Songs where the songwriter confuses A with B

in 'one in a million', axl rose confuses "small town white boy" with "insecure homophobic racist bigot"

In 'The Falling', Roots Manuva confuses Dunblane with Lockerbie.

In "Addicted to Love", Robert Palmer confuses love with sex.

I'm too dumb to play this but I'll give it a shot.
In 'Promiscuous Girl" Nelly Furtado confuses prostitution with flirting.
Eh?

In "Nashville Cats" by Lovin' Spoonful, John Sebastian confuses Nashville with Memphis:

"...every one is a yellow Sun Record from Nashville"

VeronaIn just confused promiscuity with prostitution.

"Flowin' like an adverb/ Action word"

In "Ooh Wee", Ghostface confuses the producer Mark Ronson with Mark Bronson, the production assistant on the movie "Pirates of Silicon Valley": http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0111526/

In "You're Beautiful" singer/songwriter James Blunt confuses baring your soul with being a bit rapey.

The Doors, "Five To One": Five to one, baby/One in five. ("One in five" actually implies FOUR to one.)

In "Punk Rock Girl" by the Dead Milkmen, I was always confused by the fact that he says "someone played a Beach Boys song on the jukebox / It was California Dreamin' / So we started screamin' / On such a winter's day."

California Dreamin' is by the Mamas and the Papas, of course-- but I found out much later that the Beach Boys also did it. But who the hell has ever heard that version?

Oh yeah, there's this one Tool song on "Opiate" where he says that his drugged-out friend thought he was a "fire drill." I'm almost positive he meant "fire hydrant."

In "Bald Headed Hoes," Willie D says "There should be a crime against bald headed hoes," when he means to say "there should be a LAW against bald headed hoes."

Then again, later in the song, he advocates violence against the titular figures, so perhaps he did mean what he said after all. It's hard to say.

In "You're Beautiful" singer/songwriter James Blunt confuses baring your soul with being a bit rapey
Good stuff

(x-post) >> California Dreamin' is by the Mamas and the Papas, of course-- but I found out much later that the Beach Boys also did it. But who the hell has ever heard that version?

Never knew this! Wiki sez BBoys did two cover versions. One was released on a Radio Shack sampler cassette Rock 'N' Roll City in 1983, and a re-recorded version appeared on the CD Made in The USA (1986.) I kinda doubt the Milkmen were aware of this, and always assumed they made the transposition just cuz it seems funny (or natural) that the narrator wouldn't know (or care about) the difference.

I kinda doubt the Milkmen were aware of this, and always assumed they made the transposition just cuz it seems funny (or natural) that the narrator wouldn't know (or care about) the difference.

The latter might be true, but I'm pretty sure that they had a sort of encyclopedic knowledge of music trivia, as evidenced by many somewhat obscure musical references in their back catalog.

The Supremes' "Back in My Arms Again" confuses Romeo with the Casanova promiscuous type: "And Flo, she don't know / Cause the boy she loves is a Romeo."

D&D Allstars: 1-2 Pass It -- KRS One says "Your lyrics are stiff like David Koppel" -- I assume he meant news anchor Ted and not an obscure reference to a British photographer

haha Myonga, I never thought about that!

foxy's verse on affirmative action ftw:

[Foxy Brown]
In the black Camaro
Firm deep all my niggaz hail the blackest sparrow
Wallabee's be the apparel
Through the darkest tunnel, I got visions of multimillions
in the biggest bundle, in the Lex pushed by my nigga Jungle
He money bags got Moet, Sean Don
Bundle of sixty-two, they ain't got a clue what we about to do
My whole team we shittin hard like Czar
Sosa, Foxy Brown, Cormega, and Escobar
I keep a fat marquis piece, laced in all the illest snake skin
Armani sweaters Carolina Hebrera
Be The Firm baby, from BK to the 'Bridge
My nigga Wiz, operation Firm Biz, so what the deal is
I keep a phat jew-el, sippin Crist-ies
Sittin on top of fifty grand in the Nautica Van, uhh!
We stay incogni' like all them thug niggaz in Marcy
The Gods, they praise Allah with visions of Gandhi
Bet it on, my whole crew is Don Juan
On Cayman Island with a case of Cristal and Papa Chula spoke
Nigga with them Cubans that snort coke
Raw though, an ounce mixed wit leak that's pure though
Flippin the bigger picture, the bigger nigga with the cheddar
Was mad dripper, he had a fuckin villa in Manilla
We got to flee to Panama, but wait it's half and half
Keys is one and two-fifth, so how we flip
Thirty-two grams raw, chop it in half, get sixteen, double it times three
We got forty-eight, which mean a whole lot of cream
Divide the profit by four, subtract it by eight
We back to sixteen, now add the other two that 'Mega bringin through
So let's see, if we flip this other key
Then that's more for me, mad coke and mad leak
Plus a five hundred, cut in half is two-fifty
Now triple that times three, we got three quarters of another key
The Firm baby, volume one uhh..

(Chamillionaire)
Ay big time
I'm tryna see the president dead (presidents dead?), that's what I said
But not the one in the white house man, the one with the green presidents head
Blue or red I'm still ridin', ladies be tellin' me that I'm sexcist
And I guess it's, 'cause I always love the money over dresses
Always been about them horizontal lines through them S's
That's a dollar sign, Impala flyin' watch how she undresses

(Jay-Z)
Thirty-eight revolve like the sun round the earth
Try to play hard get you found round the dirt
Six shell casings found round your shirt

Elliott Smith saying "Duracell Bunny" in Rose Parade.

no bullshit it originally was the duracell bunny, energizer ripped it off

The Duracell Bunny predates the Energizer Bunny, which actually began as a parody of the Duracell Bunny commercials and toys that became a collectible item. There are differences in appearance — the Energizer Bunny wears sunglasses, has larger ears, is a different shade of pink and has a different body shape. Also, while the Energizer Bunny is a single rabbit, the Duracell Bunnies are a species. The Energizer Bunny is always depicted with a drum, as the Duracell Bunny toys of which it is a parody had drums. The actual Duracell Bunny advertising campaign has moved beyond this, and Duracell Bunnies are usually depicted as doing something other than beating a drum.

Oh word. I just remember reading some interview with him where he copped to having the other bunny in mind when he wrote it.

In "King of Rock," Run-DMC confuse the Beatles with the Police.

Also, in "Bled White," Elliott Smith confuses the F train with the N or R. Perhaps he was at 34th St., where they intersect.

dunno if anyone's noticed this, but in the song 'ironic', alanis morrisette confuses things which are annoying (e.g. 'rain on your wedding day') with things which are ironic.

In "King of Rock," Run-DMC confuse the Beatles with the Police.

-- Douglas, Tuesday, 24 June 2008 18:44 (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

At time of recording, there were three members of The Beatles.

^^^ good find! maybe she did it on purpose to be "ironic" lol

X-Clan

My style is deep, deeper than atlantis, deeper than the sea floor travelled by the mantis.

Jay-Z has always been an adamant opponent of the Copernican model.

in the song 'gold digger' kanye west confuses 'ska punk' with 'hen fap'.

^^

the post that had to be made

Far out, I never heard of no "Duracell Bunny" till now! I missed that ad campaign entirely.

That Foxy Brown verse is kind of o_O

Isn't the Alanis Morrisette thing common knowledge?

At time of recording, there were three members of The Beatles.

This is another one where they copped to being straight-up wrong, guys genuinely thought there were always three Beatles (unlike the 417 that quantum mathematics have established as co-existing within the Schrodingerian fifth position).

