Anybody else realize that they've always heard the lyrics of a song wrong?

[raccoon]

Anybody else realize that they’ve always heard the lyrics of a song wrong?

i’ve always thought that the song, “Gotta Get a Message to You” said: “The preacher taunted me, and he smiled”

Actually, it says, “the preacher talked to me and he smiled”

I guess it was that British or Australian accent that threw me off.

[d_r]

1. When I was a kid

I the depeche mode song people are people says "I can't understand what makes a man hate another man. Help me understand." I thought it said "I can't understand what makes a man. It takes another man to help me understand." I thought it was about being gay.

[Coventina]

20. Haha! My friend thought that line was:

"I can't understand - God makes a man hate another man."

Sadly, there's some truth in that......

[Croney]

2. In You're So Vain, I thought Carly Simon said

You watched yourself go by, but she actually said:

You had one eye in the mirror, as you watched yourself gavotte.

I hate it.

[EYESORE 9001]

14. I admit that I've been wrong about it all these years

I didn’t know until this moment that it's ‘gavotte’ and not ‘go by,’ so thank you for setting me straight on that. I don’t feel a bit bad about it, however, because the alternative (i.e., wrong) lyrics fit so perfectly.

[XanaDUer2]

28. I thought the same

as a kid when it came out, I didn't know gavotte

[elias7]

3. It's called a Mondegreen...

American writer Sylvia Wright coined the term in 1954, writing that as a girl, when her mother read to her from Percy's Reliques, she had misheard the lyric "layd him on the green" in the fourth line of the Scottish ballad "The Bonny Earl of Murray" as "Lady Mondegreen"

There’s not always some great ones out there if you poke around, but everybody has their own, too...

Robert Hunter, lyricist for the grateful dead, was reluctant to publish lyrics because people often misinterpreted what was sung in concert, and he realized that sometimes other’s interpretations were just as interesting or meaningful as the original words just in a different way...

[Buckeye_Democrat]

4. MANY times in the past.

I can't even think of the many examples now, often revealed to me years later by online music videos which display the lyrics.

Oh, I just thought of one example...

I always thought the lyrics for Beck's "Loser" was "Sooo, from head to toe, I'm a loser baby..."

It's actually, "Soy un perdedor, I'm a loser baby..."

I wasn't even close!

My ex-wife from years ago was a genius at understanding lyrics, even the garbled stuff in rock music that I didn't think anyone could really understand.

[samnsara]

5. all the time.. now I have alexa play the songs with lyrics

[DEbluedude]

6. For years I heard...

Spill the wine, take that girl. Only to find out relatively recently it is - take that pearl.

[raccoon]

7. I heard it the same as you did. NT

[d_r]

9. Today I learned

I think I thought it was "dig that girl"

[catrose]

16. That's what I thought

[KPN]

10. Me too -- till just now in fact.

[XanaDUer2]

8. A relative thought Tramps Like us , baby we were born to run

as slam, bang, thrust, baby we were born to run.

[Harker]

26. Ooooh. n/t

[onethatcares]

11. ya mean Hendrix didn't sing

"Scuse me while I kiss this guy" instead of , "Scuse me while I kiss the sky".


Go Hippies, GO !

[EYESORE 9001]

15. Supposedly, Jimi was aware of the misheard lyrics

and had fun with it, even on stage.

[CottonBear]

12. Bloom County 1988 Presidential Election Louie, Louie Lyrics:

Back in 1988, Bloom Country, the brilliant comic strip by Berke Breathed, provided some special LOUIE LOUIE lyrics to celebrate the Presidential Election of United States, imagining different sets of LOUIE lyrics for each of the candidates – Mike Dukakis, George H.W. Bush, and Bill the Cat!

The Bloom County comic strip originally ran from 1980 until 1989, but was recently restarted after a 25 year hiatus, currently available via Facebook and GoComics.com.

More details about the Bloom County universe can be found at:
BerkeleyBreathed.com.

August 31st, 2016 | Category: Cartoon, Humor, LOUIE Universe, Pop Culture

http://www.louielouie.net/blog/?p=8025

[catrose]

17. Thank you! Every presidential election I think of this, as in "Better idea than debates."

[CottonBear]

23. You're welcome! That's a great idea! LOL! NT

[soothsayer]

13. That's why I like these

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMeDHNqt3/

[eppur_se_muova]

18. I always heard "in a godda da vida baby" ....

so embarrassed to realize what it really was.

[XanaDUer2]

29. I thought the same.

I thought it was some Eastern mystical place in a sacred book.

