Case in point: “Hold On Loosely”. This 38 Special classic came out in 1981. Given that I was an avid listener to Top 40 radio and Kasey Kasem’s American Top 40 (to both the Saturday 8-12 show and the Sunday 1-4 show, during which I taped on my cassette player the favorite songs from Saturday, because I knew when they would be played…Seasons in the Sun was one and probably Escape (The Pina Colada Song) as well), I have probably heard this song ::scribble, carry the two, a BAZILLION times, if not a GAZILLION.
It wasn’t until last night that I realized he’s not saying
Hold on loosely Don’t let go
If you cling to darkness
You’re gonna lose control
:smack:
Checking the lyrics, “when your feelings are such/To overprotect her, to love her too much” doesn’t sound quite familiar either. :o
I got past “I’m not talkin’ 'bout the linen” and I’ll get past this, but D’OH!
I think my Mom has the all-time funniest ‘Kiss this guy’–You know the song “You Got Lucky” by Tom Petty? Admittedly, he does drawlingly stretch out the “good” in “Good love is hard to find”, but “Silly willy love is hard to find”?
Croce’s “Operator” was always “Arboretum” to me until fairly recently since I never bothered to listen to the lyrics that would have made it clear as a bell.
*Are you reeling in the ye-eeeeeast?
Stowing away the ti-iiime?
Are you gathering up the chee-eeeese?
Have you had enough of mi-iiine?
*
Man, the 70s were trippy.
In the song “Skid Row (Downtown)” from “Little Shop of Horrors” I just in the last week realized that the guy didn’t sing “Downtown, where they cast on stock” but actually sings “Downtown, where the cabs don’t stop.”
In an old Petula Clark song, she isn’t singing “Well you’ve heard of the Klan, that’s where it began” but “Well you’ve got a good plan, that’s where it began.” Which makes somewhat more sense than what I thought I heard but still isn’t the most coherent rhyming couplet ever.
So, while I’m too young to remember when it came out, I’ve always enjoyed Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” whenever I caught it on the radio, though I could never understand all the lyrics. Eventually I found Cake’s excellent cover of that song, which I love for its inventiveness while keeping the original feelings from the song. In Cake’s version, it is much easier to make out all the lyrics, so I was able to finally get them all. Imagine my surprise when I realized that Gaynor sings “I should have changed that fucking lock”! I guess radio censors have been making the same mistake I did for so long (that she sang “stupid”, not “fucking”), and thus let it slip through for radio play. That was sure a surprising one.
This will probably seem much less funny in the morning.
