What song lyrics have you misinterpreted?

Cafe Society
1

When I was a kid, I remember the Blues Brothers came out with that great hit “I Was So Mad”, which I sang along to incorrectly for years. After getting mercilessly ridiculed by friends, I made a point of always really listening to the lyrics, so as not to screw them up again. The only other misinterpretation was the song by Elton John called “Tiny Dancer”. I didn’t mix up the lyrics themselves, but their meaning, since I heard it as “Jesus…freaks out… in the street”. I always pictured Jesus going nuts in the middle of the street (as opposed to picturing ‘Jesus Freaks’…out in the street").

Anyway, I’d forgotten about those until yesterday, when I caught my ten year old singing that Rolling Stones classic I’ll never see my Pizza Burning".

So what song lyrics have you butchered?

2

I’m only a man in a silly red sheet
Digging for kryptonite on this one way street
Only a man in a funny red sheet
Looking for special things in sodomy

3

Haha, that’s brilliant. :smiley: Can’t think of any songs I’ve misheard personally. Except Hendrix’s “Kiss this guy”, but that song has never been a favourite of mine.

I remember someone asking about what “Roger’s in the pocket” means: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbkG6Za6w5s (listen at 3.05).
Also pretty funny. :slight_smile:

4

Blinded by the light
Wrapped up like a douche, another runner in the night

5

The only one I can think of was from ‘One more with Feeling,’ the opening song. (Going through the motions.)

For a while I thought it was “Still I always feel the strangest strangement”, which I thought was weird but not up to Joss’ usual standard.

And then I figured out that the same basic sounds could be turned into “this strange estragement” and liked it much better, hehehe.

6

Dire Straits, So Far Away:

“I hear that Armageddon is a mean old town”

What? He’s saying “Here I am again in this mean old town”? It sure doesn’t sound like it! Besides, a town named “Armageddon” would just HAVE to be mean and old!

7

Are you living in the east?
Cruising away the time?
Are you gathering up the years?
Do you have a diamond mine?

8

“went to a dance
looking for a man
saw Barbara Ann
and I thought I’d take chance…”

on what…heterosexuality ???"

9

I couldn’t parse CCR’s “Lodi” at all. My best guess was “Oh lord, stokin’ on old dayung*.” What I was really hearing was, “Oh lord, stuck innnn Lodi ag-” (he really undersells the last syllable of “again.”)

*Not a word

10

what a great opportunity to recommend the classic site dedicated to misheard lyrics: http://www.kissthisguy.com/

(named after Jimi Hendrick’s classic “Excuse me, while I kiss the sky”)

good giggles aplenty…

11

In high school, I was in a band called “Luggy and the Drear”. The name came from the fact that we initially were going to do the song “Pop Muzik” by M in French for foreign language day. In order to sing it in French we had to first write down the words in English and then translate them. We never got past the writing the words down in English step. We reached one part that we just could not understand what the lyrics were. “Sounds like he’s saying ‘luggy and the drear’ to me” my friend said. The funny thing is one of the next lines is “you know what I mean”. We started laughing and shouting “no we don’t know what you mean” back at my tape player. Luggy and the Drear became a running joke between us, and we ended up calling our band that, even though we ended up doing a more mainstream Billy Joel song instead. If anyone ever asked, I was Luggy.

To this day, I still have no idea what that part of the lyrics are. I just looked it up online at http://www.lyricsdownload.com/m-pop-muzik-lyrics.html and all they have is (?) on that line.

12

I’ve said it before, but I thought the lyrics in Creedence Clearwater Revivals’ Lookin’ Out My Backdoor were
Let’s take a ride
On the Glide-Wheel Spoon
Do Do Do
This made no sense – what the hell is a “Glide-Wheel Spoon”? But I let it pass.

Years later, it hit me that it must be:

Let’s take a ride
On the Glide. We’ll Spoon.
Do Do Do

Aha! *That[/ui] made sense – a glide is one of those low swing-like benches that “glides” along parallel to the ground. “Spooning” is a “countryism” for “kissin’ and stuff”, which is appropriate for a front-porch glide.

I mentioned this to Pepper Mill, my wife, and she was surprised it took me so long to figure this out – she’d always understood the lyrics this way.

So I mentioned this on this Board several years ago, and was told that this is itself a misinterpretation of the lyrics. That they’re really

Let’s take a ride
On the flying spoon
Do do do.

Every lyric site on the internet I checked agreed with this. Nobody has it as “Let’s take a ride/On the Glide. We’ll Spoon” If anyone interprets the meaning, it’s either a nonsense lyric or (more commonly) a reference to cocaine use.

I’m having a hard time buying it, myself. Every time I listen to the song, I cannot hear it as “flying spoon”. It sounds to me like “on the glide – we’ll spoon.” (Or possible “Glide-Wheel Spoon”, which I first interpreted it as.) But I don’t hear “flying” at all, no matter how hard I try.
And, dammit, “Let’s take a ride/On the Glide – we’ll Spoon” makes sense, and fits in with Creedence’s country style. “Flying spoon” makes no sense at all, not even as an oblique coke referrence.

I see this isn’t on the “Kiss This Guy” site. But my father’s misheard lyric – “Guantanamero” as “One Ton of Metal” – is.

13

For a long time I wondered “Who is this Jason Waterfall guy and why are they rooting for him?”

Go go Jason Waterfall!

later learned it was ‘don’t go chasing waterfalls’.
Also I wondered exactly what a “dodder” was and why it was a bad thing.

Pearl Jam’s- Don’t call me Dodder

14

YES!! Me too. Also–“I’m your penis, I’m your fire. Love, desire”. And now they keep playing that song for that razor. I laugh every time.

15

I am having such an alzheimers moment. I can’t remember the name of the song. I know Stevie Nicks sang it, in the late 70s early 80s There is a line I always thought was something about “crying in my Tea Herbs”.
I know now it is just “tears”. But she puts a few extra syllables in there.

** If anyone knows what the heck song I am talking about, you might save me a lot of time and a headache. I am looking all over Fleetwood Mac lyrics sites, and Stevie Nicks lyrics sites.

16

That just triggered another memory of when I learned the Star Spangled Banner in grade school and couldn’t figure out who Jose’ was or why our national anthem was directed at him:

“Jose, can you see by the dawn’s early light…”
And when my 10 year-old (who clearly inherited this disorder from me) learned the Pledge in kindergarten, he thought it went “…and to the Republic, for Richard Sands, one nation under God…”. I found this out when he asked me who Richard Sands was. :smiley:

17

The lyrics I’ve minsinterpreted are from Desmond Decker’s “The Israelite”:

Yumsk in my tear ast jozie zabo
I don’t want to identify Bonnie and Clyde
Yo zabo zabo zabo the Israelite

18

Who is Maxwell and why did Van Halen want him to kill himself?

Maxwell Jump!
Go ahead and Jump!

19

I swear I heard “They call me crazy but they used to call me Superman”, instead of “If I go crazy…” I think my interpretation still works.

20

Put me down for that one, too. But if you listen to Manfred Mann’s version, it’s hard not to think that’s exactly what he’s singing. Maybe it’s Manfred Mann who got the lyrics wrong?: