The song Almost Paradise: all those parrot eyes
I still love to sing the lyrics to Drift Away which are
Give me the beat, boys and free my soul
I wanna get lost in your rock and roll
And drift away
as
Give me the BEACH BOYS and free my soul…
Yep, if I had actually thought about it, I might have wondered why this guy had such a need to hear Help Me, Rhonda! (where there are owls puking in my bed) to help him drift away. But I sing that part really loud in the car to drive my husband nuts.
Now the lyric that always drove ME nuts was in Hotel California at the very beginning
On a dark desert highway
Cool wind in my hair
Warm smell of colitas
Rising up through the air
What the hell is a colitas, I always thought. Some sort of desert flower? Nope, they were singing about doobage, man. And I learned that thanks to Cecil!
Coulda been worse. You could’ve misread it as
Warm smell of colitis
Rising up through the air
as in “…the girl with colitis goes by…”
Or…
On a dark desert highway
Cool whip in my hair
Wait a minute: isn’t it “If you’re going to kill me, you can’t have any pudding! How can you have any pudding if you’re going to kill me?”
(okay, okay, it’s really “if you don’t eat your meat”.)
There’s a rock song out in the last year that had odd lyrics, chorus is
“This is how
you remind me
of a Holiday Inn”
SO had to explain to me that it’s actually something like
“This is how
you remind me
of what I really am”
or something similar.
I still sing it the other way, though.
I know what I heard!
‘Flashdance (What a Feeling)’ by Irene Cara
actual: Take your passion, and make it happen.
heard: Take your pants down, and make it happen.
‘Baby One More Time’ by Britney Spears
actual: show me how you want it to be
heard: show me how you wanna do me
(I’m still not convinced this isn’t the correct lyric)
and not exactly misheard, but whenever I listen to ‘Sick of Myself’ by Matthew Sweet, I expect it to go:
I’m all used up, I’m out of luck, I am fucked up.
instead of “starstruck” for those last two syllables. Every time.
My daughter came out with a good one a while ago. We’re listening to Kid Rock’s Wasting Time, which contains the lyric:
Drinking Boones
Eating 'shrooms
Being too young to understand the drug reference, she turns to me and says, “Eating shrews? Ewwww!”
DarkWriter - you aren’t alone with your “four hundred children.” I had forgotten that one.
I actually heard it on the radio this morning. I tried to listen carefully, and discovered that almost ALL of the lyrics are unintelligible. Geez, man, take the marbles out of your mouth before you try to sing.
You can have a field day trying to figure out what The Mick is saying in a lot of R.Stones songs!!!:rolleyes:
Not to mention D.L.Roth in some VH songs too.
S.Temple Pilots have some “Sgt. Pepperish-type” lyrics in their songs as well, check em’ out.
If you want to find out what’s bein’ said in your fav songs check out www.getlyrics.com they have alot of different groups.
…Hey! If YOUR lyrics sounds good when your creating your own concert in your car while you drive then what the hell…right?
sidle, that song is Nickelback’s “How You Remind Me”… very popular song! The group’s originally from Hanna, Alberta… but then moved to Vancouver, and what can I say? We adopted them as our own!
auntie em, you did send me rolling on the floor laughing… I mean, “If you don’t clean your feet, you can’t have any pudding”? ROFL!
Narrad, after reading this thread last night, I was inspired to go do a search on mondegreens on Google… “The Ants Are My Friends” has “gone off to find itself in the world and may be back soon… or not”. I always liked that site! There’s also The Compendium of Misheard Lyrics, which I used to be able to access years ago, but now I find that I can’t. Somehow, I don’t have permission to access it on this server! Oh well…
The Compenium of Misunderstood Lyrics has gone the way of the passenger pigeon. David Trevas, who was the site owner, published a book of his favorite of the lyrics and, when it failed to sell, stopped updating the site, saying that he’d eventually find another use for his webspace. I guess he did - and he took down the site a while ago.
I loved that site. 
It took my mother several years to realize the real title to Carole King’s “Stuff that Dreams are Made Of”.
She always thought it was “Stuff that Green Tomato”.
originally posted by cepter
Oh yeah. Gotta love the Stones!
- I’ll never be your pizza burnin’…*
Now that you mention it, Winnowill, I recall seeing something of the sort when I was on the site last. It’s funny how little things can jog your memory…
In Rocket Man by Elton John - “Rocket man burning out his fuse up here alone”
I thought it was “Rocket man burning all his trees up in the lawn”
Everybody I knew thought that’s what he was saying.
My father had a great one. Back in the day, he heard the chorus to the Beatles’ Ticket to Ride as:
She’s got a chicken to ride!
But she don’t care!
Must have been quite a chicken. For my part, I misheard a line early in The Fixx’ One Thing Leads to Another for years and years:
Communicate with nacho party cheese!
It’s actually “Communicate, pull out your party piece,” but frankly I like my version better. I used to use it as a sig line on emails and such, and was astonished to receive emails from random folks who’d see it and write “Hey! You like The Fixx too?”
I still love that song.
Shaggy’s Boombastic
When I was about 13, my little brother came home one day and told me that he had just heard the coolest song at his friend’s house.
So he starts singing, “they call me Mr. Boombastic, telephone plastic.”
I didn’t believe him at first, but he insisted that that was what the song said. So, of course, I had to hear this song about telephone plastic.
The next day we went to his friends house and his friend put on the tape. Sure enough, I was right as usual.
It really said, “they call me Mr. Boombastic, say me fantastic.”
I, of course, have never let him forget it.
I’ve posted this one before, but I still tease my daughter about it. She was watching The Wonder Years and was singing along to Joe Cocker: Watch what you do/with that stank attitude. . … (What would you do/if I sang out of tune. . .)
Big Pimpin’ as sung by a friend of mine:
Big Chicken/Ham and cheese. (Big Pimpin’/spendin’ g’s)
Pearl Jam
Real:
“Jeremy spoke in class today”
Heard:
“Jeremy’s broken glass today”
as in Jeremy has broken glass today…