) to a customer from Manchester, and I pronounced the letter as “zed”. There was an audible gasp at the other end, and the customer burst out with “Wow! You know how to pronounce that properly!”
Hey, my liberal arts education came in handy after all. 
I put a line through my 7s and zeds, but D too? I am intrigued. Upper or lower case, or both?
Not in my experience, no. “C” rhymes with “Me”, so the ending’s fine from that point of view.
I was taught an “alphabet song” as a young kid in the 1960s (England). It didn’t rhyme, but we didn’t notice.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M,
(N) O P Q R S T U V W-X-Y-Z.
All done to a two-chord shuffle rhythm - I’d give the notes if it weren’t such a pain typing it into a textbox on a web-page.
My kids (still in England) are very prone to saying “zee”, but that’s because they spend too much time watching TV. Blame my ex.
Serious answer? There used to only be ‘V’ (as can be seen even in modern neoclassical stone carvings - like this one). The rounded form (U) and the doubled form (W) came later, with new names.
Another note, in classical Latin v at the start was pronounced as w (e.g. Veni, Vedi, Veci = wen-i, wee-di, wee-ky).
Modern J didn’t exist then, either - only I. See the linked picture in previous post - “IVLIVS CÆSAR”. This is one of the reasons the scene in Indiana Jones : The Last Crusade where he has to pick the proper stones to walk on is silly (you have to believe they changed the test just to fool modern people.)
My kids get short shrift when they say “zee”. Zed it is and Zed it will ever be. Zed ain’t dead, baby.
mm
“I’m tired. That’s T-I-D-E, tired.” --KoKo Taylor
It is - in French.
The D with the line through it is Vietnamese. Đđ
My American mother was confused for some time by a rhyming alphabet book bought when my elder brother was v.young:
… X Y Zee, and now it’s time to go to bed.