Misheard Song Lyrics

There's a term for it: mondegreen, which has an interesting mondegreen-ish etymology in and of itself.

A classic one is that line from "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," where they appear to sing: "The girl with colitis goes by." ("The girl with kaleidescope eyes.")

I can think of two that I sang loudly and clearly enough in front of people to get laughed at and have corrected. The first is a Jackson Browne song, "Our Lady of the Well" and he's singing this beautiful song about going to live among these people in Mexico and learning about their lives and cultural ways in comparison to his own and how it's somewhat like a dream to him and the last verse goes:

If you come to me Maria
You will find me in the shade
Wide awake or in a dream
It's hard to tell...

And I sang: If you come to me Maria
You will find me in the shade
Wide awake or in a TREE
It's hard to tell...
And my friend with whom I was singing just thought that was hysterical-"how could he be sleeping in a tree- wouldn't he fall out?! - etc., etc...I guess the shade part put me in mind of trees (I've always had a thing for trees) to the point that I blocked out what the meaning of the opposite of being wide awake might be.

And then that Motels song, "Only the lonely can play" I thought they were saying, "Only the lonely GET LAID, and it made perfect sense to me because I thought that if you were lonely, you'd go around getting laid as opposed to finding meaningful relationships in which you'd make love or use another terminology which would invest the activity with more emotional weight. My boyfriend at the time thought that was pretty telling...

Too cool shapeless !! Thanks!

Amazing Grace can sound quite like "a maiden's grave"

For the longest time I heard Simon and Garfunkel's line "parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme" as "I see Pedro, Mary, and Tom."

Just remembered one of my own...

Bronski Beat...

"Alone on a platform with everything you want in a letter...about gays."

Actually should be....

"Alone on a platform with everything you own in a little...black case."

I recall I made a topic like this on Abuzz, it was one of my first good, funny topics. I called it "Lyrical Blunders".

Anyway -- the standard is "Scuse me while I kiss this guy" but my own personal mondegreen is from England Dan and John Ford Coley's "I'd Really Love to see you tonight". The real lyric is: "I'm not talkin' 'bout movin' in" but I originally heard it as "I'm not talkin' 'bout the linen". Got my whole sorority to sing it that way.

I can't understand ANY of the lyrics of 'Blinded by the light'.

According to my mother, a bridge player, some players were cheating at a tournament.

Instead of singing, "Jesus paid it all," they would sing, "Jesus spade it all."

Those are GREAT lyrics: (but long, so here's the linkhttp://www.brucespringsteen.net/songs/BlindedByTheLight.html)
You can understand them when Bruce (as opposed to Mannfred Mann) sings them- he wrote them.

I just thought of another- Stevie Wonder's "Part-Time Lover" I initially thought was "Apartheid Lover" (it was around the right time and he was involved in the whole musicians/Sun City/apartheid boycott of South Africa). But then I asked someone how the lyrics were in any way about apartheid, and the person told me the real title.

When I was a kid I thought Crystal Gayles, "Don't it make your brown eyes blue" was "Donuts make your brown eyes blue"

For a long time I thought the Clash sang "eating chicken gruel for breakfast" instead of "when you're drinking brew for breakfast" in Rudy Can't Fail.

I can't either.

Is it Wrapped up like you do?

"Through the night with a light from a bulb." (Irving Berlin, God Bless America) How can one fine fault with this? It makes perfect sense even if it isn't the lyric.

Alex the seal
The go gos

Our father, who art in heaven
Harold be thy name.

Tripped up like a deuce another runner in the night.

Revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night.

misheard lyrics
There's a bathroom on the right. Instead of there's a bad moon

on the rise. Hmmmm whats another one OH YEAH!!! in stair way to

heaven theres this line (and I still don't know what he says) "It's just a

sprinkling of the mayfree" What the heck does he say anyway???

OH that group that Amy Mann sang with - in the 80's

"Hush, Hush keep it down now - voices carry"

I always thought it was "keep it down now - you're so scary"

Blinded by the light, wrapped up like a douche of a runner in the night.