I went looking to see if there was a youtube of a bubble gum song that came out when I was 8 or 9. Here is that song.
Let it be known that until yesterday I sang the chorus thusly:
Oh, it’s just mystery girl.
You’ve got to get-a over it!
He loved her from the start.
knowing full well the name of the song is Misdemeanor. Yeah, the first line of the chorus is “It’s just a misdemeanor”. I has a 38 year old dumb.
What’s the longest you’ve gone singing the song wrong?
It wasn’t until a couple of years ago, that I realized the last part of the Scooby Doo theme, was …
If we can count on you Scooby Doo,
I know we’ll catch that villain.
I thought they wanted to catch that feelin’. Never mind the fact that the whole premise of the show is about catching villains. :o
Floyd’s Echoes:
“By chance two separate classes meet”
Is actually (apparently)
“By chance two separate glances meet”
I assumed that Floyd were slyly satirizing British class structure, showing how we are all the same in our cores. The original recording is ambiguous, but various live shows definitely indicate the latter. Oh well.
For a second I also misheard “classes” but decided it had to be “glances”. Of course that doesn’t speak to the “summery”/“submarine” question, but that was answered when the lyrics came out, at the latest when Shine On box set was released.
Holy Mondegreen, Batman
Speaking of Bruce Wayne, I still hear it as “kiss from a rose on the grave”.
I’m going to out my daughter, just because she hooted at me so hard and so long. The Rolling Stones’ Paint it Black, she claimed, starts with the line —
I see a rainbow and I want to paint it black.
I said, no it’s “red door,” not rainbow … and oh boy did I hear about how dumb I was. I had been singing “red door” since, what, the '60s??
So I looked up the lyrics: Red. Door. RED DOOR. Not rainbow. In your face, smug daughter! 
Until now I thought that was the correct lyric too.
I know the real lyrics to “Fly Like An Eagle” but on one occasion I misheard:
“Feed the babies who don’t have enough to eat
To the children with no shoes on their feet.”
I figured Steve Miller was riffing on Jonathan Swift.
Good for you! Besides, it’s clearly red door. It’s easy to hear, and therefore nothing like Sting singing, “how my poor heart aches”, but everyone hearing “I’m a pool hall ace.” Everyone. Sometimes for years. :smack:
Well for too many years I thought the first line to “Jumpin Jack Flash” was
“I was born in a class 5 hurricane”
It made sense to me at the time. I thought that he’d shortened “category” to “class” to allow it to scan but I let that terminological error slide, I’m a reasonable man.
It actually makes more sense then the real lyrics (which is crossfire hurricane for those still wondering)
I thought this line was “change is comin’ round real soon, make us swim in it then” for over 20 years until my girlfriend corrected me (and nearly laughed me out of the room). I prefer to hear it that way even now though, as the comparison of adulthood’s onset to a tsunami or flash flood is certainly more poetic than the real lyric.
Until just last month, I thought Gordon Lightfoot was singing “Every highway lets me slip away on you.” It wasn’t until I heard the song on Sirius XM radio and saw the title for the very first time that I learned he’s actually singing “carefree highway.”
I’ve been singing the wrong words to that song since 1974, when it was released.
Whoa.
I know, right?
Speaking of Batman, for the longest time I thought the theme to the Adam West version of the show had a chorus singing “Batman” every once in a while. Nope, those were horns.
A lot of people heard Stewie say “Effin’ cry” in the opening to Family Guy but I always heard “laugh and cry.”
For 34 years I thought Jimmy Buffet stepped on a Pop Tart!
Wikipedia says this is a “long held myth.”
Brian (otherwise known as Seth McFarlane) said that it was re-recorded for clarity when he and the gang were on Inside The Actor’s Studio.
What the hell is a crossfire hurricane? (IOW, I also have always heard that one as class 5)
Yeah, and on the British “Which family guy characters have had the most screen time” special before season 8, he says to the camera “It’s not `effin’ cry’, it’s ‘laugh and cry’!”
I never knew it wasn’t a grave! But ‘gray’ makes less sense, actually.