I'm sure that everyone has had an experience where they have misheard or sung the wrong lyrics to a song. Sometimes its the singer's fault for not enunciating better (yes, thats you Thom Yorke), sometimes the listener just isn't paying close enough attention (my problem). Then you find out later you were wrong and wonder "How the hell did I mess that up?" Well I do anyway.

A famous example would be Mannfred Mann's "Blinded by the Light": Lyrics sound like "Wrapped up like a douche", but is actually "Revved up like a deuce"

Anyway, I thought it might be amusing for us to come clean with these mistakes. I'll start with a pretty bad one:

Rolling Stones "Beast of Burden"

I heard: " I'll never be your Big Suburban"

It was actually: "I'll never be your Beast of Burden"

I got this wrong for years despite knowing the name of the song. I literally have a thousand of these.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: mymindsblank,

Misheard lyrics site

I have trouble with Ryan Adams lyrics more than anyone these days. Can't think of any right now but I've done too many online lyric searches for Adams'.

Sometimes, hearing the songs and making up what they're saying in your head turns out to be a lot better than what they're actually saying.

um...hey, mymindisblank, it isn't "The Stroke" by Billy Squire that you are referring to, it is Mannfred Mann's "Blinded by the Light", with the lyric, "revved up like a deuce". Try to get the song right before you really confuse people.

Woops! your right Moses, fixed! but just cause you are from 'da Ville' don't try and get all high and mighty on me.


Here's another one...Radiohead's "Nude":

Most people know that it was a live-only song for several years and off the bootlegs my ears heard: "You'll go to hell for what you did to my esteem"

It was actually: "You'll go to hell for what your dirty mind is thinking"

I didn't realize this until In Rainbows came out and I could hear it clearly...well, kinda.

When I was really little, my parents used to listen to this country song all the time where the lady would sing about her relationship with her father. It got drilled into my head and one day I decided to sing along in the car, but it turns out I didn't know the lyrics right.

I sang, "Daddy's PAAANTS, were soft and warm when I'd done right. Daddy's PAAANTS, were hard as steel when I'd done wrong. There was so much love is daddy's PAAANTS."

I got in really big trouble too, and didn't know why. Even after I found out that the song was really about "Daddy's Hands". Several years later when I had more experience with life, things became clear.

'Daddy's pants, hard as steel'. Nice!
Personally speaking, and also harking back to childhood, I cherish the memory of my father singing Fab Macca's 'Mull Of Kintyre, oh mist rolling in from the sea' as 'Mull Of Kintyre, oh me strolling in from the sea'. Simple yet effective.

I remember singing along to the fugees version of 'killing me softly' and thinking that the line was "strong as my pain with his fingers", which clearly did not make sense, however it was only when I listened to my grandfather's Roberta Flack cd that I realised...

Peter Bjorn and John, "Young Folks".

I had to look up the words to see what it actually said because I knew it wasn't what it sounded like. It sounded like, "We don't care about the young folks; Talkin' 'bout Beyoncé."

The actual words are not really very meaningful in English, "We don't care about the the young folks; Talkin' 'bout the young style." Still a great song, and the grammar's not bad, but native Anglophones would not be likely to use the phrase, "the young style."

quote:

Originally posted by JeffinNYC:
Peter Bjorn and John, "Young Folks".

I had to look up the words to see what it actually said because I knew it wasn't what it sounded like. It sounded like, "We don't care about the young folks; Talkin' 'bout Beyoncé."

The actual words are not really very meaningful in English, "We don't care about the the young folks; Talkin' 'bout the young style." Still a great song, and the grammar's not bad, but native Anglophones would not be likely to use the phrase, "the young style."

That song is just full of grammatical flukes and bizarre phrasing like: "it didn't lead nowhere" and "usually when things has gone this far/
people tend to disappear/no-one will surprise me unless you do", and the way he pronounces "leaving" makes it sounds like "sleaving". I don't know if this butchering of English is intentional, but I guess it doesn't matter - they got a hit out of it.

