Misheard lyrics

aaliyah's we need a resolution

"snoop video, looks at the ceiling"
(really: stupid yo? looks are deceiving)

* "Microphone Fiend:" I thought Rakim was describing his love of rapping as "sort of an addiction/magnetized like Nixon." Hmm, I thought, clever allusion to Watergate. It turns out he was saying "magnified by the mixing." Honestly, I prefer the former.

* "Whip It:" "Go forward! Move ahead! Run to the taxi! It's not too late!" That one isn't mine, but I like it all the same.

* "Goodbye Stranger:" "to Rabbi Josen/every day." It was actually "is the life I've chosen/every day."

* The Cars' "Bye Bye Love:" "Substitution asked Confucius, 'What's inside your head?'" It was actually "Substitution, mass confusion, clouds inside your head."

* speaking of The Cars: "Let's Go" takes on a more sinister tone when you think Ric Ocasek's singing "she never liked the Jews." (Again, not mine, but I've never heard it the same way!)

La Isla Bonita

I believe that was Maxell tapes (before they got Pete Murphy looking windswept).

"I like juice and that's the truth!!"

anyone, my all-timer -- when i was a little kid, i used to think that the buggles' "video killed the radio star" was "vinnie, don't kill the radio star" (and listening to the song, it never made sense why "vinnie" wanted to kill the radio star)

and i used to think that the line from "le freak" by chic that goes "le freak, c'est chic" was "bo-beep, go sheep!"

'He met Marmalade down in old New Orleans/Struttin' her stuff for Mister Heath'

Also googled as:
"Wrapped up like a deuce"
"revved up like a deuce" (Seems to be the consensus on the Manfred Mann version.)

Wrapped up like a goose in the middle of the night
Held up by a ...deuce... another ruler in the night
...douche...
..."dooshent"...
Slapped up by a dude...
Knocked up by...

..From "The Straight Dope" :
"Bruce's lyrics were no paragon of clarity, but at least you could understand the words: "Cut loose like a deuce another runner in the night." Some claim the "deuce" being referred to is the 1932 Ford Coupe beloved of hotrodders (cf. the Beach Boys' "Little Deuce Coupe"). Maybe, but when you're talking about a song whose opening line goes on about madman drummers, bummers, and Indians in the summer, I'm not making any definite claims.

The Manfred Mann's Earth Band ("Quinn the Eskimo") did a cover version of the tune in 1976. It became a hit, no doubt because the band made the lyrics even more opaque than they already were. They changed the line in question to "wrapped up like a deuce."

What's it mean? I'm barely on speaking terms with my own subconscious. Don't ask me to explain someone else's."

Everlast, watching the Discovery Channel.

(NERD - Provider)

also an ex-gf thought that brand new heavies - you are the universe was "you are my unicorn".

Truer words were never misheard.

"You are everything to me/You are Wayne's World" - Containe, "You" (should have been 'you always were')

moral to the story: never assume a proper noun is the correct lyric.

Michael Jackson: "Smooth Criminal"

(In reality it goes: "Annie are you okay?")

Madonna: La Isla Bonita

"Where the sheep have no name" instead of "where the streets have no name" (Where The Streets Have No Name)
"I have pierced holy lips" isntead of "I have kissed honey lips" (Where The Streets Have No Name)
"Hell, damnation" instead of "Elevation" (Elevation)
"Gonna take a walk with your sister Lorraine" instead of "Johnny take a walk with your sister the rain" (Mysterious Ways)

"You can go your own way / You can call it thunder and 'oh-nee-baaaay" (i know that one falls apart but when I was a wee lad that's how my sister and I sang it in the car)

"Living on a Cheerio pole" - male background vox on Material Girl - sang more as a joke, in retrospect - another Kerry-and-James-back-of- the-car-on-family-vacation classic

and another from that same era: Rick Astley's "Never gonna Give you Up" sang as "Then I'm gonna give you up, then I'm gonna let you down / then Im gonna run around and dessert you"

We'd also do this weird thing with our hands along with the opening descending keyboard riff in "Carribean Queen" that made it look like we were casting a spell and it never failed to make us giggle uncontrollably. Man, my parents were into some shitty music.

"Have a nose...what kind of fool am I?"

from Robert Plant's "Heaven Knows." my aunt used to babysit me when i was little, you see. she played guitar, and was avidly into Led Zep and Pat Benatar and Heart, amongst other things. she was more amused by this than i think i was, and one night we stayed up rewriting all the lyrics to the song, starting with what i'd heard. i don't remember them all, although "the finesse of the old grey goose" was involved somewhere...

Kiss - "I want to rock and roll all night. . .and part of every day"

For years I thought that the line in Dylan's 'Jokerman' about "a small dog licking your face" was actually "a small dark look in your face".

Huh… I guess I did too, until just now.