How can I go on / When every alpha particle hides a neon nucleus

In the song "Richard", Billy Bragg confuses the noble gases neon and helium.

what a loser

this thread is really primo material btw... good work all around

(Lil Wayne)
Young moolah baby
I got money on money on money on money
on top of more money on top of my shit like flies
open that ferrari f 5 like eyes up and down ocean drive
jumpin up out that maybach with a bitch way back to tease them thighs
she got a tattoo on her booty and it say 305
DJ Khaled say it's a movie now don't forget your lines,
Cause you dont want me to edit before we roll the credits
bitch give me my credit
i'm so energetic
i'm f**kin like a rabbit smokin on lettuce
whatever i want i get it
i meant it if i said it
and i say i keep it pumpin i aint talkin unletted
if you want it come get it
cause boy i'm ready
i get that fast fetty they should call me Tom Petty
got two bitches one peanut butter one jelly
i'm a American gangster already

richard petty is the NASCAR driver, tom petty is a singer/songwriter

A) Halloween
B) Not Halloween

Bushwick Bill (My MInd is Playin' Tricks on Me)

early morning april 4th a shot rings out in the memphis sky

that beach boys 'california dreaming' got what felt like alot of airplay on mtv at the time, here's the horror - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAQ-AeUlijU. big al jardine showcase. lotta sax. i think it was the followup to the slightly bigger hit 'getcha back' - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1Pk9kwcGKk - really really shoddy production on these things, the vocals on 'getcha back' are just stunningly schlocky. really w/ these, roth's 'california girls', 'wipeout' (the best of this bunch by many miles), and then of course 'kokomo' the beach boys were hustling pretty hard for a hit then.

Y'all niggaz is scared, I'm your worst nightmare squared
That's double for niggaz who ain't mathematically aware

Nice, or possibly Smooth

"Like Dizzy Gillespie played the sax"

In The Crazy Word of Arthur Brown's rendition of "Fire", Arthur Brown confuses being the god of hellfire with being Arthur Brown.

In "Tambourine", Eve seems to think the Taj Mahal is a palace, rather than a mausoleum:

"Doin it big like I live in da Taj Mahal,"

that beach boys 'california dreaming' got what felt like alot of airplay on mtv at the time, here's the horror - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAQ-AeUlijU. big al jardine showcase. lotta sax.

jesus, what is up with that video? if you turn the sound off, it's like a long-long david lynch short.

In "Tambourine", Eve seems to think the Taj Mahal is a palace, rather than a mausoleum:

Only learned that fact myself in the last year. :(

"I'm a venereal disease like a menstrual bleed." - Lil Wayne

In Eve's defense, living in the Taj Mahal would be pretty sweet even if it were an abbatoir

i dont know if thats relavent here, and it was written with full awareness,but "left of the dial" - the replacements:
"pretty girls are growing up
playing make up,wearing guitar"

Re Dead Milkmen and "California Dreamin'", Made in the USA was a popular comp, and lots of people heard that cover, but CD jukeboxes were exceedingly rare in 1988 and it wasn't a single.

OK, maybe it was a single. The important thing is that someone needs to flesh out the entry for "Jukebox" on Wikipedia.

"Y'all niggaz is scared, I'm your worst nightmare squared
That's double for niggaz who ain't mathematically aware"

Ha, wow. Who was that?

Cannibus

It's OK, because my nightmare is 2.

In '4th Chamber' by the GZA, RZA confuses positrons with protons.

Either that or he confuses 'Causing explosions' with 'Collectively forming a hydrogen atom'. Though that would have made the acronym 'PEACFAHA'. And also wouldn't have scanned.

I like this forum already and this is only my first post. Ace.

Hello linea. It's good in parts.

In "Daddy," Juelz Santana confuses leaving his child an orphan with siring a bastard. (One imagines that ship has sailed already, Mr Santana.)

Same as in "Mind Playing Tricks On Me"

"Y'all niggaz is scared, I'm your worst nightmare squared
That's double for niggaz who ain't mathematically aware"

Maybe he meant that anyone who confuses "multiplied by two" with "to the power of two" is "mathematically unaware"? (Which would be OTM)

I think that is the correct interpretation of that line.

he is actually saying your worst nightmare is the number 2

(your nightmare)^2 = (your nightmare)*2

-> your nightmare = 2

haha

My take:

for the mathematically aware, he is (your worst nightmare)^2
for those that ain't mathematically aware he is twice that: 2*(your worst nightmare)^2

So for all beings > 2, it's better to be non-mathematically aware if beefing with Canibus. I understand now.

Heh, it's the old "I know what I am and I'm glad I'm a man/And so is Lola" kerfluffle all over again! "Pronoun Trouble", Daffy Duck would say.

so that would be 2 men.

Either way, Canibus really should call his next album (Your Nightmare)^2 = (Your Nightmare)*2

Brooklyn Academy - Raise Ya Hands

"Your girl got more niggaz in her mouth than Kramer from Friends"

cant believe theres no noreaga mentions here

run laps around the english channel

In most Rolling Stones songs, Mick Jagger confuses the female sex with a piece of meat.

"When I was in England town. The rain came right down"

Love-She comes in colours.

Well he could be half-right.

Except when he wrote that, he'd never been to England Anything.

Hold the press!

There's an England Town in Texas.

Maybe he was unlucky with the weather.

With Frampton comes Alive 2, Peter Frampton confused the general public with someone who gives a shit.

in hey hey, my my neil young confuses sid vicious with johnny rotten:

The king is gone but he's not forgotten
Is this the story of Johnny Rotten?
It's better to burn out than it is to rust
The king is gone but he's not forgotten

Even if you change the line to the right show, what exactly are Brooklyn Academy getting at there? I'm sure I would have heard about an episode of Seinfeld in which Kramer had "niggaz in his mouth".

PLEASE, NOBODY LINK TO THAT FUCKING THREAD.

In "Paranoid", Ozzy confuses paranoia with depression.

In "Return of the Crooklyn Dodgers" Jeru confuses Manuel Noriega being captured for Manuel Noriega being killed.

In today's high tech world where almost everything is remote controlled, it's difficult to image life without batteries, but let's be honest, batteries are not a product that immediately create an emotional response.

In Duracell's case however, that is exactly what happened when the company introduced Duracell Bunny to the world.

It began in 1973, when breakthrough advertising was developed to communicate that Duracell alkaline batteries lasted much longer in than ordinary and inexpensive zinc carbon batteries. A small pink, fluffy bunny was created, who, powered by Duracell batteries, was able to outlast all others in an array of colourful challenges.

The Duracell Bunny made his debut appearance in the US 35 years ago, in a commercial that included a group of drum-banging pink bunnies. The winner was the Duracell Drumming Bunny, the message was loud and clear - powered by the long-lasting Duracell battery, he's unstoppable.

From 1973 through to 1980, the Duracell Bunny starred in a toy campaign, which was later rolled out around the world.

Throughout his successful career, the Duracell Bunny has embarked on numerous sports and cultural activities :

He excels on drums which he has been practicing since 1973
With unparalleled endurance, the Bunny's a natural at skiing, kayaking, boxing, football and marathons; he always performs at the top.

For over 33 years, Duracell has followed a coherent advertising strategy continuing to evolve the bunny to keep up with the consistent improvements in quality and power of Duracell batteries. 35 years old, 35 years of high performance and the Duracell Bunny is still going strong.

Today the Duracell Bunny is one of the Top Advertising Icons of the 20th Century.

The Duracell advertising strategy has now changed. The Duracell Bunny does not want to compete any longer with Zinc-Carbon Bunnies, as the Zinc Carbon category is less and less important. The Duracell Bunny has now come to the real world to highlight the power of the new formula of the best Duracell ever, Duracell Ultra AA / AAA.

Damn Duracell Bunny was a wind-up toy anyroad!

just to get back to the Dead Milkmen/Beach Boys controversy...

The BB cover was HUGE and I thought it was there song for years. I also remember seeing the MTV video a lot.

So I don't think the Dead Milkmen were mistaken.

