We've been talking at work about misinterpreted lyrics and having quite a bit of fun with it.
Some that we've come up with are:

"I'm not talkin' 'bout millenium" (I'm not talkin' 'bout moving in -- from I'd Really Love to See You Tonight)

"You're A Vegetable" (You're the best of all -- from PYT)

"I'm a pool hall ace" (How my poor heart aches -- from Every Breath You Take)

"Life in the Bass-ane" (Life In The Fast Lane -- what can I say, the misinterpreter of this one is as blonde as I am)

"He's a wealthy million-atkinson" (His welfare is my concern -- from He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother -- what can I say, I'm as blonde as miss Bass-ane . . .)


What have you "heard?"

Back when Seals & Crofts "Diamond Girl" was released, I was living in a period before I would have hearing aids. My hearing impaired ears kept hearing, "sexual airplane/maiden child". LOL!

When I was a kid, I thought it strange that Neil Diamond was singing a song that was apparently about a priest whose name was "Reverand Bluejeans".

I just learned this word a month or so ago: mondegreen.

From Wikipedia:
A mondegreen is the mishearing (usually unintentional) of a phrase as a homophone or near-homophone in such a way that it acquires a new meaning. The word "mondegreen" is itself a mondegreen. The American writer Sylvia Wright coined it in an essay "The Death of Lady Mondegreen," which was published in Harper's Magazine in November 1954.[1] She wrote:

When I was a child, my mother used to read aloud to me from Percy's Reliques. One of my favorite poems began, as I remember:
Ye Highlands and ye Lowlands,
Oh, where hae ye been?
They hae slain the Earl Amurray, [sic]
And Lady Mondegreen.
The actual fourth line is "And laid him on the green," from the anonymous 17th century ballad "The Bonnie Earl O' Murray." Wright gives other examples of what she says, "I shall hereafter call mondegreens."

I had a friend who sang "pipe in the Vaseline"
Not sure what kind of twisted imagery was going on in her head when she heard that, but now that's what I hear when I listen to the song.

My sister used to sing “why don’t you dance with me, I’m not no little black girl” do Dance This Mess Around. Don’t think she intended to sound racist, but she would even get soulful when singing it.

And I used to think David Byrne said “am I god, what have I done?” in Once in a Lifetime, which I still prefer.

Crystal Gayle-I heard "Don't take me half the way" as "don't take me house away".
Go-Go's-At least the first 2 or 3 times I heard this, I thought, instead of "our lips are sealed", they were singing "honest Cecille".

Be honest now, how many of us thought that Peter Gabriel was singing "she's so pop-u-lar" on "Games Without Frontiers"? (Really the French phrase "jeux sans frontiers.")

As I've admitted before, as a youngster, when I played my 45 of Melanie's "Lay Down (Candles in the Rain)" I used to sing along:

"Lay down, lay down
lay it all down
let your white clothes pile up
while you wash them 'round..."

Would've made a great laundry detergent ad.

I'm listening to my brand new Rhino metal box, and Living Colour's Cult of Personality is playing.
I just remembered that I first thought it was Total Personality when I first heard it.

And I also thought the line in Maggie May was "All you did was wet my bed", but in doing a little online research, see that I'm not the only one who did.

I thought Cyndi Lauper was saying "What in the world can they get done" on Girls Just Want To have fun, instead of "When the working day is done." I think it was the way she broke up the words.

For years I thought Jimi Hendrix was saying "So let us not talk bossy now" instead of "...not talk falsely now" on his version of All Along The Watchtower.

The first time I heard Three Dog Night doing Eli's Coming I thought they were saying "Levis Coming" and I remember thinking what a long commercial it was. Hey, I was just a kid.

Sometimes I like my misheard lyrics better than what's really being said. On Wrapped Around Your Finger I thought Sting was saying "Things they would not teach me up in college" which sounds kind of conversational, instead of the real lyric: "Things they would not teach me of in college" which manges to sound both pretentious and gramatically incorrect at the same time.

all these posts and the most famous one ever is still not here:

hendrix, "scuse me while i kiss this guy"

Be honest now, how many of us thought that Peter Gabriel was singing "she's so pop-u-lar" on "Games Without Frontiers"? (Really the French phrase "jeux sans frontiers.")


LOL . . . And sort of conversley, "You're cheatin' on me, Fransae" (You're cheatin on me Friends Say) from Back it Up by NIls Lofgren.

Oh yeah, another thing: I still refuse to believe that Eric Burden is singing "Spill the wine, take that pearl" and NOT "dig that girl."

A Man Died, Charlie, In That Spree of the Bloody Red Baron Over Germany . . . (Still don't really know what they are saying there . . .)

In Van Halen's "Running With The Devil," I used to think David Lee Roth was singing "I've got no love, no love in Korea," which was quite amusing to the couple of Korean classmates I had in junior high. Eventually I discovered it was really "no love you'd call real," and I've never enjoyed the song quite the same since.

"Many men died, tryin' to end that spree, of the bloody Red Baron, of Germany." At least, that's what I used to sing along...

I'm down with "She's So Popular" and "Dig That Girl"

Only very recently was I amazed to learn that the last line of the chorus of CCR's Down On The Corner is "Tap Your Feet" and not "Can't Be Beat."

I fess up to that one. How 'bout from the Beatles' Maxwell's Silver Hammer:

Is it "Maxwell House Cof-fee" or "Maxwell must go free"

"There's a bad moon on the rise" is "there's a bathroom on the right"!

Didn't Stairway to Heaven have the line "and every wino down the road"?

Hendrix was well aware to the "kiss this guy" thing - on one of the live versions he intentionally sings "'Scuse me while I kiss THAT guy"! I think it's on the box set.

"The movement you need is on your shoulder . .. " Oh. Wait. Uh.......

"BLINDED BY THE LIGHT" By Manfred Mann



ACTUAL LYRICS:
""Blinded by the light,
revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night".

what I heard:
Blinded by the light, wrapped up like a douche another roller in the night"



ACTUAL LYRICS:
"And little Early-Pearly came by in his curly-wurly and asked me if I needed a ride"

What I heard:
"..And little girly pearly kept his anus curley- whirly and asked him if I needed a ride."


I don't care what anyone says! Thats what I still hear and thats STILL how I sing it!

Manfred Mann definitely sang "douche" on their hit version of "Blinded By the Light." And I've seen Fogerty several times since he started touring again, and he always throws in the "bathroom" line during the song. Gets a roar from the audience.