I used to hear the lyrics of "Tangled Up in Blue" wrong and have never quite reconciled the written lyric vs. my sense of what the lyric *ought* to be. E.g.:

We drove that car as far as we could, abandoned it out west
Split up on the docks that night, both agreein' it was best

vs.

Split up on a dark sad night, both agreein' it was best

― ; (Ye Mad Puffin), Saturday, January 1, 2022 5:46 PM (twenty-nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Damn, I've thought it was "docks that night" for decades.

woah. also in the "docks" camp.

I feel obligated to inform the Swedish Academy.

Lol

For 25 years I thought the line in "Maybe Partying Will Help" was "what about the people who don't have what I ain't got" but apparently it's D. Boon's singing "what I have got" with a weird inflection?!?! I always thought the double negative was purposely opaque.

Cheese On Fire
And Cheese Burnin'

Amy Holland - Cheese On Fire

Ramones - Somebody Put Something in My Drink

Another night out on the street
Stopping for my usual seat
The bartender bleats

(Oh, bartender, please)

Suzi Quatro - Shine My Machine

You can't knock the rock 'n' roll rocket
It's what keeps this city alive

but really:

You can't knock a rocker for rockin'
It's what keeps this city alive

Hers is good too, but I think I'll cling to what I've been hearing for 15 years. After typing it out, I also think "rock 'n' roll racket" might do even more favors for the rest of the song's lyrics.

At the drive-in/In the old man's barn Ford

Gorillaz - Rhinestone Eyes

I got a feeling now my heart is frozen
All the birdseeds and Michael Rosen

In XTC's "Easter Theatre," I'd always heard one line of the chorus as:

"If we all breathe in and roll away the stone"

...which makes a semipagan springtime song actually about Easter.

Faith No More - Death March

It's Dove Bars Death March, baby!

I just discovered today that the Climax Blues Band sang "Kept on looking for a sign in the middle of the night"

I always heard "Kept on looking for the sun in the middle of the night"

Which I think I still prefer.

I wonder why
He's the greatest dancer

Oh, what, wow

I don't blame myself for not hearing that unusual exclamation correctly.

You and I and everyone, alive
We can run into the fire
I’m a trust fund baby
Yeah, I’m a trust fund baby

I went down to Miami,
I let a girl name a salmon.

I remember long ago thinking the “you know I’m such a fool for you” line in Let it Linger by the Cranberries as “I’m searching for food for you” which gave me a pretty skewed wilderness-survival impression of the song

loooool

so that's where they got their band name!

I know of a Cranberries cover band called the Craisins.

For years I thought the "it's a game, it's a game, well let's call it a shame" couplet in "Goin' Through The Motions" by Blue Oyster Cult was "it's a girl, it's a girl, well let's call it a-Shirl."

higher and higher and higher and higher and higher and higher
kissing the spider

For as long as I’ve been alive, I thought the lyric was “my regal robes of the forest / would be satin, not cotton, not tinse”.

I always thought that “tinse” was some actual fabric, or a reference to tinsel. The word Bert actually sings is “chintz”.

I had always heard it as chintz, but had no idea what that meant until looking it up just now. I knew that the adjective "chintzy" usually means cheap/lousy. Actually refers to woodblock-printed cotton originating in India. It's one of those things where I'm scrolling through GIS results like, "ohhhhh, so that's what that's called."

https://www.vam.ac.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/2015HN5366_jpg_l_93a4c450a85b16fe802d93e616d43963.jpg

Bob Marley - Jammin'

Jah seated in Mount Zion
And rules all creation
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/26/58/78/26587861afe4afbd77f92ff00f99eff5.jpg

(yeah, we're...)

from green earrings by steely dan

"the rings of randy's eyes"

― i also enjoy in line skateing (spazzmatazz), Sunday, June 8, 2014 8:11 PM (nine years ago) bookmarkflaglink

Came here to post this, glad I ctrl+F'd first. Though I hear "Randy's eye" singular lol

I always thought the line in The Pet Shop Boys "Being Boring"--"We dressed up and fought and thought 'make amends'"--was "We dressed up in thoughts and thoughts make amends". I was wrong, but I still think mine is better.
― The Illiterate (moriarty), Sunday, 14 January 2007 03:34 (seventeen years ago) bookmarkflaglink

I also thought it was "we dressed up in thoughts and thoughts make amends" for the last however many decades I've been listening to this song for, and it was always one of my favourite PSB lyrics, but their official website says "dressed up and fought and thought 'make amends'", so I guess that must be what Neil is actually singing

I was part of a hip hop channel on mIRC (DALnet) once and the 'summary' for the room that loaded up when you entered was this quote from a member of the channel from like a year or two earlier, where they had thought the lyric to The Real Slim Shady was

I'm Slim Shady
Yes, I'm the real Shady
All you other Slim Shadys
are justin my teddy

and were still being clowned for it years later

Justin, my teddy
I love it

Neil Young sings to his car:

When you're old enough to repaint
But young enough to sell