I think the Neil Young line is more a question. Let's say:
Is this[, too,] the story of Johnny Rotten?
Record released '79, recorded '78, before PiL, basically.

It also really implies Rotten v. Presley.

In Ghostface's song "The Drummer", he yells, "When Biggie died, they came out with Biggie fries!" Wendy's introduced the Biggie fry several years before the death of the Notorious B.I.G.

Michael Jackson's "Thriller" is actually about the horror genre.

On "It's Never That Easy Though, Is It? (Song For The Other Kurt)", Los Campesinos! confused "ringtones" with "dialling tones"

In "Being Boiled" by Human League Phil Oakey confuses Buddhism with Hinduism.

Where does that happen?

Geto Boys, "My Mind Playing Tricks On Me":

I often drift while I drive
Havin fatal thoughts of suicide
Bang and get it over with
And then Im worry-free, but thats bullshit
I got a little boy to look after
And if I died then my child would be a bastard

A child's father being alive or not has nothing to do with his bastard status.

From the musical Hair (with the hit by the Cowsills) referring to having long hair:

"It's not for lack of bread, like the Grateful Dead."

In fact the Grateful Dead were very successful financially by that point, and could easily have afforded haircuts!

Maybe they mean the actual grateful dead, God rest their souls.

Although in that case I would have submitted their being dead as the main reason why they haven't gotten haircuts.

"Then someone played a BEACH BOYS song on the jukebox, it was "California Dreamin'" - wtf???

in "Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)," Beyonce seems to be under the impression either men really like women's fingers, or that they put wedding rings somewhere other than on their finger.

that post makes even less sense than the song

Single Ladies (Put A Sock In It)
Single Ladies (Put A Donk On It)
Single Ladies (Throw Some D's On It)

I shouldn't have laughed at that, but I did

And if I died then my child would be a bastard

A child's father being alive or not has nothing to do with his bastard status.

Unless you read this as "my child would turn into a bastard of a person if I died." (Which I don't.)

In "Being Boiled" by Human League Phil Oakey confuses Buddhism with Hinduism.

Where does that happen?

Er, pretty much in the very first line. From http://www.league-online.com/beingboiled.html ...

Academics were mystified and intrigued by the bizarre lyrics of silkworm torture and Phil admitted that it was all down to religious confusion on his his part as he explains here: '...I'd got some religions mixed up and I thought that like Buddhism was the same as Hinduism, and it was sort of a plea for vegertarism really against killing the silkworms to make socks or something? I got really confused about it.'

A child's father being alive or not has nothing to do with his bastard status.

― өөө (Pleasant Plains), Saturday, January 3, 2009 4:07 AM (14 hours ago) Bookmark

ya honestly i've always read that as "my son will turn out to be a dick if he grows up in the streets without my guidance"

A great song title by Luna:

"We're Both Confused"

Pavement's "Give It A Day":
"Increase Mather told her Dad, 'I roundly disagree with you'"

Increase Mather was a man.

REM: "Laocoön, and her two sons"

Laocoön and his two sons:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/17/Laocoon_Pio-Clementino_Inv1059-1064-1067.jpg/570px-Laocoon_Pio-Clementino_Inv1059-1064-1067.jpg

That's what dropping out of art school will do for you, I guess...

In "Being Boiled" by Human League Phil Oakey confuses Buddhism with Hinduism.

Where does that happen?

Er, pretty much in the very first line. From http://www.league-online.com/beingboiled.html ...

Academics were mystified and intrigued by the bizarre lyrics of silkworm torture and Phil admitted that it was all down to religious confusion on his his part as he explains here: '...I'd got some religions mixed up and I thought that like Buddhism was the same as Hinduism, and it was sort of a plea for vegertarism really against killing the silkworms to make socks or something? I got really confused about it.'

― Special topics: Disco, The Common Market (grimly fiendish)

Cheers - that's all cleared up then.

On "Ice Cream", Raekwon the Chef confuses rape, the form of sexual assault, with a medical procedure.

In "Key Largo," when Bertie Higgins evokes the shared experience of the Bogart & Bacall characters in the movie Key Largo he confuses an idyllic romantic excursion with a terrifying hostage ordeal.

How would those Human League lyrics make sense even if he were talking about Hinduism?

(Maybe that's what moley was getting at?)

in "my president is black", nas confuses diameter and circumference in comparing the relative sizes of hulk hogan's arms and the rims on barack obama's car.

In "Allentown," Billy Joel confuses "graduations" with "diplomas"

In "Smooth Operator," Sade confuses Chicago with a city on the East Coast.

In "Kids In America," Kim Wilde confuses "East California" with the other side of the state.

Done this on another thread, but The Congos seem to be under the impression that the Ark of the Covenant contained many pairs of animals rather than the Ten Commandments, Aaron's Rod and manna.

I'll defend "graduations" as some attempt at poetry - this big major event of their lives turns out to be nothing but this flimsy piece of paper hanging on the wall. That never really helped them at all.

In "Smooth Operator," Sade confuses Chicago with a city on the East Coast.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51B6444C6WL._SL500_AA240_.jpg

to be honest I choose to view the directions in that song as discrete items:

- coast to coast
- LA to Chicago
- across the north
- south to Key Largo

which could describe a trip from Boston to LA to Chicago to Philadelphia to Florida

^ a common itinerary for pimps and other assorted operators

not sure 'east california' is wrong, she could be taking a sly dig at the residents of west california there

You know, in the "Allentown" video when BJ sings "well the graduations hang on the wall," they show a shot of those photo collages with the senior portraits, and then into a montage of more "candid" photos.

Maybe he meant a "graduation photos" in the song and just left the word off.

In "My Girls," Panda Bear mistakenly uses one's social status as an example of a material thing, rather than an abstract concept.

In "Welcome to Heartbreak," Kanye West confuses heartbreak with jealousy, as well as confusing a child's report card with an item that one could reasonably describe as "brand new".

Re: "Punk Rock Girl" I think the "California Dreamin'" mix up is intentionally inaccurate.

In "My Girls," Panda Bear mistakenly uses one's social status as an example of a material thing, rather than an abstract concept.

although they do both fall on the self-oriented axis of Schwartz's circumplex model of universal values. I suspect that's how they got confused.

Slayer 'Silent Scream' - "Scattered, remnants of life/ Murder, a time to die/ Pain, suffrage..."

what about Bruce's "one legged dog" in the Wrestler song? it seems like he meant 3 legged :/

Sam Cooke's "Another Saturday Night" and every other song in which the singer confuses Frankenstein with his monster

In "Chicago Seven," Memphis Slim confuses the alleged conspirators behind the 1968 Chicago DNC protests with dead people, like the four killed at Kent State's protests in 1970:

"Everybody's talking about Chicago Seven, four more in Ohio, that makes eleven. Nobody seemed worried about all the black blood spilled, but they began to take notice when some of their own got killed."

Wire - "I'm Confusing A With B"

In "Bangkok", Alex Chilton confuses Indonesia with Thailand:

"Here's a little thing that's gonna please ya
Just a little town down in Indonesia"

I took my wife to a little town in Indonesia once.

Jakarta?

NO, WE WENT THERE BY PLANE LOLOLOLOL

^_^

in 'one in a million', axl rose confuses "small town white boy" with "insecure homophobic racist bigot"

― Charlie Howard

lol everytime this thread bumps I cant help laughing at this.

In "Do You Remember Rock'n'Roll Radio?", the Ramones confuse the end of the '70s with the end of the century.

In "My Girls," Panda Bear mistakenly uses one's social status as an example of a material thing, rather than an abstract concept.

this is next-level

"It's the end, the end of this centipede"

In Dig, by NOFX, Fat Mike confuses the value of gold in its raw form with the value of gold as a historic cultural artifact.

