The first time I heard Charley Patton’s “Jesus Is a Dying Bed Maker”–dubbed from a scratchy old 78–I was quite startled by what sounded like a refrain of “Jesus is a giant big nigger!”
In Andy Gibb’s song ‘Love is Thicker than Water,’ he very clearly to me says ‘the fish dreamer’ instead of ‘this dreamer’ one of the four times he says those words. No one, ever, that I have mentioned that to can hear it, but it’s plain as day to me.
0:19 This dreamer
1:01 The fish dreamer
2:09 This dreamer
2:19 This dreamer
Most of mine have been covered here.
“Blank Space” I heard “I want a lonely Starbucks lover”. So she likes guys who hang out in coffeehouses.
“Southern Cross” I still swear it’s “Nice Jamaican waves”, never mind it’s the wrong part of the world.
My biggest one and most recently discovered I was wrong is Led Zeppelin’s “Fool in the Rain”. For years I thought it was “I’m just a fool waiting on the wrong blonde”. Made some sense, he’s standing in the rain waiting on a girl who stood him up again. He realizes another girl is the right one for him and he goes running to her. The line “ain’t the first time, believe me baby” even backed up my misheard lyric.
Then one day I suddenly heard that line correctly. “Just a fool waiting on the wrong block”. Oh. :smack: Kind of changes the meaning of the song. I almost think I liked my misheard version better.
In ‘Uptown Funk’ I was convinced the lyrics were:
Girls eat you hallelujah
Don’t Stop 'Til You Get Enough by Michael Jackson;
Keep on, with the force, don’t stop
always sounded to me like
Keep on to the Post Office
I’ve only just now googled to find out what it should have been.
I hear it. It sounds to me like he is saying “The this dreamer” and they left it in the final mix.
In the Beatles “Here Comes The Sun” George gets mixed up between saying “seems” and “feels” at 2:21 in this link, so it comes across as “it seels like years since it’s been clear.” They probably were on their 100th take and just thought “fuck it. No one will notice.”
For me that was “…blowing through the chasm in my mind.”
Ditto.
John Fogerty is a good one for mishearing. For years I hadn’t a clue what he was singing in “Lodi”: “If I only had a dollar / For every song I’ve sung / Every time I had to play / While people shsmumblemum.” Then I heard Emmylou’s version - and I couldn’t understand that line when she sang it, either! I finally ended up asking my wife, who told me it was “While people sat there drunk.”
I do hear the laughter! It’s me!
Pinball Wizard. Not The Who version (which I’d never heard), but, ahem, the Elton John version (on his GH V2 album):
Lyrics: That deaf, dumb and blind kid, sure plays a mean pinball.
I heard: You can’t stop a blind kid – Sean plays a mean pinball!
From Robert Plant’s “Burning Down One Side”:
heard: tried Zabamin, tried Zahmaine
lyric: try as I might, try as I may
I had no idea what those places in the mishead lyric might be, maybe some hippie reference I was too young to understand, so I went with it.
Twenty-five years and the actual lyrics made themselves clear…
Obscure song: 3x2 = 6 by Vanity 6. I’ve broken the link because some of the images border on NSFW.
https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=P9gZak_0KXo
Without cheating or opening the spoiler box, what is she saying at 1:07?
I heard, which makes absolutely no sense, Male Makers, Girl Takers, A girl’s best friend’s her pride.
The actual lyric: My made up name is Vanity, 'cause a girl’s best friend’s her pride. Also, I could make out about half the other words in the song without having seen the lyrics.
Another Elton John, but not a mishearing, just a misunderstanding my 9yo self had in the song Tiny Dancer:
Sung: Jesus-freaks, out in the street
Understood: Jesus freaks out in the street
Same words, different meaning! 
The Creedence Song “Down On The Corner” had totally incomprehensible lyrics to me until I heard a cover of it at a restaurant. Until then, it sounded like:
Down on the corner
Out here in the street
Wifdklshfsdfkjdskjhin
Bring a nickel, happy feet.
And you still can’t convince me the line isn’t
*You don’t need a pinhead
Just to hang around
*
He is NOT saying “penny”. No way.
Sammy Hagar, Heavy Metal.
Lyric: Headbangers in leather, sparks fly in the dead of night
Misheard: Ten fingers in leather, sparks fly in the middle of the night
Edit: Actually, now that I look up the lyrics, there’s a bunch of them I got wrong.
.
Eagles. “Life in the Fast Lane”
For years, due to sub-par radio in the VW that I owned at the time, I still parse the chorus lyrics as “Eat my jar of Vaseline”.
I blame it on youth, commonly available psycho-active drugs, and that damn radio.
When I hear it now, I still use those lyrics. My daughters have the roll-eyes down pat whenever that song comes about.
“Space Truckin’” by Deep Purple.
lyric: C’mon, c’mon, c’mon space truckin’.
heard: C’mon, c’mon, c’mon space monkey.
I don’t remember this particular example but I’m sure you’re not making it up because Andy Gibb pronounced the “ess” sound as “esh” in several of his songs. One that comes immediately to mind is from *I Just Want to Be Your Everything *:
“Open up the heaven in your heart and let me be
The things you are to me and not some puppet on a shtring”
I’m cracking up at some of these but mostly I can’t believe that other people hear the same nonsense lyrics as I.
I always heard “keep on, to the bus stop, don’t stop…”