[QUOTE=Paladud]
When I first came across Radiohead’s “Paranoid Android,” I heard the pre-last part as:
“Rain down, rain down,
Come on, rain down on me..
From a greyhound…
From a greyhound…”
Since I saw this on YouTube with the crazy music video, I had no particular reason to question this interpretation. Alas, looking up the lyrics has dispelled my belief that Thom Yorke desired to be peed on by a dog.
Share yours
[/QUOTE]
I’ve been peed on by a greyhound, it was certainly nothing to sing about. Stupid dog! If you stood still for a couple seconds he figured you might be a tree and he’d may as well go for it.
I post this one every time there’s one of these threads but one of my favorites is Aerosmith’s “Love in an elevator”, which I originally heard as “Lovin’ an alligator.”
My own that I really thought was the case for a long time:
Wasted away again in Margaritaville
Searchin’ for my lost Shaker soul
Some people say that there’s a woman to blame
But I know, it’s probably my fault.
Sure, it doesn’t rhyme, but I figured it was a metaphor for someone who’d broken free from their Puritanical value system and turned to a life of debauchery. Upon seeing the turpitude in which they’d sunk themselves, they longed for some shred of their former honest life to cling to. Turns out it’s just some drunk guy trying to find a shaker of salt.
I’ve been misunderstanding lyrics forever, and I’m still at it. I’m in the car with my kid and this song comes on. When alone, I’ve been known to sing along, even though the words kid of mystified me, I mean, why would anybody write a song that went, “We can be depressed, we can be depressed…”
But the presence of my kid in the car suddenly somehow revealed the actual lyrics, and I missed the boat by about an ocean: “Why can’t we be friends, why can’t we be friends?”
:smack:
On the other hand, even though I KNOW he’s not talking 'bout the linen, it sounds to me like, well, like he’s not talking 'bout the linen.
[QUOTE=Askance]
The same with REM’s This One Goes Out To The One I Love, apparently they used to get people telling them how they fell in love to this rather creepy song about cold blooded murder.
[/QUOTE]
Can you please explain why that song is about murder? I don’t get it.
[QUOTE=Hilarity N. Suze]
On the other hand, even though I KNOW he’s not talking ‘bout the linen, it sounds to me like, well, like he’s not talking ‘bout the linen.
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For awhile I thought he was not talkin’ bout the wedding, which makes sense in context. And I forget if I was one of the ones who thought there was a warm wind blowin’ the stars around.
[QUOTE=Neidhart]
Don McLean, American Pie, "As the planes rise high into the night, to light the sacrificial rite . . . "
[/QUOTE]
Not a mondegreen, but I always substitute a soundalike word in the next line:
Speaking of Deee-Lite, and also not a mondegreen, whenever there is a song that says something like
I always wonder why they’re making an obscene reference to a prohibited act even though I know it’s not the lyrics.
[QUOTE=Ogre]
“The white-winged dove”? That’s terrible. I’ve been singing “Just like the wild wind does” my entire life…which is clearly the superior lyric.
[/QUOTE]
Back when the song was first released in the 1980s, a friend of mine was convinced that Cuts Like a Knife by Bryan Adams was actually “Cock Sucking Night”.
[QUOTE=Ludovic]
For awhile I thought he was not talkin’ bout the wedding, which makes sense in context. And I forget if I was one of the ones who thought there was a warm wind blowin’ the stars around.
[/QUOTE]
There’s not a warm wind blowing the stars around? :eek:
[QUOTE=Hilarity N. Suze]
There’s not a warm wind blowing the stars around? :eek:
[/QUOTE]
There’s a warm wind blowin’, the stars are out. But it’s pretty hard for the wind to actually blow the stars around! (If I made that mistake before I’ve erased it from my memory.)
ETA: looking back on it, it’s possible that it could be another “Sugar Bear” situation, where what you think you hear really IS what you hear despite it making little sense.