The excavation was a financial success
With artifacts of gold
The arrowheads went straight to the Smithsonian
The rest was melted down and sold

Even if you change the line to the right show, what exactly are Brooklyn Academy getting at there? I'm sure I would have heard about an episode of Seinfeld in which Kramer had "niggaz in his mouth".

― Dorianlynskey, Wednesday, November 26, 2008 10:17 AM (2 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

http://i.imgur.com/zi7hd.gif

Wire, "Practice Makes Perfect"

"'Cos you see up in my bedroom
I've got Sarah Bernhardt's hand"

... she had a leg missing not a hand

he sings "leg"

okay wow he doesn't maybe. he mumbles maybe "hand" like he's embarrassed tho, i don't think it's a mistake.

I am Whiney and I am PARODYING YOUR VIEWPOINT IN ALL CAPS (some dude) wrote this on thread most pathetic excuse for wordplay in Young Money's "Bedrock" on board I Love Music on Aug 25, 2010

"I could move through a room full of vultures nice
and I still turn heads...POLTERGEIST!"

-Fabolous on RichGirl's "Swagger Right," which is especially terrible because the movie he's thinking of is The Exorcist, not Poltergeist

In "Livin' In The Future", Bruce Springsteen confuses the future with the past. At least, I think he does:

Don't worry darlin', now baby don't you fret
We're livin' in the future and none of this has happened yet

I mean, if the things he mentions haven't happened yet, then he must be living in the past, right? Maybe I'm the one who's confused.

Maybe they're living in the future and the things that happen, happen even further into the future?

maybe by living in the future, he means that the lives they believe they are living are somehow holographically projected into the future, but their actual selves are safely in a better time in the past.

i don't know how you'd parse that other than 'these are things that could hypothetically happen, they have yet to happen'

holography. time travel. alternate dimensions. cryogenic preservation.

in the 2nd verse of "Dollar", Scarface raps:

I takes her home
You sweat the shit
She rolls her eyes
Like the exorcist

In "Highlands", Bob Dylan confuses Aberdeen with somewhere that's actually in the Highlands. Maybe Aberfeldy, I don't know.

“Backstab the bitch/like I’m Myer Michaels” (Young Thug, No Cap)

In "Open House", Lou Reed confuses Czechoslovakian with Rusyn (or Ruthenian) when he sings(?) of the 'Czechoslovakian customs' of Andy Warhol's mother, Julia. As any fool knows, Czechoslovakia didn't exist till 1918 and Julia emigrated to the USA in 1921, aged 29, and, in any case, Rusyns are neither Czech nor Slovakian.

Not quite the same thing Danish hip-hop group Nik & Jay made several songs about going to the famous Danish beach Bellevue and watching the sunset. Bellevue faces east. Second time they made sure to say 'sun set over the ocean' to underline they'd never done it.

Ha, I was just about to bring up the similar geographic confusion in "The Night Chicago Died," but then decided it wasn't really an A-with-B situation.

Re Sarah Bernhardt's hand

There is a book I own that has various famous peoples hands as made via moulds. I suspected that was what Wire was singing about, and in the latest biog book they confirmed it.

Funnily enough, it does not include SB's hand.

Andy Partridge is fairly good at doing this, though fair play to him for owning up about it so cheerfully:

Todd Bernhardt: Okay, let's talk about "(Living through another) Cuba".

Andy Partridge: Well, first off I must apologize for my historical crapness here, because the Cuban Missile Crisis was not 1961, as I say in the lyric. It's one of at least three factual blunders I've made in my song lyrics over the years.

TB: What are the other two?

AP: Well, for this one, I should have said, "It's 1962 again and we are piggy in the middle." You know, Britain's little place between Great Big Russia and Great Big America.

TB: Right...

AP: And in the song, "This Is the End," I say, "They might drop Fat Boy on your town," but of course the atom bomb was not "Fat Boy" -- it was "Little Boy" and "Fat Man." So, I weirdly combined the two of them to make a non-existent atom bomb -- "Fat Boy".

TB: The new atom bomb! The Third Wave.

AP: Yeah. The one they're going to drop on Swindon, I'm sure, just to tidy the place up a bit! (laughs) To correct all the problems we have with our architecture. And also, in the song "Rip Van Reuben," the man who wrote the Wizard of Oz was L. Frank Baum, not L. Frank Richards. Frank Richards wrote the Billy Bunter school books. So, I should check my facts before I do my lyrics!

TB: You and I had also talked about another one when we discussed "I'd Like That." In those lyrics, you have all these historical couples, and you put together Helen and Hector, who were not really a couple.

AP: No. Dammit. (pauses) That one's poetic license!

From the Chalkhills website.

in 'Joy Without Pleasure', Daniel Johnston confuses joy with pleasure and pleasure with joy

In the intro to "The Tackro", Lee Perry poses the question, "Have you ever met anyone uglier than you, Van Cleef?", apparently under the impression that Lee Van Cleef's character in "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly" is The Ugly when, of course, he's The Bad and Eli Wallach is The Ugly. I don't think it's the only reggae song where this mistake is made either.

Pavement's "Give It A Day":
"Increase Mather told her Dad, 'I roundly disagree with you'"

Increase Mather was a man.

Another one — “Box Elder, MO” (he meant “MT”).

In the theatrical trailer, Angel Eyes is referred to as The Ugly and Tuco, The Bad.[17] This is due to a translation error; the original Italian title translates to "The Good [one], the Ugly [one], the Bad [one]".

Maybe they only showed the theatrical trailer in Jamaica!

K-Fed famously confused paparazzi for Pavarotti

In "Livin' In The Future", Bruce Springsteen confuses the future with the past.

also confuses himself with John Prine.

Taylor Swift's latest album has a lot of confusion about common phrases. "Paint me out to be bad," in The Man, confuses "paint me as" with "make me out to be." In London Boy, she's very confused about what "home is where the heart is" means. "They say home is where the heart is / but that's not where mine lives." She's agreeing with the platitude that she thinks she's questioning.

My my, on board the HMS Bellerophon, lying off Rochefort, a coastal town in western France, Napoleon did surrender.

OK, scansion needs some work.

confusing "military surrender" with "falling in love"

"Uma Thurman" by Fall Out Boy, where I'm pretty sure they confused Dick Dale's Miserlou with the theme for the Munsters.

In London Boy, she's very confused about what "home is where the heart is" means. "They say home is where the heart is / but that's not where mine lives." She's agreeing with the platitude that she thinks she's questioning.

I think she's tweaking the platitude – she doesn't consider London to be her home, even though her heart (a dude) lives there. Admittedly, it's not the greatest line.

In the New Order song, Crystal. Bernard Sumner confuses honey with something that cannot be bought for money.

Whereas Honey is easily bought within many food and heath stores.

To be fair, he could be listing these as distinct features of love. (1) It's like honey. (2) Additionally, you can't buy, it with money.

Not a song per se BUT William Carlos Williams once wrote, "Your thighs are appletrees whose blossoms touch the sky. Which sky? The sky where Watteau hung a lady's slipper."

He appears to have been thinking of "The Swing," by Fragonard.

In the Muppet Movie song "I Hope that Something Better Comes Along," Rowlf sings about "the little feet of tadpoles," but tadpoles don't have feet, as Kermit points out.

"She made a monkey out of ol' King Kong" -- such a good lyric since King Kong was a gorilla.

I think she's tweaking the platitude – she doesn't consider London to be her home, even though her heart (a dude) lives there. Admittedly, it's not the greatest line.

What does the original proverb mean? If it is "no matter where I roam, my heart will always be at home", then this tweaking makes sense. If it is "no matter where I'm from, wherever my heart is atm - that's my home", this seems like a pointless thing for her to say; if anything, it undercuts the romantic message.

