My favorite, courtesy of my little sister:
Carly Simon, You’re So Vain
Actual: You flew your LearJet to Nova Scotia, to see the total eclipse of the sun…
LS’s version: You flew your REAR END to Nova Scotia…
Mermaid-
Your post about the end of Evangeline was one of the funniest things I’ve seen- I can totally relate - I always thought “tell me how you want it” sounded totally perverted too, for the conclusion of a song about a wannabe nun!
I don’t know is Jet Airliner by the Steve Miller Band has been mentioned yet, but I do know that they’re ACTUALLY saying that
Big ol’ Jed had a hard on
ME TOO! I thought I was the only one.
My sister used to sing the chorus of “Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue” as “Don’t it make my manna, ooh.” Never could figure that out.
My dad sang the chorus of Dire Straits’ “Walk of Life” as “Walk on By”. When I informed him of his error he proceeded to show me how wrong I was by demonstrating the “walk on by” - a very saucy little strut. He still likes his words better.
Haha! You guys are killing me with some of these lyrics! I am literally crying I am laughing so hard!
LOL! LMAO! I can’t stop laughing at this! 
Ok, I have got a good one for you. A couple of months ago my wife and I were driving in the car together when one of our favorite bands came on the radio, Collective Soul. The song was one of their big AOR hits from the mid-90s, She Said. So we are listening the song and blurt out this: "Isn’t it odd how such a wonderful song, with such a brilliant hook, can have a bizarre line like “You like shrimp or chow rice? She said” in it? My wife looks at me like I am some sort of freak and says “What?? What are you talking about?”. “The chorus, the line is ‘You like shrimp or chow rice? She said’, isn’t it?” “No!” Says my wife, "He says ‘Life’s river shall rise, she said’ LOL! O god, did I feel like an idiot! And I had been singing that song that way ever since I heard it! Worse yet, my wife never lets me hear the end of it! She’s told all of her friends and family about it. How embarrasing.
Peter Gabriel
Games without frontiers, war without tears.
refrain
She’s…so PUNCT-U-AL
(or, alternately)
She’s…so Funky, yeah
LMAO! LOL!
Laughing…too…hard…can’t…breathe…must…get…air
It goes…
Gold Coast slave ship bound for cotton fields
Sold in the market down in New Orleans
Scarred old slaver knows he’s doin’ alright
Hear him whip the women just around midnight!
*
and…
I was born in a cross-fire hurricane
And I howled at my Ma in the drivin’ rain
*
What took me years to decipher was the third verse…
I was drowned, I was washed up and left for dead
I fell down to my feet and I saw they bled
I frowned at the crumbs of a crust of bread
Yeah, yeah
I was crowned, with a spike right through my head!
Yow! Is it any wonder? Those lyrics sounded funkier than any Mondegreens we’ve come up with yet!
Like Whoopi said in that otherwise horrid movie: "Talk English, Mick!"
Hall and Oates: You can rely on the old bad bunny… (Old man’s money)
Blind Melon: You know I like to keep my cheese dried and aged (cheeks dry today?–I still don’t know for sure)
Shouldn’t there be a rule for this thread that people should put the real lyrics too, just in case someone doesn’t know them? I looked for a while for the real lyrics regarding the “one-winged dove,” but got tired of looking.
OK, found it. “White winged dove.” Hmm.
Another, from my cousin:
Billy Idol: How’s about a date? (Eyes without a face)
You mean it isn’t “gimme the Beach Boys, and free my soul”?
and I always prided myself on never, ever getting lyrics wrong…guess I’ll have to go hide somewhere.
One of my roomates in college always thought the line about “girls with ravaged faces” in At Seventeen (been so long…was it Janis Ian?) was “girls with garbage faces” and there was nothing we could do to convince her…
No wonder Lucille decided to leave. I know of guppies with fewer children.
When Eiffel released their song “Blue”, I heard the verse—correctly—as “da ba dee, da ba di”. But shortly thereafter, a friend pointed out how weird it was that they were singing “I’m in need of a guy”. (!) And now, I can’t help but hear it that way… sigh…
I was aware of this old Andrews Sisters type song which I thought went,
Come here, Mr. Shane,
Please let me explain".
Until yesterday when I heard an installment of NPR’s series on the golden age of Yiddish radio. The first line was really Yiddish!, which I’ll write in standard German because I don’t know how to spell the Yiddish):
*Bei mir bist Du schoen,
please let me explain. *
I’m still fairly fluent in German, but I missed that! Of course, in German, schoen doesn’t really rhyme with the English word explain, but still!
At any rate, however, I was glad I could stop wondering who Mr. Shane was and why the Andrews Sisters were singing to him.
Some of my favorites that I recall reading in a book –
“Every time you go away, you take a piece of meat with you”
(don’t recall the song or who sang it, but the correct lyric does not have ‘at’ in it.)
Simply Irresistible by Robert Palmer :
“My anus will fix it, you’re addicted to love.”
(‘might as well face it’, in case you had to ask …)
Rock and Roll All Night by KISS
“I want to rock and roll all night, and part of every day.”
(or ‘party’, whatever, I must be pretty easygoing.)
I knew someone who thought that Depeche Mode’s Enjoy the Silence had this line in the chorus :
“All I ever wanted, all I ever needed
is him in my arms.”
(that would be ‘here in my arms’)
For myself, I used to think that Huey Lewis was singing, “the heart of rock and roll is in Cleveland!” (yes, he does say Cleveland at one point … I thought he was just repeating himself.) After all, that’s why they put the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame there, isn’t it?
Not to nitpick, but I think the group was called Eiffel 65. My sisster and her friends thought the same thing about that song, as well. Whenever I heard it from then on, I see their point!
Hey, I’m listening to the CD now, so I can tell what the real lyrics are, as opposed to the “made-up” lyrics.
Song: “Hello Time Bomb” by the Matthew Good Band
My version of the lyrics: “Don’t even know if I’d die for your love/And it’s so bad, it’s so bad”
Real Lyrics: “Dirty enough I’ve got me a love/And it’s so bad, it’s so bad”
Even though this CD has a lyrics sheet included with it, and even after I looked at the lyrics several hundred times, I still sing it that way! I don’t know why… maybe it just sounds better! (or makes more sense)
when my brother was little he would sing along to the Happy Days theme ‘screwing all week with you’ instead of ‘grooving all week with you’. my horrified mom heard him and promptly corrected him, he was 10 i think. I used to think it was ‘I hear the secrets that you keep, eating tacos in your sleep’, instead of ‘i hear the secrets that you keep, when youre talking in your sleep’. I think that was by the romantics. I dont think i’ll repeat what i used to think some of the words were for Body Talk, by Olivia Newton John.
Funny. I always heard that as “She’s so popular!”
Then there’s some John Lennon song (Dream No 9?) whose refrain is, apparently, imaginary words. At any rate, I’ve always heard them as “Ah! Balacava! Popsicle Stick!”
(BTW, the words from JCS are “Do you think you’re who they say you are”).
I beg to differ - everyone in my family knows that its:
Big ol’ Jed had a line-up
although, if big ol’ Jed also had a hard-on, I suppose that could explain what the line-up was for.
The artist was Paul Young - 1985 - Every Time You Go Away, and the correct lyric is …you take a piece of me with you…"
Now - another of my favorites:
ACTUAL: "Don’t it make my brown eyes, don’t it make my brown eyes, don’t it make my brown eyes blue…
HEARD: Donuts make my brown eyes, Donuts make my brown eyes, Donuts make my brown eyes blue…
:rolleyes: