Just discovered the song from Caddyshack isn’t called “Amber Light,” it’s called “I’m Alright”. It still sounds like “Amber Light” to me, and considering it’s playing while the hero rides his bike non-stop through lights, I think I get a pass.
Amber Light
Nobody worry 'bout me
something mumble-mumble something bike?
Can’t you just let me be?
They don’t write them like that anymore.
Reminded because I just heard the song. I thought Olivia Newton-John was saying, “Please mister, please-- don’t blame me at 17. . .” saying she was too young to take responsibility for the broken romance, when she was just being a jukebox referee and asking some stranger not to play a certain song. Once I learned she says, “. . .don’t play B-17” I wonder what B-17 was. Theme from A Summer Place or maybe Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head.
I have thought about this too much.
Reminding me of the Greg Kihn song The Breakup Song (They Don’t Write 'Em), (remember? “uh uh uh, uh-uh, uh-uh, uh”) which I always used to mishear the main lyric as Hey don’t ride my daddy no more.
An intentional mondergreen from when I was a kid:
I hope ya go blind
I hope ya go blind
Yeah I wish you the wooorrrrrst…
A quick review shows me that it was just Tommy James, post Shondells, so I’m nitpicking myself.
:eek: Hitchens a ride :eek:
In mentioning The Who (from “5:15”) : Magically “born” on a quiet street corner (when it should be “bored”) I came across the amiright website which is so bloody damn comprehensive that it made me wonder if every single personal mondegreen in this thread could be found there.
There’s a line in “Sad Songs (Say So Much)” by Elton John where he sings, " why don’t you tune in and turn them on" that my brain, to this day, still thinks he says “why don’t you chew? That’ll turn them on.”
Speaking of Elton John, I already mentioned a misheard lyric from Funeral For A Friend back on the first page. Here’s another from the same song:
Lyric: ‘The roses in the window box have tilted to one side’
Heard: ‘The cold November wind don’t rock [can’t remember the rest]’
In your defense, Kenny Loggins is always difficult to understand. In that particular song, he pronounces “I’m” as “Am”. Took me forever to figure out what he was saying.
If not for the song title appearing recently on my car stereo, I would still think that Pete Townshend’s “Let My Love Open The Door” is “Delilah Open The Door”.
Speaking of artists who are always a little hard to understand, I always heard the first lines of Joe Cocker’s rendition of “A Little Help From My Friends” (the version used in the opening titles for The Wonder Years) as “Watch what you do with that same attitude.” It was only later when I heard The Beatles’ version that I realized it was actually “What would you do if I sang out of tune?”
Also Van Morrison: “You mah brown-eyed girl” could be heard “Yuma brown. . .”
My daughter singing along to the opening of The Wonder Years:
“Watch what you do with that stank attitude,
Don’t you stand up and walk out on me!”
Tom Petty:
One foot in the grave
And one foot on the pedal
I was Barney Rubble
Purty little Love song,
Purty little Love song
Purty Little loo-ooove song,
Can’t be wrong
I remembered another one:
In the song “Jeremy” by Pearl Jam, the real line is of course “Jeremy spoke in class today.” I used to always hear it as “Jeremy smote them yesterday.” Like Jeremy finally got tired of being bullied and unleashed his god-like wrath upon the school, which totally makes sense in the context of the song.
That Linda Ronstadt song from the 70s ‘Poor Poor Pitiful Me’
I always thought the chorus/tag line part of the song was “…Ohhh lord, simple me. Oh lord simple me” and on sinful me, which I later found out to be.
When I was a kid I sometimes sang that ARS song “Imagine hairy lovers, Mr. Kane’s* a clown…”
*old schoolteacher.
Footloose, kick off the Sunday shoes
Please, Louise, pull me off of my knees
Jack, get back, come on the four wheel track
Lose your blues, everybody cut footloose.
I always thought “come on the four wheel track” was some sort of people dancing like train’s reference. Well, it made sense to me. I still sing it that way because I don’t like drug references.
We are the champions
We are the champions
Youse guys are losers
'Cause we are the champions
Of the world
Revved up like a deuce another runner in the night
Wrapped up like cadeuceus not a runnell in the nigh
This is kind of a stupid one, but in the fade-out ending of the Beatles’ Old Brown Shoe John repeats “Look out, look out girl…”
For some reason this kid heard it as “Look out, good luck, girl…”
Which is incredibly stupid in that I couldn’t tell he was simply repeating “look out”, (and not bothering to question why he’d wish her “good luck”.)