I believe it's the latter - and it may be pointless, but I think that's what she means. Whether she's visiting London or is at home, London isn't her home; but her "heart" lives there.

It would almost be better if she were misreading!

In Madison Avenue's "Don't Call Me Baby", the singer says, "You're sure misunderstood" in reference to a particular man's eligibility to refer to her as 'baby'.

What she means is that he's 'misinformed' about his position. It would also work to say, "You've surely misunderstood". This has bugged me since 1999.

In 'It's Alright' Sterling Void confuses "dictation" and "dictatorship". This has bugged me since 1989.

It's surprising is that Neil Tennant just rolled with it in the PSB cover version. I'd have thought it'd be the sort of English up with which he would not put.

I think "Tom Sawyer" by Rush is more about Huckleberry Finn, but I'm more than willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.

"What they say about his company..." Who? Becky Thatcher? The daughter of the county judge? What are they saying about her? Tell me.

Acc to this, it was based both on Tom Sawyer (as an individualist) and Pye Dubois's "Louie the Warrior": https://www.loudersound.com/features/the-story-behind-the-song-tom-sawyer-by-rush

Lil Yachty re: his like "My new bitch yellow / she blow that dick like a cello": "I fucked up. I thought Squidward played the cello. He don't. That's a flute. I fucked up."

(also, he actually plays the clarinet)

"What you say about his company is what you say about society" - my guess is this more about respecting individuals' non-conformity and freedom of association (e.g. Tom skipping school and hanging out with whoever he wanted); I don't think Peart was racist at all but I'm not sure this was really meant to be a statement about racism, except in the sense that everyone should have the same individual freedoms.

"Dictation" can mean "the act of commanding arbitrarily" so it is correctly uses in "It's Alright".

Perhaps, but the phrase is not idiomatic and sounds a little strange. Anglophones do not describe North Korea as a place where "dictation is being forced". We call it a dictatorship.

"What you say about his company is what you say about society" -- My interpretation was more like, whatever horrible things they would say about Jim, well, you could say the same damn things about society as a whole.

That would probably be a more meaningful statement. I'm just not sure it's what Peart intended.

He was obsessed with themes of solitude, individualism, non-conformity, and liberty at that time, including on much of the rest of the album, and it's what comes across in his quotes about this song as well.

Darren Hanlon's "Cheat the Future": "Over three hundred thousand stars make up the solar system"
I saw him perform this live, and beforehand, he explained that he realized too late that the solar system has just one star (and was mixing up "galaxy" and "solar system").

I think a lot of "Tom Sawyer" can be explained by the fact that it was slapped together rather quickly. It doesn't make tons of sense, just sounds sorta cool.

Usually Peart's lyrics are quite transparent, but "Tom Sawyer" makes no sense to me. Unlike the New World Man or the Digital Man, I don't even know what we're supposed to think about this character.

Back to the main topic, I think Kanye does this a lot in a kind of troll-y way. The one that comes to mind is "I keep it 300, like the Romans."

Lyrically, "Tom Sawyer" is credited to Pye Dubois and Peart, and was apparently adapted from Dubois's poem, which I can't find rn, so that's probably why it's different from Peart's usual style and may not all fully cohere. I don't think it's incomprehensible that the character is a tough-minded free thinker whom we are not supposed to put down as arrogant, though.

but did he con his pals into painting that damn fence?

Ha, I think that might be what "he gets high on you/And the space he invades, he gets by on you" is getting at - he looks out for himself, even at your expense sometimes. It's about today's Tom Sawyer, so a modern-day warrior who is like Twain's hero.

The space he invades is clearly a reference to the popular arcade video game "Space Invaders."

However I suspect Peart was actually thinking of Frogger.

It doesn't make tons of sense, just sounds sorta cool.

Very willing to let this be the final word on this subject!

In "Durham Town (The Leavin')" Roger Whittaker, when singing of the river whose banks he used to sit on as a boy, confuses the Tyne with the river that Durham actually stands on, the Wear.

In "Lee Remick" by the Go-Betweens, Robert Forster confuses Ireland, where he claims the eponymous heroine comes from, with the USA, where she actually came from.

Xpost I remember someone writing into Points of view about that one, after Roger Whittaker had performed it on Top of the Pops. In 1968.

To be fair, in the song he sits on the banks of the Tyne watching the ships leaving. He doesn't say they were leaving Durham. They'd be more likely leaving Jarrow, South Shields or Newcastle.

(late 1969,apparently)

Hefner's 'Mary Lee' has the line "this dear has trestles hanging from her ankles", he definitely did not mean this

Jarvis Cocker wrote the song 'Manon' for Pulp about a man, without realising it's a women's name

TS: 'Lee Remick' by the Go-Betweens vs 'Lee Remick' by Hefner

George Harrison "I want to tell you"

The middle-8 has it "But if I seem to be unkind, its only me it's not my mind that is confusing things"

A couple years later he admitted he should have had it the other way round, ie "But if I seem to be unkind, it isn't me it's just my mind that is confusing things"

I wonder if he ever sang it live with the corrected lyric?

In Fickle Friends’ recent song “Turns Me Bad” the vocalist sings:

“There's something about you that I'm craving for
The way that your body makes me want more
The way that I'm losing my school of thought”

I assume she means “train of thought”, but I guess causing someone to lose an entire school of thought would be quite something.

Ooh, good one.

In "Down at the Arcade", Lou Reed confuses the Temptations with the Four Tops.

I suspect the Four Tops song 'Reach Out I'll Be There' is what he had in mind, not the Temptations' 'I'll Be There'.

Dan Fogelberg's "Hard to Say" includes the lyric

It's never easy and it's never clear
Who's to navigate and who's to steer
And so you flounder, drifting ever near the rocks

I think he meant "founder." But is that confusion or just not-quite-right usage?

I think "flounder" is correct, actually. One of its definitions is "to be in serious difficulty". To founder is to come to grief on the rocks, so he's not quite there yet.

In "Down at the Arcade", Lou Reed confuses the Temptations with the Four Tops.

LOL. Lou was often confused in his songs.

Although as anagram points out, 22 years after Lou's song, the Temptations did record a song called "I'll Be There". Confusion or startling prognostication?

In the Springsteen song "Wages of Sin," he sings "We keep paying wages of sin for the wrongs that we've done." But wages of sin are something you earn, not something you pay.

Lou was often confused in his songs.

Was he? I'd love to be half that confused, lol.

One example I did uncover (which I mentioned on The Blue Mask thread): as far as I can tell, via some online research, Syracuse U. didn't play a football game on 11/22/63 – which calls into question the details of a verse in "The Day John Kennedy Died." But Lou may have be misremembering, or (of course) using poetic license.

(I’m also assuming “upstate in a bar” means Syracuse, but he may have been somewhere else.)

Have college football teams ever played early on a Friday afternoon? Maybe the day after Thanksgiving, but 11/22/63 wasn't that.

In "Sad Song" by the Velvet Underground, Lou Reed is confused. He claims to be in love with Mary, Queen of Scots, stating that in 1493 'everything is like it should be'. However Mary was not born until 1542. Moreover he claims Henry V would have broken his heart, yet Henry died in 1422.

Maybe his European History class which covered those dates was that same afternoon.

tbf a lot of his study time was probably spent trying to comprehend how someone shot John Kennedy in the face.

In "Sad Song", Lou did admit "how wrong (he) can be".

in that fucking journey song steve perry sings that his character was "born and raised in south detroit". there is no area in detroit referred to as south detroit, though there is a neighbourhood called southwest detroit

Compare "Kids in America"

New York to East California
There's a new wave coming, I warn ya

wtf is "East California"?