[3catwoman3]

32. I'm afraid to ask, but I will anyway.

What does it really say?

[Paladin]

19. "Carefree Highway" by Gordon Lightfoot.

Great song, I really like it; have heard it a dozen times a year for decades. And I always thought it was "Every Highway" ("Every highway, let me slip away from you&quot . Moreover: It still sounds like "Every Highway" to me, when I listen to it. And beyond that: I think "Every Highway" makes better lyrical sense than "Carefree Highway."

OK, end of rant. Play it again, Gordon....

[Coventina]

21. The Christmas carol "We Three Kings"

I thought they were announcing that they were from "Orientar"

"We three kings of Orientar"

As a kid I always wondered why I never heard of the country "Orientar" outside of that song. I also wondered where "Orientar" was.

[wnylib]

39. Another Christmas carol

It Came Upon A Midnight Clear. As a kid, I thought it was "Angels bending near the earth to touch their hearts of gold" instead of "harps of gold."

Same carol, "The world in solemn stillness lay, to hear the angels sing." I heard, "The world is all stealing a sleigh."

[Coventina]

40. LOL!

Christian hymns / songs can be misunderstood in numerous ways.

I remember one from Sunday School: "Jesus wants me for a sunbeam."

One girl asked what was a sunbeam?

Another kid said, "I think it's a waffle iron."



ETA: Another Christmas carol:

I thought "While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks at Night" was "While Shepherds Washed Their Socks at Night"

[wnylib]

41. A typo got some laughs at a local church.

My Mexican-American friend typed up some pages of responses and hymns to use for her church's Spanish language mass. One line was, "Jesus makes you fishers of men." In Spanish, the word for fishers is "pescadores." My friend accidentally left out the first "s" so that it read, "pecadores." Pecadores means "sinners."

Another friend caught the mistake just when they were ready to pass them out and they rushed to insert the "s" with a pen.

What made the typo even more amusing (and embarrassing) for my friend is that she used to teach secretarial courses in Mexico.

[yellowdogintexas]

22. #1 on this list: " Bathroom on the right" I can't believe I am the first to mention it! nt

[Harker]

30. CCR?

I heard "better under the john" for "run through the jungle." several times.

Fogerty was a one-man head trip.

[yellowdogintexas]

34. yes, CCR and yes he was NT

[wnylib]

38. OMG! This is the first time that I have learned

that anyone else misheard it the same way that I did. I knew that what I heard couldn't be right, but had to look up the lyrics to find out what they really sang.

[malthaussen]

24. The Clasic Mondegreen:

-- Mal

[gratuitous]

25. "I took a luminous {something} to both headlights"

It's not my standard music fare, so I didn't pay close attention to Carrie Underwood's "Before He Cheats." I got hung up on what the hell she took to both headlights of her cheating boyfriend's truck. It was a "luminous" something or other, and I had to listen very carefully before I finally figured out it was a Louisville Slugger (a baseball bat) she bashed in the headlights with.

[Harker]

27. Skip James - Devil Got My Woman...

I wondered for years just what the hell he was on about with "waggies from the West." What's a waggy? It's not in any slang dictionary in my collection, not even Clarence Major's "Juba to Jive.". I was thinking, are there waggies back east, too?

Wild geese. Waggies.

Please don't get me started on Charley Patton.

[lpbk2713]

31. Old Lang's Eye

All I knew of it was that it was an old song from another country so I didn't expect it to make sense.



Auld lang syne

[hurl]

33. As a kid

I loved (still do) Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here, their greatest work IMO. In Welcome to the Machine, I heard, "He always ate in the steak bar" as "You know his agent's State Farm," which struck me as odd - but being kind of a dope, I just went with it.

It's about 4:40 in

[Wolf Frankula]

35. "And Michael was a moonbeam maker" in the song 'Albert Flasher'

by Guess Who. For forty years I thought it was "And Michael was a movie maker."

Wolf

[Mad_Dem_X]

36. My sister had an interesting interpretation of a line

in Bruce Springsteen's "I'm On Fire." The line is, "It's like someone took a knife, baby, edgy and dull, and cut a six-inch valley through the middle of my soul."

My sister thought it was, "...cut a six-inch belly through the middle of my stove." I still tease her about that.

[Nevilledog]

37. "Tequila" by Dan & Shea

But when I taste tequila, baby I still see ya
Cutting up the floor in a Sirota t-shirt



Actual lyrics:

But when I taste tequila, baby I still see ya
Cutting up the floor in a sorority t-shirt


I just assumed Sirota was a band or something. Made sense to me at the time.