Misheard Lyrics??? #eegads

There is a book out there called "A Maiden's Grave". That's what one character heard in the hymn "Amazing Grace".

I fondly remember Carly Simon singing You're So Vain and the line where she said: "I had some dreams there were clowns in my coffin clowns in my coffin" ir made no sense to me and it didn't make much more when I learned she actually said "clouds in my coffee"

The Mommas and the Papas, "Dedicated to the one I love"

... This is dedicated to the one-eyed love ...

On Elton John's Goodye Yellow Brick Road, I thought the first two lines were,
When are you going to come down
When are you going to laugh?

I thought is was song about trying to cheer somebody up using fantasy imagery. Then I read the lyrics and they are bitter as hell.

Of course there are the classics...

Jimi Hendrex: "S'cuse me, while I kiss this guy" (S'cuse me, while I kiss the sky)

and

Eltons's "Hold me closer, Tony Danza" (Hold me closer, tiny dancer).

The Stranglers' Five Minutes.

Five minutes and you're almost there
Five minutes and you're almost dead
Five minutes and you're almost there
Five minutes and you're almost dead


A friend of mine thought it was "Five minutes with your Uncle Fred."

I'll stay far far away from Uncle Fred. Just to be safe.

You spin me right round, baby
Right round like a ragged baby
Right round round round
You spin me right round, baby
Right round like a ragged baby
Right round round round


The song is far less surrealist (or less horrendously child abusive) than I've always believed it to be.

I just had call to listen to some old Jane's Addiction tracks

I'd always liked 'Standing In The Shower ... Thinking' and I'd always thought it had the repeated line:
"And the world ain't so f*cking hot"

I just looked up the lyrics for the first time.

It's actually:
"And the water is piping hot.. "

Projecting much?

Since I live in Japan, I often encounter the difficulty some Japanese have with pronouncing L and R. Teaching English in the local school system, I work hard to correct such mispronunciations. But outside, I can't correct other adults, and just have to chuckle inside at what I hear.

My Japanese wife and adult son drag me out to a karaoke bar now and then. On one such visit with accompanying friends (who speak Japanese only), I had them singing along to an old Alice Cooper song:

"Only women breed, only women breed..."

At Christmas time, we sing about the bears that come out of the mountains in northern Okinawa only during the Christmas Season. C'mon, you all know that one:

"Jinger bears, jinger bears, jinger arr the way.."

And the old Johnny Cash tune about ralking in Germany:

"Because you'le mine, I ralk the Rhine"...

OK, these are not misheard lyrics as much as misspoken. But just as much fun.

There is a song, San Antonio Rose. I grew up thinking it begins, "Deep within my heart lies a memory." After I grew up I was shocked to realize it actually is "lies a melody." So I was singing it to myself one day when a friend overheard and decided to correct me. "It's memory," he insisted. We got pretty heated arguing. There were no smartphones or PCs in the day and so we never resolved the argument. But between you and me it is melody.