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/11/Eastern_California_county_map.png/250px-Eastern_California_county_map.png

I don't know either, but it looks like it has something to do with going back to Annandale.

wtf is "East California"?

it's near south detroit

I always take a cue from Woody Guthrie and tell people that Amityville is located on the New York island.

there’s clearly an east here where did it go

https://external-preview.redd.it/aIdezuom1VZW6iGaLAb2VJj_a276ZCpKlz0Ov7D8IV0.png?auto=webp&s=aba2c462e6853f536826cda274c4e1249e367e69

Kim Wilde was just giving a shout out to all the hip new wave kids in Death Valley

shoutout to Lone Pine

The west takes what the east delivers.

Daddy was a cop, on the east siiide of Chicago

John Couger confused sucking with chewing in Jack & Diane.

often confused rocking with sucking in other songs

Sucking in the USA

In "Life", Des'ree confuses a rabbit's tail with a rabbit's foot.

Doo, doot doot doo.

In "Teenage Lobotomy", the Ramones confuse severing connections in the brain's prefrontal cortex with the removal of the cerebellum.

From She's Gone:

Think I'll spend eternity in the city
Let the carbon and monoxide choke my thoughts away

I know they were just trying to fit the rhythm of the song, but I'm pretty sure carbon on it's own isn't toxic, and one oxygen molecule isn't stable by itself.

Of course, if they'd spent more of their Philly youth in chemistry class (rather than standing on a street corner singing around a trash can on fire), then they wouldn't be Hall & Oates.

https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/V0AAAOSwS8FhwHmO/s-l1600.jpg

one oxygen molecule isn't stable by itself

It is, actually, though a single atom (which the lyric appears to posit) isn't.

Pedanticallier than yours,

Touche

Baby when you're at the wheel
I can't believe the way I feel
It's such a rush just being with you
We're driving in the rush hour

As fond as I am of this song, I've always been rankled by the fact that the central simile... just doesn't work. Wiedlin equates the thrill of new love with the sensation of driving at speed "in the rush hour". But of course, what the occupants of a car actually experience while inching slowly forward during rush hour traffic is boredom, irritation and transient micro-hatreds.
She would know this if she'd spent more of her LA youth driving to work, rather than performing with the premier distaff new wave band. But then she wouldn't be Jane Wiedlin.

Maybe it's like "being with you is such a rush, it feels like we're driving even though it's rush hour and we've been motionless for 15 minutes in bumper-to-bumper traffic."

I thought she was making a contrast: "This rush hour is actually great!"

Not a songwriter but there is a reasonably famous William Carlos Williams poem that goes

Your thighs are appletrees
whose blossoms touch the sky.
Which sky? The sky
where Watteau hung a lady's
slipper.

And numerous explicators have pointed out that WCW was probably thinking of a painting by Fragonard ("The Swing"), not Watteau.

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/49758842643_2c60422232_b.jpg

It's so nerdy and yet it's the ur-example of "confusing A with B"

Me, I feel like we could delve a bit deeper on the misattribution of Mary Magdalene as a penitent prostitute, but the horse has left the barn on that one

If we're going to bring in poetry, then this glorious poem by Kay Ryan got past the New Yorker factchecker, despite getting the basic biology of tree growth wrong

Tree Heart/True Heart
The hearts of trees
are serially displaced
pressed annually
outward to a ring.
They aren’t really
what we mean
by hearts, they so
easily acquiesce,
willing to thin and
stretch around some
upstart green. A
real heart does not
give way to spring.
A heart is true.
I say no more springs
without you.

Ryan has subsequently disowned the poem :(

not a song, but the original short video that Hank Azaria did for the show "Brockmire", he was using Godfather references in his sportscasting, and at one point said "Barzini's a pimp, he never coulda outfought Santino!", and I was angry because the line is "Tattaglia's a pimp"...and then in one of the episodes, they had the same piece of dialogue, but he'd fixed the reference!

From She's Gone:
_Think I'll spend eternity in the city
Let the carbon and monoxide choke my thoughts away_


I know they were just trying to fit the rhythm of the song, but I'm pretty sure carbon on it's own isn't toxic, and one oxygen molecule isn't stable by itself.

Of course, if they'd spent more of their Philly youth in chemistry class (rather than standing on a street corner singing around a trash can on fire), then they wouldn't be Hall & Oates.

I think "Inertia" by the Wonder Stuff fits here. It's not completely wrong that a heavy object given a sufficient force and momentum will keep moving for a while and it would be hard to stop it, but they seem to think inertia means you can't stop moving.

It doesn't?

*mean you can't stop moving?

well it can do but also means it's really hard to start moving

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXnoWb88Jr4

Ha!

In "The Dean and I," at the moment of a critical confession of love, 10cc proclaim that "The elevator in my heart has gone AWOL, AWOL, AWOL, AWOL." Which sounds cool, but doesn't really make a lot of sense:

* This is the only use of the "elevator" metaphor in the song, and it's a concept (going AWOL) that has no particular association or clear meaning with regard to elevators.
* At a stretch, they might be suggesting that the elevator is not where it's supposed to be, like it's dropped rapidly or something, which would fit the emotional stakes of the situation, but is just really labored to my ears. Nobody either in or waiting for the elevator would ever proclaim "This elevator's gone AWOL" upon realizing it's plummeting to the bottom of the shaft.
* MAYBE they want to suggest that the elevator has flown up and out of the heart's building, like Willy Wonka's Great Glass Elevator. After all, the song was released just two years after the original Wonka film, and one year after Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator hit bookstores. But nothing else in the text supports this reach.

My conclusion: they meant to say "haywire."

think they need to see a cardiologist quickly

Now explain what the rest of the song is about.

Not sure that this one fits exactly with the theme of this thread, but it strikes me as the same kind of sacrifice of sense for the sake of the rhythm or the rhyme:

"Tonight there's gonna be a jailbreak
Somewhere in this town"

Uh, yeah, it's gonna be somewhere in this town . . . at the jail.

There might be more than one jail in the town.

Hackd iphone could be anywhere.

xxp great minds…

I always had trouble with this classic by Thin Lizzy:
"Tonight there's gonna be a Jailbreak/Somewhere in this town!"

"Somewhere in this town?" Ummmm.....the jail, maybe?

― Alex in NYC, Wednesday, January 2, 2002 5:00 PM (twenty years ago)

There is nothing new under the sun.

"Tonight there's gonna be a jailbreak, somewhere in this town"

I'd imagine it'll be taking place at the jail, Phil. Great track though, and great band.

― does it look like i'm here (jon123), Tuesday, December 3, 2019 4:21 AM (two years ago) bookmarkflaglink

The whole town is like one big jail, and the name of the jail is Society

Singer doesn’t know where the jail is exactly

iirc the original liner notes lay out a narrative that more or less matches bernard snowy's summary

Just got the iPhone joke, that’s pretty funny.

xxxxxpost some towns have multiple jails.

They might have been on work placements

I always figured that jail was a metaphor for being grounded.

One thing we can be sure of, there's gonna be trouble.

In "Do You Believe in Magic" by the Lovin' Spoonful, the line

I'll tell you 'bout the magic and it'll free your soul
But it's like trying to tell a stranger 'bout rock and roll

confuses literal and figurative language. It's not like trying to tell a stranger about rock and roll; it is that. He's literally talking about rock and roll to someone he doesn't know.

pic.twitter.com/rfcsKSUxYL

— potato bun (@erewhonsmoothie) August 15, 2023

the chef's kiss here, really, is using a child's cartoon to defend this error

squidward plays a clarinet tho

It's also funny b/c even if he had correctly named a wind instrument, there's a lyrical confusion in conflating the literal and figurative meaning of "blow"

Recommendations for hip-hop without adagio (or these other tempos)?

Recursive confusion: Squidward actually plays the clarinet, not the flute.

what's the matter jimbeaux, don't you know how to reed?

