Nah, nah, nah. It’s about how ubiquitous Australian backpacking travellers are. And how they are recognised all over the world. Plus pride in being Aussie. Well at least that is my interpretation. It is not impossible that a genuine Brussels he-man would keep in some vegimite (especially if he likes ‘entertaining’ Australian guests).
Oh wait, I found the actual lyrics. The Brussels guy says he is from down under. Oh well.
Not misheard lyrics, but more a case of misunderstood lyrics:
I liked R.E.M.'s “Fall on Me” better before I learned it was a song about acid rain. (Cite) The phrase “don’t fall on me” is very evocative, and I thought it worked great as a relationship song. When I learned it was about acid rain it just seemed more prosaic and dull.
Similarly, I like Neal Young’s “Long May You Run” when I thought it was a kind-hearted farewell to a former lover. Then I listened more closely and realized it was about an old car. I still like the song, but not as much.
I agree. What’s the point of banning them, Dex?
I think in the past I saw a mod post that it is a blanket rule just to be on the safe side. i.e., even though there is a lot of public domain / expired stuff out there that is legally ok to repost, the mods just don’t have the time to do copyright analysis on every obscure bit of lyric that gets posted.
Which does make sense. After all, the Italian libretto might be public domain, but perhaps the translation isn’t.
Ooh, I like your version.
I listen to a lot of J-pop. That is popular music from Japan, in Japanese, and usually without ever looking at a translation of the lyrics.
Frankly I prefer it that way. I can groove to the sounds of the music, even try to learn the words (well, technically the vocal sounds) but not have to face just how banal the lyrics probably are.
At times I remember the story I was told many years ago from a fellow student just back from a year abroad in the USSR. He’d met a group of kids who loved American music, and would sing it, understandably. Without ever knowing what they were singing.
He was rather shocked to have a girl hitting on him while singing “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover.”
For a few minutes I’ll even be tempted to find out what I might be singing. But if I wait a few minutes, the mood passes, and sanity returns. 
I, too, listen to a lot of J-Pop, and even learn the Japenese words for them, or at the very least, the phonetic sounds. I attempted looking up a few translations. Sometimes, sometimes, they seem very deep. Sometimes, they are just nonsensical.
But after I looked up some lyrics that translated into: “Tip tap, love is always like candy. Tasty, like fruit.” I gave up. (in that same song, I was, however, delighted to find that the english word “jellybean” was just slipped in there - it doesn’t go with any of the other sentences, or have anything to do with the song, other than it just being a random sweet. Something like “namida mo kitto
kawaku yo. Jelly bean. Ahhh! PASUTERU no hizashi ni…” It fits with the tune, but otherwise, it’s just… jellybean. Floating there.)
It took me 20 years to get around to finding out what the real words to Born to Run were, and I wish I hadn’t . Springsteen mumbles so much I couldn’t make out much more than a few words here and there. It’s such an energetic, upbeat kind of tune that I was dismayed to find the lyrics so morose.
Similarly, I’ve heard many, many people singing along to Born in the USA like it’s some kind of patriotic anthem. The chorus is rousing enough, but the verses are anything but patriotic!
(I’m hoping enough people are familiar with The Boss that I don’t need to quote or link to lyrics. If I’m wrong, could somebody please help me out?)
Context is everything, especially with opera arias. Lauretta, the character who signs that particular aria, is a young woman who’s trying to convince her father (the eponymous Gianni Schicchi) to find someway to help the Donati family alter the late Buoso Donati’s will (as the wealthy Donati bequeathed most of his fortune to a local monastery instead of to his family members). She’s engaged to Rinuccio, one of the only decent people in the Donati family, and they’ll need the inheritance money to start their life together.
So, she’s basically saying, “Daddy, I love this boy, I want to marry him, and if you don’t help us out, I’m going to kill myself.” She’s being intentionally melodramatic, and her tone is complemented by the soaring romanticism of Puccini’s gorgeous music. In the context of the opera–a one-act comedy–her overwrought lyrics make perfect sense.
Like many opera arias, though, the music is beautiful by itself–it’s only when you listen to the lyrics that you realize that you’re only getting a tiny snippet from a larger story (a perfect example of this is “La donna e mobile” from Verdi’s Rigoletto–in this aria, the Duke is complaining about how all women are unpredictable and moody. The music is so famous that everyone’s heard it before; I once encountered a Pillsbury commercial that uses the music, but with the Doughboy singing about Italian breadsticks instead of misogynist stereotypes).
Then again, everything sounds better when sung in Italian. Everything. 
Lou Christie’s Lightning Strikes. It’s about a guy who wants his girlfriend to wait for him while he screws around with other women. I hope the girl this song was written for ran far, far away.