Once Mom and I are driving along and Mom starts a tirade about lyrics allowed on the radio. I ask her what she’s talking about and she informs me that we are hearing, plain as plain…
There’s gonna be a hard-on tonight,
a hard-on tonight, I know
I told her Don Henley couldn’t help it if she had a dirty mind.
…heartache tonight, I know…
For a little while I thought “Love In An Elevator” was “Love in a la vida”, which actually almost makes sense.
I want to think that my high school choir director told us to lean more towards “eggshell-sees” when pronouncing that word while singing. Perhaps this is what many professional choirs/singers are told to do? (Or maybe he told us not to do that because it was a common error for untrained singers to make? I can’t remember now.)
For myself, I was long convinced that the lyrics to Spandau Ballet’s song True went a-somethin’ like so:
*Huh, huh, huh, huuuuuuuuuh, huuuuuuuuuuh,
I’m known as Munches, too.*
No, it doesn’t make sense, but when was that ever a criteria for a song?
Oh, and you’ll never convince me that Manfred Mann’s Earth Band song Blinded by the Light doesn’t say,
Blinded by the light
Wrapped up like douche, another rotor in the night
Who pronounces “deuce” with a strong “sssshhhhhhh” at the end? Ha! Ha! Please.
Ummm…ssshhhhomeone with a lisssshhhp?
I thought for a long time that the lyrics were
I know this lunch is true
I just thought maybe he was having a lunch date with a hot chick and he was having trouble believing it was really happening…shrug
My 12 year old son heard this song just yesterday and sang it that way. Common mistake. I had to correct him, and of course explain what a douche is. A Kodak moment indeed!
For a mondegreen that Homer Simpson would probably enjoy - when I was a kid, I misheard the chorus of Carly Simon’s song as:
Donuts make my brown eyes blue
Thanks Badtz Maru don’t feel nearly so silly now.
SO had one:
Friend’s Mom driving car pool starts signing along with BeeGee’s More Than A Woman only sang it as :
Bald Headed Woman, Bald Headed Woman to me …
BB Mak’s “Until You’re Back Here Baby” was sung by my boyfriend as
Into your back end baby. . .
Michael Bolton’s song “Time, Love and Tenderness” was heard by me several years ago as
Timed oven tenderness.
“And you can whack 'em while you want 'em,
You can whack 'em while I walk away.”
–Lisa Houseman’s unnamed classic from “Dirty Dancing.”
I was once confused by Led Zeppelin’s verse in “Stairway to Heaven,” which said:
“Yes, there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run
There’s still time to change the road you’re on.”
I heard the last part as “but in the logroll, there’s still time to change your overalls.”
I believe that’s Crystal Gayle’s song.
I know somebody who thought that great song by U2 went:
“Someday, buddy, Someday.”
My Mom’s famous misheard lyrics are:
“little blue Scoop”, instead of “little deuce coupe” Beach Boys
“return Lucinda”, instead of “return to sender” Elvis
“bald-headed woman”, instead of “more than a woman” BeeGees
When I was a kid, I thought the Eagles were singing “Ain’t no way to hide, you’re Illini”, which I figured was either about Indians or people who attended the University of Illinois, who I guess were poor players at hide-and-seek.
Y’know, I always sang it that way, although my version had roller instead of your rotor. I never quite understood what a douche was. I thought it was like a doona, a quilt.
:smack: Thank you.
I knew what a douche was and still heard it that way…
For a long time I thought the line in “Down on the Corner”, the CCR song, was:
You don’t need a pinhead just to hang around
One day I thought about it it and said to myself, of course you don’t. Then I realized it was “penny”, you don’t need a penny just to hang around.
For the longest time I thought he was saying “With the blood I shed it’s a lonely view.” Hey, it makes a little more sense than him singing about shedding birds! I thought he was suicidal and cutting himself or something.
Van Halen’s Panama: When I was younger I alternated between thinking he was saying “Had enough!” and “Bad enough!”
My mom’s always good for these things too. Rock You Like a Hurricane was on the radio once, and she started laughing at the lyrics and saying that the song was gross. I couldn’t figure out why, and when I asked, she asked “Well, why is he saying Raunchy like a hurricane?”
Just the other night we were in the car and she was singing along with Dude Looks LIke A Lady but was singing “Do it like a lady!”
About ten years ago, a friend of mine told me she thought inEvery Breath You Take, the line:
“How my poor heart aches,”
was
“I’m a pool hall ace,”
I had never heard anyone sing it that way and thought she was crazy, then I saw it on kissthisguy.com and, apparently, more people heard it that way!
Mark me down for “douche”, too. 