Embouchure hope we get this sorted out

I fucked up, but it do sound good.

baby i'm scared of you by womack & womack probably one of my favorite songs ever but this always irked me:

But my heart is nothing like those locks
And your formula's not my brand of stock
Like little red riding hood, you're the fox
Oh baby I'm scared of you

Men are all canids

elliott smith uses the wrong pronoun for the hindu god shiva in "son of sam"

Shiva opens her arms now
To make sure I don't get too far

what i find interesting about this is that i'm pretty sure that line is recycled from something he wrote when he was in high school - so in all that time he either didn't learn shiva's gender, or just chose to stick with the line cause it sounds better

has parallels with another early lyric -

The mighty mother with her hundred arms
Swept all aside

so maybe this theme of powerful many-armed female deities was something he liked to stick with?

there's a lyrical confusion in conflating the literal and figurative meaning of "blow"

"she play the skinflute all night..."

ACUTALLY, one "blows" into the "edge" of a flute, so....

that's probably the funniest mea culpa I've ever read honestly

he blames his A&R guy, then blames everyone who heard the song for not telling him, then admits he got the idea from Spongebob Squarepants, then gets the instrument wrong anyway? amazing

stupid sexy squidward

also I think he's implying he thinks Squidward is the yellow one?

First of all, who's his A&R? A mountain climber who blows an electric guitar?

i used to know a girl named shiva, maybe ES did too

she worked at Red Lobster but he didn't remember

In “Konichiwa, Bitches,” Robyn says “I’ll hammer your toe, like a pediatrician.”

Surely she means podiatrist?

thinking her childhood doctor might need some investigating

or maybe she was referring to that lil reflex test they do only they don't hammer your toe it's your knee

I'll squeeze your balls and make you cough

Like a podiatrist

I'll examine your throat like an EMT

I'll squeeze your balls and make you cough

Like a podiatrist

― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Wednesday, August 16, 2023 12:52 PM

Lost Lulu lyric

https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/1200x675/p01h6z6b.jpg

gd this revive delivers

"To Sir With Love" would be a great entrance song for Trump

more like "Tosser with Golf Glove" amirite

Like a basketball player

baby i'm scared of you by womack & womack probably one of my favorite songs ever but this always irked me:

Like little red riding hood, you're the fox

I played a trivia boardgame yesterday ("Linkee") where Little Red Ridinghood was the answer to the given cluewords "wood", "red", "grandmother", and "fox".

I got it right having remembered your post!

Lil Yachty confirmed not a Danny Brown fan

In "The Smithsonian Institute Blues", Captain Beefheart confuses dinosaurs with prehistoric mammals.

In the Small Faces song, "Rene", at one point the eponymous heroine is described as "groping with a stoker from the coast of Kuala Lumpur". Here Steve Marriott is confusing Kuala Lumpur with a city that is actually on the coast.

"in that fucking journey song steve perry sings that his character was "born and raised in south detroit". there is no area in detroit referred to as south detroit, though there is a neighbourhood called southwest detroit

― 《Myst1kOblivi0n》 (jim in vancouver), Tuesday, June 22, 2021 5:12 PM (two years ago) "

Maybe he was born in Windsor, Ontario (sometimes jokingly referred to as South Detroit)

Another thing that runaway lied to him about

don't stop believin, hoser

"I ran the phonetics of east, west, and north, but nothing sounded as good or emotionally true to me as South Detroit," he told the reporter. "It’s only been in the last few years that I’ve learned that there is no South Detroit. But it doesn't matter."

Also, if you get on a train at midnight (or any time, really), it has a specific route and destination. You have, presumably, purchased a ticket. Maps are widely available. You can't just go "anywhere."

Like, Antarctica or the Moon or Madagascar. Very difficult to reach by train.

"The Night Chicago Died" is about a shoot-out between the Chicago Police and gangsters tied to Al Capone. It was inspired by the real-life Saint Valentine's Day Massacre,[2] although that involved Capone's men killing seven of Bugs Moran's gang members and had nothing to do with the police. No confrontation large enough to leave around one hundred police deaths ever happened. Al Capone was arrested in 1932 for income tax evasion.

The song's events supposedly take place "on the East Side of Chicago". Chicago has three commonly referred-to regions: the North Side, the West Side and the South Side. There is no East Side, as Lake Michigan is immediately east of Downtown Chicago. While there is an area of Chicago known as "East Side", it is a neighborhood on the Far South Side on the Illinois/Indiana state line. East Side is also several miles away from where Capone lived on Prairie Avenue in Chicago. Furthermore, in the 1920s, East Side was known for being a quiet, residential, and predominantly Eastern European neighborhood—a sharp contrast from the site of the bloodbath described in the song.

Songwriters Peter Callender and Mitch Murray said in interviews (most notably on Beat Club shortly after the song's smash success) that they had never been to Chicago before that time, and that their knowledge of the city and that period of its history had been based on gangster films. (Callender defended his interpretation of Chicago's geography by saying, "There's an East Side of everywhere!")

As reported by History.com:

"...in England there were at least a few young men that didn’t have all the facts straight, and in the 1970s their pop group from Nottingham turned their romantic misunderstanding of American history into a historically dubious yet gloriously catchy hit record. Though it was never intended for the American market, Paper Lace’s "The Night Chicago Died" crossed the Atlantic and became a #1 hit on the U.S. pop charts..."[2]

Paper Lace sent the song to the mayor of Chicago, Richard Daley, who greatly disliked it.[3] A member of Daley's staff is quoted as saying that Paper Lace should "jump in the Chicago River, placing your heads under water three times and surfacing twice. Pray tell us, are you nuts?”[4]

The Antartica route was discontinued in 1981, after lots of Journey fans who showed up at the train station asking to go "anywhere" ended up freezing to death there.

Play Don't Stop Believin' on a piano with a lot of jagged passing chords and a plaintive growl, rhyme "believing" with "bleeding" somewhere, and you could mistake the lyric for early Tom Waits.

It would be called "Streetlight People"

Just a city boi

Born and raised in North Hanoi

Once there was this girl who
left her small town to take the midnight train
But when she bought her ticket
She didn't know where she was going
She said it didn't matter
Just take me anywhere

Mmmm Mmmm Mmmm Mmmm Mmmm Mmmm Mmmm

Collected via social media:

Maybe I'm being pedantic but the new Dua Lipa song, Houdini, uses the line "Catch me or I go Houdini" to imply she'll disappear. But Houdini was primarily an escape artist. Outside of the metamorphosis trick, which was a swap, he never disappeared himself. It feels like the song writer had no idea other than the name means magician.

(primo pedantic post, imo)

Houdini plays the mamba

Melle Mel confuses salty with bitter

I've brought this up elsewhere, but in "Hot Stuff" by Donna Summer the songwriter seems to confuse making other people's phones ring with having your own phone rung.

Sittiin' here eatin' my heart out waiting
Waiting for some lover to call
Dialed about at thousand numbers lately
Almost rang the phone off the wall

Someone offered the explanation that this may be the British usage of "ring," as in another word for call, and in fact the lyricist is British (Pete Bellotte, I think). Always sounded funny to me though.

that reads like two separate thoughts to me - first two lines are "i'm waiting for a lover to find me," second two lines are "i'm actively out here looking for lovers as well"

But whose phone is being rung off the wall?

The LOL Britishes explanation seems likely but awkward, ungrammatical and not something anyone would say irl.

Man, if it was Donna Summer, I'd bet all thousand numbers rang her back.

oh boy, ranging phones, that's where i'm a viking

wait, what is confusing? to ring somebody means to call them in USA too

If I heard someone say "My phone was ringing off the wall" I would assume they meant they were getting lots of calls, not making lots of calls.

ring my phone
off the wall

Americans only started saying they "ring" someone in the Internet Age when the English language has flattened out worldwide and Americans have adopted English idioms and vice versa. No one in America in the 1980s said they would "ring" someone unless they were PBS-watching Anglophiles.

