I always hear it as “one winged dove” also but all the lyric sites I checked say it’s “*white *winged dove”. Certainly explains the dove in the video, eh?
Steve Miller’s The Joker has the famous line “I speak of the pompatus of love”. I “knew” it couldn’t be “pompatus” so I decided - and convinced a whole lot of people at the time- that the line is “I speak of the properties of love” I was so proud of myself until I read about how it is actually “pompatus” :smack:
The Beatles’ “Can’t Buy Me Love” has an interesting permutation in Russian. The title phrase comes out in that language as * ken babe lom*, meaning “Throw a crowbar at the old lady.” (!!)
I’ve always sung it your way, but now I know why I like it better.
Don’t forget the other part of that song: “I’m not talkin’ 'bout Millenium*” sounds so much better than the actual “I’m not talkin’ ‘bout movin’ in”, which makes it just another song about shackin’ up in the swingin’ 70s.
*technically, “milleni-un” but I figured that was his accent
Toto’s Africa.
Correct lyrics:
It’s gonna take a lot to drag me away from you
There’s nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do
I **bless **the rains down in Africa
Gonna take some time to do the things we never had
The lyrics I heard:
It’s gonna take a lot to drag me away from you
There’s nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do
I **left **the rains down in Africa
Gonna take some time to do the things we never had
It made sense to me that when *she *arrived the rains stopped. It’s weird that it took so long to pick up on the true lyric – it’s repeated in the refrain multiple times.
Similarly, “Knights in White Satin” is a lovely visual image.
I’ve just discovered I’ve been hearing this one incorrectly all these years:
Neil Young “Tell Me Why”:
Correct: “When you’re old enough to repay. But young enough to sell”
Obviously superior version: “When you’re old enough to repaint. But young enough to sell”
Seriously, wtf does “old enough to repay” mean? At least “repaint” connotes age and connects at least tenuously with getting something ready to sell.
Speaking of which, there’s a choir singing during the fight on the bridge in Mordor in the LOTR movies (specifically when the goblins are shooting arrows at the party) where it sounds like they are singing “oooooh…ahhhhhh…who got salami? who got salami?”)
I thought Ke$ha was saying in Tik Tok:
“Tonight, I’m-a fight till I see the Satellite.” I thought that was an interesting lyric which made me like the song more.
Of course, what she is actually saying is “Sunlight” but it still sounds like “Satellite” to me.
This is one of those things that has to be wrong. “Repaint” is it. I can’t believe Neil says it’s repay. There is a tape of him doing Tell me why, and he explains he is doing it as a request for Briggs or his manager. He sings and then says “I don’t edit this stuff folks”
Thirty thieves and the thunder genie!
Thirty thieves and the thunder genie!
Pink Floyd, From DSOTM:
Correct:
Haven’t you heard, It’s a battle of words, The poster bearer cried
Incorrect:
Haven’t you heard, It’s a battle of words, And most of them are lies
For “Snoopy vs. the Red Baron”
Correct: * Eighty men died, tryin’ to end that spree*
Better: * Aim and dive, tryin’ to end that spree*
The “Weird Al” version has one of these lines, as well:
Real line: “Goes in the back and beats up on the liverwurst.”
As my older brother and I heard it: “Goes in the back and beats off on the liverwurst”
It’s funny, I’ve heard that song since I was ten and thought the last word in that line was “Streak”.
Help I’m steppin’ into the twilight zone
The place is a madhouse
Feels like being cloned
My beacon’s been moved under moon and star
Where am I to go now that I’ve gone too far
Soon you will come to know
When the bullet hits the bone
WTF does being cloned feel like?
I heard it as:
The place is a madhouse
Feels like Vietnam
To an American of a certain age the word Vietnam invokes an image of a place that’s not only dangerous, but also chaotic. And where there were many guns.
The theme song to the old Wonder Woman show included the lines:
In your satin tights
Fighting for your rights
And the old red, white, and blue!
I heard the last line as “And the only boy you knew!”
Which TOTALLY MADE SENSE. Diana was from an island of all women, she had never seen a man before Steve Trevor crashed on Themyscira. And she was always saving him, all the time. So he was the only boy she knew, and he was one of the things she was fighting for. Q.E.D.
Almost everyone hears it as “grave”, but hearing it was “gray”, I looked up the lyrics to study them. He’s wrapped it all up in poetic metaphor, but he talks about having been a graying tower on the sea, and she is like a kiss from a rose - she is a splash of color to his gray, bleak world. A kiss of red on the gray of his life.
Be nice if you listed the original or identified or someway. I do know the first.
He killed a man, so Beelzebub is going to take him away.
I thought that too, and it is better.
I’ve mentioned this one before – in the Creedence Clearwater Revival song Lookin’ Out My Back Door are the lines:
Tambourines and Elephants
Are playing in the band
Won’t you take a ride
On the Flying Spoon?
do, doo, doo
I swear that I not only have heard this as, but STILL hear it as:
Won’t you take a ride
On the Glide?
We’ll spoon.
Fior years I couldn’t understand what that meant, until I finally learned that a “Glide” is a sort of parallelogram Rocker/swing:
Okay – that made sense. Lots of back porches had glides on them, for sitting in the summer breeze. The singer is inviting the listener to sit with him on the glide and lightly make out (“spoon”).
When I was originally perplexed, I had neither hear of a “glide” or of “spooning”. But it all fit together.
For years I was convinced that I had finally figured out the meaning of the lyrics – it was country slang that I, a suburbanite, was unfamiliar with.
Then someone pointed out that the lyrics were really “flying spoon”.
I was sure they were wrong. It never sounded like “flying spoon” to me. It still doesn’t when I listen to it. I would still be disputing it, but every copy of the lyrics online says the same thing.
So I’ve gone from thinking I figured out the innocent meaning in the band’s bucolic roots to trying to understand something that sounds like a coke reference.
And just in case you think I’m completely off my Glide, my wife Pepper Mill had the same evolution of understanding about the lyrics, completely independently of me – except she knew what a “glide” and “spooning” were. She was similarly disbelieving when I showed her the lyrics online.
I still prefer
“Won’t you take a ride
On the Glide
We’ll Spoon”
…which is what it certainly sounds like they’re singing. And makes a helluva lot more sense.