I thought Alanis Morissette was singing:
A traffic jam when you’re already late
A no-smoking sign on your cigareh-ate
i.e., “A no-smoking sign on your cigarette,” with the last syllable stretched out and altered to rhyme with “late.” I still think my version is more ironic than what she actually sings (“…on your cigarette break”).
Elvis Costello’s song “Less than Zero” (1977) is famously about British fascist Oswald Mosley’s attempt to rehabilitate himself and return to upper-class society.
Until yesterday, I had always heard the opening couplet as
Calling Mister Oswald with the swastika tattoo
There is a vacancy waiting in the English Who’s Who
But the words are actually
…English voodoo
[!]
Resurrecting this old thread because I think this would be a hijack in a P&E thread, and it’s not really worthy of a thread of its own. But until today I always thought Britney Spears sang “Oh Biden, Biden” at the start of her 1999 hit ‘Baby One More Time’. Why, I do not know (Biden wasn’t a well known figure at that time, and practically unheard of here in the UK. I guess I thought it was some sort of nonsense lyric).
Anyway, riffing off that, and with apologies for the earworm, I now give you this reworking. I’m a little late with it, something similar may be doing the rounds on social media already for all I know.
#Oh Biden, Biden,
How was I supposed to know,
That you were gonna stop here?
Oh Biden, Biden,
You’ve said it’s your time to go,
And now you’re out of fight, yeah
Show me who you want it to be,
Say it’s Harris, 'cause we need to know now:
Who’ll beat Donald?
Republicans kill democracy (and I),
I must confess, I do believe (do believe),
You’re getting old and might lose your mind,
But your Veep is fine,
Beat the Donald, one more time!
Green Day: Good Riddance
Lyric: ‘Another turning point, a fork stuck in the road’
Heard: ‘Another turnip on a fork stuck in the road’
Maria Muldaur: Midnight At The Oasis
Heard: “With fifty girls to attend him, they all send him to jump back against the wall”
Actual Lyric: “With fifty girls to attend him, they all send him, jump at his beck and call”
I’ve done these on another forum, but after a quick search apparently not here:
Porcupine Tree, “Baby Dream in Cellophane”: lead singer Steven Wilson kind of slurs things in the first of three iterations, but it certainly sounds like this to me, at least in the last two:
In the rain in cellophane
Held a box of sticky glass [two dot A sound in that last word, British-style natch]
They won’t bring me down
The clocks go round, they never stop
I thought it was him being clever, because cellophane could be said to be “sticky glass” (it certainly can be sticky, if opaque if you try to actually see through it)…
But then the “They” lacks an antecedent:
In the rain in cellophane
Pale dogs and demigods
Rather trite and boring, but OK fine whatever.
This one tho seriously bugs me each and every time it plays here (yes it is on my regular rotation):
REM, “I Believe”:
When I was young and give and take
The foolish sent my fool away
As in hidebound authority figures who try to corral your free spirit in school and church and such when you are young–goodness knows my grade school was chock full of such, in the form of sadistic nuns and disinterested civilian teachers both of whom clearly hated little kids.
But looks like I whiffed again:
When I was young and give and take
The foolish said my fool awake
HUH?! That makes absolutely NO semantic sense, and grammatically is a hopeless confusing mess to boot. The foolish authority figures would want you to remain asleep figuratively, but literally wouldn’t want you taking a nap in class I guess. Alas the studio version has a discernable “k” sound there at the end, as do most live versions, sigh.
Not misheard, but I always want to sing ‘Another turnip truck, a pork chop in the road.’
I think there’s another thread for ‘Lyrics you like to change’. If there isn’t, I’ve often thought there should be.
The thread about the song Brandy reminded me that I thought
“He came on a summer’s day bringin’ gifts from far away”
was
“be kind, on a summer’s day; bring her gifts from far away”
Doesn’t fit with the lines that follow but that’s what my six year old self heard.
A few weeks ago I was listening to Pandora through my car’s infotainment system, when Pandora’s algorithm decided to play “Hey Jealousy” by the Gin Blossoms. And seeing the song title displayed on my car’s infotainment screen was the moment I realized the title and chorus of that song are not “Hey Chelsea”, which is how I’ve heard that song for the past 30+ years. I always just assumed the singer was talking to a girl named Chelsea.
Pearl Jam’s Black:
Real lyrics:
I know someday you’ll have a beautiful life
I know you’ll be a star In somebody else’s sky But why can’t it be mine
I thought it was:
I know someday you’ll have a beautiful life
I know you’ll be somebody else’s guy But why can’t it be mine
I guess that’s the same as the famous Purple Haze mondegreen. I thought that it must have been a phrase in the goodbye letter, because the rest of the song uses “she” pronouns. But why would she say that if she was the one breaking up? Oh well, sky it is I guess.
Don’t feel bad; for the longest I thought it’s " hey Jessie"
Yeah, in exactly the same vein, REM comes to bat again (Michael Stipe must breed mondegreens by the busheload in his basement recording studio):
“Me In Honey”:
*Daphne, look *
What it’s doing to me
But instead it is apparently
Left me to love
What it’s doing to me
Again, contradictory and nonsensical (sounds like a good thing to me, so dunno what he is complaining about), but as said this is f. M. Stipe we’re talking about.
Bringing this old thread up because Facebook memories reminded me that I was well into my 50s when someone corrected me and told me that Stevie Nick was not singing just like her white fingers feels the dawn, sound like they’re scheming (or, alternatively, screaming) ooo baby, ooo said ooo.
Yep. People (including me) will have songs suddenly pop into their minds or hear them playing and say, ‘Hey!’ 
Which song was that?
Edge of Seventeen. Real words (apparently) Just like the white-winged dove sings a song, sounds like she’s singing ooo baby, ooo, said ooo.
Oh, yeah. I used to hear it as Just like the way we love.
I as well, heard it as Just like the way we were. EDIT: or also Just like the world we know.
I’ve heard it that way too.
The first few times I heard it, I thought it was “Just like the wild wind blows”.
Being a birder, I was never fooled by that cut.
Likewise with Jim Croce’s “I Got A Name”:
Like the whippoorwill’s and the phoebe’s cry
Most lyric sites alas will insist the latter is “baby’s” which is a non-sequitur (I’ve already documented the mondegreens you’ll find on those sites, where after one set of lyrics is posted, it gets copied to the others by bots or something, correct or not).