There's this Sting song that goes "be still my beating heart" and when we were little my brother mentioned something to my dad about how it was a golf song, and he was like, "what?" and my brother's like, "Well, yeah, he says he's 'Still not beating par.'"

Hilarity.

I used to think Queens of the Stone Age's Feel Good Hit of the Summer went "you can sing around, you know make a little marijuana, excellent to see you out the home". Uhuh.

I Fought The Law -

I used to think it went "Hop off the log and the log won" Duh

Hendrix, Purple Haze -

"'Scuse me while I kiss this guy"

Bodies - Drowning Pool

Let the bicycle go....let the bicycle go! BLOOOOOOWWWWW!

Guided By Voices - Things I Will Keep

The lyric is 'unlock the timers and strike the chimers'

I always heard 'unlock the timers and striped vaginas'. :/

another one:

When I was a youngin' in the mid-80's, my parents listened to some Four Tops occasionally. When the song "My Girl" was playing, instead of hearing "talking about my girl (my girl)" I heard "talking about Magic (Magic)"

I thought it was a song about Magic Johnson and it instantly became one of my favorite songs.

I've got a bunch.

That one late 80's or early 90's song..."Hands to Heaven" by Breathe.

When i was like 11, I thought it was..."tonight i need your sweeeet caress...hold me in the dark ass".
Needless to say, it's darkness.

Tears for Fears: "Shout"
I thought, "in valentine's, YOU SHOULDN'T HAVE TO SELL YOUR SOUL...."
it's really, "in violent times...you..."

"Kyrie" by Mike and the Mechanics
I thought, "carry a laser down the road that i must travel"
It's really, "kyrie eleison...down the road..."

oh, and for Pearl Jam's "Yellow Ledbetter", well, it's whatever you want it to be as it is said there are no correct or specific lyrics for that song. My shifting interpretation goes:

"on a ceiling, on the forth side letter set,
and I said, I want to read it again"...
and later...
"and no, I don't know whether it was a box or a bag...oh yeah, and yeahhhhh, can you see them? Out on the porch! Yeah, but they don't waaaaaive....i see them, round the front wayyyy, yeah, and i know and i know, I don't want to stay"

Some others:

Cyndi Lauper, "True Colors": I thought "If you're lost you can look" sounded like "If your lobster can love" and I had to read the album liner notes to see what the actual words were.

Corey Hart, "It Ain't Enough": Until I saw the title of the song it drove me crazy hearing it on the radio because I didn't know what the words were, but what they sounded like was definitely wrong: "That enema, that enema for you." Of course the real words were "It ain't enough, it ain't enough for you."

Michael Jackson, "Billie Jean": "The child is not my son" still sounds to me like "The chair is not my sign." I was not the only one, because David Letterman did a skit about this in which he played the song to see if it said "child" or "chair." In the skit there was a comically obvious voice-over that said "chair."

And possibly THE classic misheard lyric of all time, from Manfred Mann, "Blinded By the Light": "Wrapped Up Like a Douche." The real words are allegedly "Revved Up Like a Deuce." Actually I just searched for "wrapped up like a douche" on wikipedia and got 18,400 hits, 100% of which I am pretty sure relate to this song.

quote:

Originally posted by Moses, R.M.:
oh, and for Pearl Jam's "Yellow Ledbetter", well, it's whatever you want it to be as it is said there are no correct or specific lyrics for that song. My shifting interpretation goes:

"on a ceiling, on the forth side letter set,
and I said, I want to read it again"...
and later...
"and no, I don't know whether it was a box or a bag...oh yeah, and yeahhhhh, can you see them? Out on the porch! Yeah, but they don't waaaaaive....i see them, round the front wayyyy, yeah, and i know and i know, I don't want to stay"

I don't remember if I ever posted this here, but this is incredibly funny.