Or when you heard the lyrics wrong. I seem to have a mild version of this problem with every song I listen to, since they’re hardly ever about what I thought they were about at first. But which songs did you seriously like better when you didn’t know what the singers are saying?
I can think of two off the top of my head - there is The Scientist by Coldplay, with the “I’ll take you back to the start”, which I originally heard as stars, which I thought was just much more romantic and imaginative than start. Then there is Tunnel of Love from the Fun Boy Three, where there is a line that goes “Hope you make it to the church on time.” I heard “hope” as “ho!”, as in a spontaneous exclamation and I found it incredibly appealing that the singer would just exclaim “Ho!” in the middle of a song. I was rather disappointed to hear it was actually a word. Minor, perhaps, but I didn’t like the song so much after that.
I’m sure other people have had this too. C’mon, share!
not so much a single song as everything the Band Lush released after they decided to make themselves intelligible. good lord do they suck when you can understand the words.
Weezer’s Hash Pipe. It’s a rockin’ song with a hard driving guitar riff and yet the lyrics are about a male prostitute. Dont’ get me wrong, I’m not bothered by songs about male prostitutes, it’s just that the music doesn’t seem to match the topic.
Hmm… this isn’t so much misheard lyrics as mis-broadcast lyrics.
I’m not a fan of Radiohead, but I was going through a very difficult time of life when “Creep” was on the radio and it really resonated with me.
A while later I downloaded the the song, but instead of the lyric “You’re so very special” that I was used to, I found out that was only the radio version of the song and the actual lyrics were “You’re so fucking special.” I could have dealt with that for one chorus for emphasis, but they used it every damn time.
Now, the word “fucking” doesn’t bother me; I use it all the time. But for some reason, in that song, used over and over, it seemed gratuitous and it pretty much ruined the song for me. Now, every time I hear it I think about how the suits made the artist produce this sanitized version for the radio (which bugs me) and how I don’t like the original version. Then I become so distracted, it takes away any residual meaning th song had for me.
Oh, yeah, speaking of radio lyrics, I seem to have imprinted the radio version of Cocaine (“It’s all right, it’s all right, it’s all right… OK”) at a young age. Totally different.
I was listening to “Swimming in your Ocean” by the Crash Test Dummies, which is a CTD song, so, y’know, it’s all quirky and stuff.
Anyway, the chorus goes, "When I’m swimming in, swiming in your ocean, and floating on something something something something. . … " Always wondered what it said, so I looked it up.
“When I’m swimming in
When I’m swimming in your ocean
Floating aloft on creams
And scented lotions . . .”
Led Zeppelin’s Gallows Pole, off Led Zeppelin III. Before I knew the name of the song I always thought he was hoping they’d “Keep me from the gallows cold.” But it’s “gollows pole,” which to my mind is less poetic.
There are two versions of “Creep” on Pablo Honey. One uses “fucking” and the other uses “very.” You could easily get the clean version if you still wanted it.
A perfect example was that German Band Nena’s 80s hit 99 Luftballons. In German it was innocuous enough, but to hear it in English, god was it stupid! “Everyone’s a Capt Kirk” killed it for me…
Whoa, I didn’t know that and went to the lyrics to see for myself. It was bad enough liking a song that I thought was about drug use rather than male prostitution … not that there’s anything wrong with that.