Well, to clarify, there’s an earlier line which says
which is where you got the “passionate” lyric, at least.
Great, I’m not a total idiot then. 
I thought I had made a thread of my own on this topic, but it didn’t come up in search.
Here’s another one…I’ve always heard REM’s “I Believe” as saying “The foolish sent my fool away”-makes perfect sense, the idiots in our lives, well meaning as they might be, get us to forsake our authentic inner self.
It just played this morning, and I tried Googling that line, and got only 2 hits, neither of which were for the REM song. Instead all of the lyric sites insist that it is “And foolish said my fool awake”, which is complete gibberish from a grammatical and a semantic viewpoint.
I’m sticking with my interpretation and I don’t care what anybody else, including Michael Stipe himself, says or thinks.
Here’s another childhood one - remember the old Gene Autry song “Here comes Peter Cottontail”? You know:
Here comes Peter Cottontail
Hoppin’ down the bunny trail
Hippity hoppin’, Easter’s on its way…
I always thought the verse went
He’s got jelly beans for Tommy
Colored eggs for sister Sue
There’s an organ for your mommy
And an Easter bonnet too
and wondered 1) why Mommy would get a pipe organ for Easter and 2) why people didn’t find the lyric incredibly rude. Recently I remembered it and looked up the actual lyrics.
It’s orchid. Your mommy gets an orchid. Not an “organ”.
:smack:
Yeah, I got an organ for your mommy right here…
My dear old Dad once half awoke from a fireside doze just as Frank Sinatra was droning away on the radio.
“Wassat? What’s he on about ? “I Did It Sideways”? Bloody idiot!”
and he drifted off again.
But does Rod Stewart really mean “or steal my daddy’s cue and make a living out of playing pool”?
I just looked it up. None of the lyrics in that song make sense.
Message didn’t take.
I just looked it up, none of those lyrics make much sense.
Although “docks” is interesting and reasonable, I don’t think Bobby got it wrong. The reason the car is abandoned is because it’s broke down and worn out. They drove it as far as they could. If it wasn’t worn out it wouldn’t make sense not to sell it for a few bucks.
And atmospherically speaking, leaving the car on the waterfront and strolling off in different directions is a little tooo cinematic, too noir. Splitting up when you’re both in the same coastal city isn’t as interesting as splitting up in the dark in Hicksville, with both parties heading off somewhere and leaving a steaming car behind.
That’s a hilarious story.
(I tried doing it sideways but I kept falling off.)
A lot of these have been funny. But because of Gyrate, I am now cleaning my screen. It took three and a half years, but you win the thread.
I’d always heard the first line as "I’m not talking about <mumble>
I’d always heard it as “Disappointment-hearted are my dreams.” Never bothered to Google the lyrics, because I wasn’t even in doubt.
It at least made sense, but certainly “Disappointment haunted all my dreams” makes a good deal more sense, and it’s more up to the quality I’d have expected from Neil Diamond (who wrote the song) back in the mid-1960s. (I’m a big fan of his up to about 1971 or 1972.)
> elongation/palatalization of the “t”
I was gonna say that, but you said it better.
I was kind of disappointed when I found out the lyric in Nirvana’s “On A Plain” was not:
The finest day that I’ve ever had
was when I learned to cry on a man
I thought it was a cool sentiment about being a sensitive man/breaking down gender stereotypes.
Oh, it’s cry on command. :o