I keep hearing a famous REM song with a lyric in it that I just cannot understand.
It sounds to me like
comedy-cha-wakerer
comedy-cha-wakerer
comedy-cha-wakerer
and so on
what the hell is he saying ?
It’s from “The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite”, on the album Automatic For The People and it’s:
Call me when you try to wake her up
Really ? bloody hell :eek:
Tks
I always thought it was some kind of American Indian phrase.
Jabba’s right…though whenever I listen to it, I always here “Don’t even try to wake her up…”
“The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight” also features an audible giggle from Michael Stipe which survived the editing process.
The story goes that Stipe kept stuffing up the line “… and a reading from Doctor Seuss”, substituting “Zeus” for “Seuss”. He finally nailed it, but laughed his way through the next few words.
Before I knew the actual lyrics, I was thinking “Calling Jamaica”
God, that giggle is terrific! The icing on the cake of an already good song.
Probably my fave REM disc
and I too, thought he was saying
Calling from Jamaica
lol
Yeah, I used to hear “Jamaica” too, but it is “Call me when you try to wake her up.” The song is about a guy in a phone booth trying to call his girlfriend. “I can always sleep standing up” = he’ll wait at the phone booth for as long as it takes. The “sidewinder” is probably the phone cord; hence “the sidewinder sleeps in a coil” - he hasn’t been called back yet. Course, I still can’t make sense out of all the lyrics, but then, it’s an R.E.M. song.
And I really adore that giggle.
I always knew what the lyric was–for whatever reason. I wish that Michael Stipe would have said Dr. Zeus, though. Then it would’ve been a Kage Baker reference :).
Leonard Bernstein!!!
Also: the original authors of “The Lion Sleeps Tonite” got a mention in the liner notes, and R.E.M. did a cover of that song as a B-side.
Hey, ChalkPit, if you have trouble with any other lyrics in the future (and with REM, that’s highly likely), you might want to try the Misheard Lyrics website. It can really be very helpful. The most amazing thing about it, however, is some of the fucking weird lyrics that people think they hear in some songs.
When i looked a few minutes ago, for example, the latest story referred to the REM song “The One I Love.” There is a line in that song that says “A simple prop to occupy my time,” but the person in question thought that it actually said “A simple bra to lock you by my tide.” WTF? That would be bizarre, even for REM.