I love that song. I seriously heard “dead head sticking out of”. Like a dead body in a Cadillac with the head hanging out a window. It made sense with the next lyric “Don’t look back, you can never look back.”
Same song: “Your brown skin shining in the sun”
I hear: “Your breath is shining in the sun” (could never figure that one out.)
I heard this for years when listening to the Beatles classic:
Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book?
It took me years to write, will you take a look?
It’s based on a novel by a man named Lear
And I need a job, so I want to be a take the back right turn.
I was most chagrined to eventually learn that it’s Paperback Writer! :smack:
[sub]in my defense, I didn’t really listen to the lyrics save for the chorus[/sub]
Speaking of The Beatles, I always heard ‘Help me get my beans back on the ground’ in Help.
But then, I was only three years old.
In Jason Mraz’s “I’m Yours”, the line is “I can’t hesitate no more” - but I always heard it as “I can’t get sauteed no more”. Which made sense, because I’d get tired of being fried in oil with assorted vegetables pretty fast.
Van Halen’s “Running with the Devil”
Actual: “Ain’t got no love, no love you’d call real”
Heard: “Ain’t got no love, no love in Korea”
Parliament’s “P-Funk Wants to Get Funked Up”
Actual: “Let my funk be P-Funk”
Heard: “Let my funky people go”
The Who’s “Did You Steal My Money?”
Lyric: did you steal my brasso / nick my gelt you asshole
Misheard: lick my gouging asshole
Van Halen, Everybody Wants Some
My lyric: You can’t get a medic on a subway line
Actual lyric: You can’t get romantic on a subway line
Actually, either one makes sense. I’ll probably keep mine.
I don’t mean this to be snarky, but how can you mishear lyrics when it’s the title of the song? Many of these are amusing and some really funny, but when you mishear the lyric and it’s the title of the song 
Because you don’t always know the title of the song. It’s kinda hit-or-miss whether they tell you the song title or artist before or after the song on the radio.
What I heard was “She seems to have a physical attraction.”
Add me to the list of those who heard it your way. And prefer our alternate version.
Boston, More Than a Feeling
Actual lyric: “I see my Marianne walkin’ away”
What I thought it was until just a few months ago: “I see that derriere walkin’ away”
I was watching an episode of The Middle and the father is singing the song loudly while at a stop light. I couldn’t figure out why they substituted the word “marianne” for “derriere”. I asked my husband about it and he was highly amused.
A couple of strangely urine-related ones:
Royal Blood’s Figure It Out:
Lyric: Nothing here to see/Just a kid like me/Trying to cut some teeth/Trying to figure it out
Heard: Nothing here to see/Just a kid like me/Trying to piss in your tea/Trying to figure it out
U2’s Even Better Than The Real Thing:
Lyric: Give me one last dance, we’ll slide down the surface of things
Heard: Give me one last dance, we’ll slide on a surface of piss
Frankly, I think my versions are better, at least for the imagery invoked. 
Just to prove I’m not totally fixated on bodily waste, for years as a kid I used to think the line in Motörhead’s Ace of Spades:
I don’t share your greed
was
Eyebrows shaved clean
I dunno. I guess I just thought that hard rocking, fast living gambling types used to shave their eyebrows off or something.
I just looked up the lyrics for Dion’s hit Abraham Martin and John to use in the succinct lyric thread game. All my life I’ve been singing the last part “Some day soon you’re gonna be wondering” And that is wrong.
Didn’t you love the things that they stood for?
Didn’t they try to find some good for you and me?
And we’ll be free
Some day soon, it’s gonna be one day
:eek::smack:
The Johnny Rivers TV theme song for the 1966 US version of the British series Danger Man - ‘Secret Asian Man’.
For me, this same lyric has been:
“You can’t alter magic on a Sunday lie”
I thought Dave was getting mystical 
Up until this very moment that’s what I thought it said too.
Olivia Newton-John’s “Physical”:
Real lyric: “I want to get animal, animal”
When I was little I heard: “I want to get Panama, Panama.”
(I also got in trouble for singing it to myself in the car one day because of the “rude” lyrics. But Mom, it’s about exercising. Working out at the gym. What else could it be about?)
Got one more, just when I saw that this thread was bumped, I heard “Big Spender” on the TV. I used to think it was about a guy named “Bix Bender”. To my excuse, I first heard it as a kid when I hardly knew a word of English.
I just found a new one. In “The Thunder Rolls” I always heard
As the storm blows all
Out of control
But it’s actually
*As the storm blows on
Out of control *
Not a big difference but it does change the meaning a little bit, especially in the second verse.
I just got lunch in our cafeteria, and the song playing was The Police’s “Canary In a Coal Mine.” For an embarrassingly large part of my life, I thought the song was “canary in a coma.”
(When I first heard it I wasn’t familiar with the “canary in a coal mine” concept, and it took forever for me to see the title in writing/hear the song and have the actual lyrics finally click.)