Whoa. News to me.
BZZZZZZT–Wrong Answer
I remember owning the LP and checking the lyrics. It’s definitely “Sugar Bear”
Along those lines, I was sure “Hunting the horny back toad” was wrong, but not so. “Where the dogs of society howl” I didn’t figure out for years.
Well, I’ll be pitched in shit. “Should’ve they” makes a lot more sense… sugar bear, you know, doesn’t make a lick of sense.
Oh, well.
“Sugar Bear” is a better rhyme for “Didn’t you dear”
Ditto. My guess has been that he originally wrote it as a jingle for a breakfast cereal commercial.
Yeah, but we’re talking Bernie Taupin here, who doesn’t necessarily “need” to rhyme every single line. Look at “Levon” for example…
Well, and who’s Danny?
“It’s four o’clock in the morning, Danny, listen to me good”
In general I can never understand lyrics but one instance in particular changes the entire meaning of a song for me.
The song is by Jane’s Addiction and the chorus is “We’ll make great pets…” over and over. Turns out the song is about aliens enslaving the human race and making them pets, in a somewhat light hearted tone.
For the longest time I thought it was a very depressing song because I thought the chorus was “We’ll make regrets…” over and over.
Even the tone of the music changed once I knew what he was really saying.
I don’t know which is correct in this case, but I have definitley seen lyric sheets that were clearly written by someone jotting them down as they listen to the song- mistakes aplenty.
FTR, I was thought it was “should’ve been (you)”, with the “you” not or barely audible.
Me too! What gave the mis-hearing particular “props” was that the first time I heard the song was in a lesbian bar – made perfect sense!
And I thought he was going back to his “hidey hole out in the woods.”
All this talk of “Blinded by the Light” and yet no one has yet been “revved up like a douche?” 
I once wondered aloud, next to my AC/DC-loving mother, what the “thirty deeds” of the Thunder Chief were. I wondered if it referenced some bizarre historical event I’d never heard about. I should listen more closely. :smack:
I also made a radical mis-hearance of the Counting Crows cover of “Big Yellow Taxi.”
The intro to the song, of course, goes thusly:
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot.
I, however, heard it as:
They paid paradise
To put up a f**king lie.
I didn’t think they could play stuff like that on the radio… until I learned what they were really saying. >< The fact that I’d never heard the original version before then didn’t help…
The thing is, the backup singers who repeat “sugar bear”… they, too, sound like they’re singing “should’ve they?”, even more clearly than Sir Elton.
IMrevisedHO, of course.
Listening to “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” I always thought it was coming back from Summillin, Wisconsin.
Only after many many listenings did it dawn on it. “Oh! Some mill in Wisconsin.”
When I was little I thought there was a country called “Orientar.” Where the Three Kings came from.
I also thought St. Mary was really fat. Because, you know, “Round yon virgin.”
By The Pretenders:
Every day
Every night time I find
Mystery Jesus
On my mind…on my miiiind.
I still sing it that way when I’m not thinking about it.
Giggle. You’re welcome.
I avoid the Manfred Mann version and the Springsteen one is clearly “deuce”. 
Another one:
I can’t imagine how many times I’ve heard “Down on the Corner”, but only this weekend did I realize he wasn’t saying
You don’t need a pinhead just to hang around,
But if you’ve got a nickel, won’t you lay your money down?
The mystery is why I mentioned this to my friend.
To the OP’er – I also thought for the longest time it was “I’m not talking bout the linen…”