I’ve had “Get Back” going through my head because Disney + is promoting a feature on The Beatles so I keep hearing it. This made me think about the lyrics and whether they were transphobic, so I looked them up in order to read them carefully and think about what they mean.
I am gobsmacked that the lyrics are not “Jo Jo was a man who thought he was a woman, but he was another man.”
Run Away - Slade
Lyric: ‘If you got it soft, don’t beat around the bush.’
Heard: ‘If you gotta crush, don’t be an octopus.’
Correction: Run Runaway.
Further correction (original post was from the ‘kiss this guy’ mondegreen site):
Africa, by Toto:
Actual lyrics: As sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti
Heard: As sure as Kilimanjaro rises like an empress above the Serengeti
My way is better.
The correct lyric, of course, is “fist on my plate”, I knew that when I made this typo.
38 Special
Actual
Just hold on loosely
But don’t let go
If you cling to tightly
You’re gonna lose control
Heard
Just hold on Lucy
But don’t let go
If you cling to tightly
You’re gonna lose control
Sweet Ballroom Blitz.
First time I heard it was out of a jukebox in a crowded, noisy bowling alley.
Actual: It’s, it’s, a ballroom blitz
I heard: it’s, it’s, a bottle of piss
“Rocky Raccoon”
Actual:
And her name was McGill
Heard:
And her name was Moogy-ill
“We Can Work it Out”
Actual:
the title
Heard:
wicket, wicket out
“Penny Lane”
Actual:
There, beneath the blue, suburban skies
Heard:
There, beneath the blue, so purple skies
(ya know, being five or six, and everything)
A guy kept correcting me that the lyrics were bar room blitz. I had the satisfaction of him eating crow after him checking the facts.
In Weird Al’s “Tacky” (a spoof of “Happy”) I couldn’t understand why Al’s used Lincoln Bibles on display were tacky. Turned out to be “used liquor bottles”.
I get Knocked down
But I get up again
Then everybody kicks me down
Maybe not spot on for what the OP was looking for, as well as sort of gross, but I find deep resonance and life meaning when singing the lyric:
Livin’ it up at the Hotel California.
…to the tune of…
If you get caught between the Moon and New York City
…from Chris Cross’s Arthur’s Theme.
You have to extend it to a “foooorrrrrr-n’ya” so it kinda fits.
ETA: please take note of Chris’s really razor-sharp lip-syncing.
They aren’t?!
[Checks online lyric site]
“Loretta Fart”??! “Frying pan”!??
I thought they got that shite out of their system with Walrus. Michael Stipe would be proud.
I am calling shenanigans on that one-just listened, and it’s definitely the former, Paul’s voice is crystal clear no Stipe level mumbling no reverb no being drowned out by a background instrument. As I said in one of these threads these lyric sites all copy from each other mindlessly, so I suspect some joker early on uploaded these gag lyrics somewhere and they all got copied. Unless someone can show me an official source (The Fabs weren’t generally in the habit of printing their lyrics on their albums) I call bullshit.
I have never heard the song with ‘Sweet Loretta Fart’ in it. Here’s a YouTube video of the song. The ‘Loretta Fart’ stanza sounds like the guys goofing off, and is spoken without accompaniment.
ETA: I don’t know The Beatles well enough to identify who is speaking.
Isn’t it actually " Jo Jo was a man who thought he was a loner, but he knew it couldn’t last"?
When you listen knowing that those are the (supposedly) correct lyrics, it sounds plausible.
If you Google “Jo Jo was a man who thought he was a woman, but he was another man” there are only 1800 hits. That seems unlikely if those were the accepted lyrics.
Actual: Undercover angel, midnight fantasy
I heard: Undercover angel, midnight Tennessee
That’s first snippet is the first stanza, not the second, the one under discussion. Mondegreen site amiright.com has it as the non bizarre version in any event.
I’ve documented innumerable mondegreens of these sorts on all of the usual lyric sites, and this is just another example. Listen to it on phones and make up your own mind.
OK, I’m confused. What is the exact line you’re calling shenanigans on?
Same! This thread has made me laugh and cheered me right up. I always heard All Those Parrot Eyes instead of Almost Paradise.