Kind of related…the Creedence Clearwater Revival version of “Heard it Through the Grapevine” has a second-generation mondegreen built in. The line (that took years of hearing before I could decipher it)
Come out of Fogerty as something like “hava whatcha zee…nanana, whatcha hear”. I swear, he didn’t look up the lyrics before recording it; just went with what he heard.
Precisely. I didn’t find out otherwise until I saw the lyrics on a copy of the sheet music. If you hear it as “grave”, you can get a good metaphor going about a new love springing up unlooked-for when an old love is gone. A tone poem, if you will, on how strange it feels to fall in love again, and how it heals an old heartbreak.
“Grey” changes the focus to weather imagery–fog and snow, and a light shining through it (“blooming”). That’s a guess, mind you. It completely fails to work for me, which is why I like “grave” better.
Add me to the ever growing list of people that heard “grave” as well.
You can add me as well. You can also add the person who transcribed the lyrics here, too. They start out with “grey,” but they switch to “grave” for a lot of the later usages in the song. (I checked several others, too, but most of them seem to use “grey” consistently).
A friend thought it was “Tent devil in the freeze aisle”
That’s hilarious, I think that Seal’s Kiss From a Rose has got to be one of the more popular recent mondegreens.
Myself, I couldn’t figure it out and couldn’t be bothered to look it up, so when I sing along in the car I usually sing “I’ve been kissed on the nose by a train” just for humor’s sake, and the fact that that’s what falling in love feels like.
I think the lyric being referred to is in the background, near the end of the song. It always bothered me, I thought it said “systematic anticline” whthat is.)
The line I remember from the innersleeve said “it’s just an automatic line”
My boyfriend was singing along to Live’s The Dolphins Cry and I almost fell on=ver when he belted out the line “Yeah I was lost in a spoon of peas”.
My own personal mondegreen occurred when I found out that the lyric in Train’s Drops of Jupiter is “And that heaven is overrated”, not “And Van Halen is overrated”.
More Beatles:
When I was five I was sure that the payoff line in Being For the Benefit of Mr. Kite was:
“And tonight Mister Kite is having his meal!”
I was thoroughly spooked by that song, and thought it was about some horrific creature, half man, half predatory bird, who did unspeakable things.
Not a mondegreen, but I just reminded myself that, at the same age, I was spooked by Strawberry Fields Forever, which I thought was about a guy taking his son to some strange place called Strawberry Fields, where he would leave him forever. I still get chills remembering that. Wow.
Just thought of another one.In “Metro” by Berlin: Always wondered why she was “swimming through a pile of cheese”! 
Regarding “Tenth Avenue Freeze Out.” I have never, not once in many many listenings of the song, been able to hear any kind of coherent phrase made of actual words from the main refrain of the song. My little brother, AFAIK (this was some time ago), hears it as “Tenth Avenue Freestyle.”
My ex-wife heard the lyrics to Canary in a Coal Mine by the Police as:
“You live your life like you were Larry in a coma.”
I may have mentioned this before, but when I was a kid, I thought that the French lyrics to O Canada said Et ta valeur, deux fois trompée (and your valour, tricked twice) instead of Et ta valeur de foi trempée (and your valour, steeped in faith).
Tori Amos is a good one for this, especially “Tear in your Hand.” I thought the first lines were:
All the world just stopped now
So you say you don’t want to stay together anymore
Hit me - take a deep breath babe,
If you need me, kneel, kneel me, hanging out with the dream king
You should hide, write a word
I don’t believe you’re leaving in trust, men should make the same ice cream…
In fact, they are:
…Let me take a deep breath babe,
If you need me, me and Neil’ll be hanging out with the dream king,
Neil said hi, by the way
I don’t believe you’re leaving 'cause me and Charles Manson like the same ice cream…
Not much more explicable, as you can see (except if you know that Neil is Neil Gaiman). Don’t even get me started on “smashing up a pool room”.
I’ve had a couple good ones with the Pet Shop Boys, too, such as hearing “this kind of painful pretense” for “this fin-de-siècle pretense” in “Decadence.”
My sister thought Elton John was saying,
"Rocket man, burning all the trees off of the lawn."
Instead of,
"Rocket man burning out his fuse up here alone "
The national anthem.
When I was too young to know better, I always heard it as “Jose, can you see?”
And know that I know better… I still hear it wrong. I have to make an effort to parse the damn thing right. I blame growing up in Southern California–“Jose” was a more common word in my vocabulary then the phrase “Oh, say”.
I still hear that line as Burnin’ up the streets of everyone
Not exactly a mondegreen, but I was always puzzled by the line “You took me from the shelter of a mother I had never known” in the song “Band of Gold.” I mean, how sheltering could she have been?
I only just realized a couple of days ago that the “I had never known” part actually ties in with the next line, which is something like “the love of any other.” (It’s given a little differently on every site I tried.)
My brother Josh’s rendition of “Avalon” by Roxy Music:
I’m surprised I haven’t seen this Elton John one:
When he sings “Hold me closer, tiny dancer” a lot of people hear “Hold me closer, Tony Danza.”
Not a real mondegreen for myself, although it is my favorite.
The one that comes to mind as having happened to me had to do with a fast food restaurant instead of a song. We have a lot of Whataburger restaurants out here in AZ. I must have heard it in a radio ad as a kid because for a long time I had the impression they were called “Waterburger.” *(How do they make these fantastic water burgers?!?) * It turns out I wasn’t alone, when I grew up a friend of mine had thought the same thing.
My boss actually thought it was “N***** in the bathroom,” and was horribly upset that I was listening to such racist music in the store. It took me at least an hour to figure out what she was talking about. This is the same boss who thought that “Don’t stick your finger in my pie,” in “I’m Moving On,” by Yoko Ono was “Don’t stick your finger in my c***.” It’s always the most innocuous songs that give her the most trouble.
Alias, I’d forgotten all about the extra hotel and the hair on a locket. I just figured they were playing Monopoly, and he was cheating.
I recently realized that it’s “Body and beats, I stain my sheets,” and not “When I eat beets, I stain my sheets,” in “Blister in the Sun.” The disgusting mental images still come up every time I hear that song, but maybe I’ll forget them with time.