I'm in the phone booth, it's the one across the hall
If you don't answer, I'll just ring it off the wall

"almost rang the phone off the wall" of all her friends' kitchens guys come on jeez

Me, in a song I wrote:

"I sent my coals to Coventry"

Which I was sure was an idiom but appears to be a conflation of "Send someone to Coventry" and "Send coals to Newcastle"

Americans only started saying they "ring" someone in the Internet Age when the English language has flattened out worldwide and Americans have adopted English idioms and vice versa. No one in America in the 1980s said they would "ring" someone unless they were PBS-watching Anglophiles.

Oh, just saw President Keyes' post, sorry

I think there's a slight distinction there between ringing an object and ringing a person, with the latter being definitely rare in the US of the '70s/'80s

(Also Blondie didn't write that song, but they were certainly Anglophiles!)

I don't think you "ring" an object in the UK either though? People don't say "ring my phone", they say "ring me".

HP Baxxter has no problem ringing up da laydeez:

"I’ve always been the party pleaser
There’s not a doubt, I’ve checked all the ladies out

Ring me up!
Skip to the dip now!
What we say?
Jigga Jigga!

Ooooohh! Ho-ho!
Davay-davay-davay!
Jigga Jigga!
Allright!
Aaaaaarrrghh!"

whether he has confused A with B, however, remains moot

ring a ring of roses?

songwriter confuses the bubonic plague with making a telephone call

You can, however, ring someone's bell

xpost

anita baker - ring my bell

the white stripes - my doorbell

I did indeed circle both of these with a marker pen

oh, XP

xp to Tom Well I was thinking it's easy to slide from a common phrase like "ring my bell" to "ring my phone" and there's no confusion if Donna Summer is ringing someone else's phone. But in the phrasing of "Hot Stuff" she's first calling lots of different numbers and then one particular phone is being rung off the wall, so I was trying to imagine if in UK usage you can ring your own phone off the wall (actually someone else suggested the possibility first in another thread). But you said before that would be awkward phrasing, so maybe not.

She's making so many phone calls that the resonance of the ringing coming through the earpiece is going to sonically blast her own phone off the wall.

You can certainly ring a bell, true! Also the changes.

anita baker ward - ring my bell

He could play a guitar just like ringing a bell

In "Safe From Harm" I'm pretty sure Massive Attack didn't mean to say "what happened to the deliberately treated small details of my childhood days"

Haha I have always wondered about that line

I think Tim Booth is mixing up lightning and thunder at the start of Sometimes. The thunder is the crack.

There's a storm outside
And the gap between crack and thunder
Crack and thunder
Is closing in, is closing in

I recently heard a podcast listing "errors" in rap songs; two are as follows:

Common: "I'm your worst nightmare squared. That's double, for those who ain't mathematically aware."

Nelly: "I'm a sucker for corn rows and manicured toes." (In which the apter word would, presumably, be pedicured.)

"Y'all ____ is scared, I'm your worst nightmare squared
That's double for ____ who ain't mathematically aware"

Maybe he meant that anyone who confuses "multiplied by two" with "to the power of two" is "mathematically unaware"? (Which would be OTM)

― Myonga Vön Bontee, Wednesday, July 9, 2008 8:41 PM (sixteen years ago) bookmarkflaglink

I think that is the correct interpretation of that line.

― HI DERE, Wednesday, July 9, 2008 8:53 PM (sixteen years ago) bookmarkflaglink

he is actually saying your worst nightmare is the number 2

― Curt1s Stephens, Wednesday, July 9, 2008 8:57 PM (sixteen years ago) bookmarkflaglink

(your nightmare)^2 = (your nightmare)*2

-> your nightmare = 2

― Curt1s Stephens, Wednesday, July 9, 2008 8:58 PM (sixteen years ago) bookmarkflaglink

haha

My take:

for the mathematically aware, he is (your worst nightmare)^2
for those that ain't mathematically aware he is twice that: 2*(your worst nightmare)^2

― HI DERE, Wednesday, July 9, 2008 9:01 PM (sixteen years ago) bookmarkflaglink

So for all beings > 2, it's better to be non-mathematically aware if beefing with Canibus. I understand now.

― Joseph McCombs, Wednesday, July 9, 2008 11:58 PM (sixteen years ago) bookmarkflaglink

Genius Annotation

Mathematical wordplay. Of course, squared and double do not mean the same thing. To double a number is to multiply it by two, to square a number is to multiply it by itself. Common is one nightmare squared and Canibus is one nightmare squared. 1 squared + 1 squared = 1 + 1, which equals 2 nightmares, double the original number (1). From a different standpoint, 2 squared is the same as 2 doubled: 2 x 2, which equals 4. Canibus and Common (2 rappers) squared (2 x 2) equals the same sum of rappers as Canibus and Common doubled: 4 rappers.

In "Everyone's a Ricket" by Buddy Hernia, he sings "it happens to us all if you stay too long in the sun". That is the opposite of how you get rickets.

TIL...

Now I'm trying to think what the opposite of a hernia is.

puncture wound

in "Back Street Girl" Mick Jagger sings

Please come right up to my ears
You will be able to hear what I say

so either he's confused your ears with his ears, or he's confused his ears with his mouth

That reminds me of watching the football at the weekend, and a player celebrated by gesturing to the crowd like "turn it up, I can't hear you"

And Jamie Carragher said "og we can hear you mate, don't you worry!"

It's like, he's not saying turn me up, you can't hear me.

happy to believe that Carragher has always thought that's what that gesture means

tbf if someone comes right up to your ears they're also going to be quite close to your mouth

in "Whutcha Want" by Nine he says

I'm like Elmer J Fudd with the mansion and the yacht

and I'm like.. I'm pretty sure you mean Scrooge McDuck, Nine. i flip over to Genius and that line's been annotated "from Bugs Bunny, short film - Hare Brush" and well, it's an Elmer J Fudd joint and the very first scene Elmer Fudd is CEO of some huge company and i'm like oh man, well, i never knew this side of the man. but then i actually WATCH "Hare Brush" and there's no mansion or yacht at all, it's a kind of psych-sploitation plot where Fudd is "crackers" and thinks he's a rabbit, Bugs takes the wrong medicine at the loony bin and begins believing he's Fudd, and then you get the amusing spectacle of each of them playing each other's parts in various woodland scenarios.

so Nine DID mean Scrooge McDuck, that's my theory and i'm sticking to it

feelin like Ashley Pomeroy up in here...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocuGqbgmzRc

oh goddamn it, the one part i ffd past

Okay Nine. checkmate Nine. checkmate.

Genesis - The Cinema Show

"But there is in fact more Earth than sea"

The surface of the planet Earth contains more sea than Earth. The lyricists Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford are confusing Earth with Waterworld.

Could they perhaps mean “there is more to the earth than just the sea”

also, what is under the sea?

Uh, surely Waterworld contains more sea than Earth as well? They must have been thinking of Landworld

Regrettable lapse from a pair of Old Carthusians.

as luck would have it this was discussed on the rest is science (not that i watch/listen to it but this clip came up on a feed)

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZNR1XghJ9/

in a nutshell, if the earth is about the size of a typical classroom globe, all the water on earth would fit into a tablespoon

https://d9-wret.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/assets/palladium/production/s3fs-public/thumbnails/image/all-the-worlds-water.jpg

now do human biomass

About a billion times less if I calculate correctly.

Mike Oldfield's "Five Miles Out" has "the evil eye of the hurricane's coming in now for the kill" - but the eye is relatively calm. I'm not sure if he mistook it for the eyewall, which is apparently nasty, or if he just didn't know. The cover of the album seems to be based on this line and actually gets it right.

now do human biomass

― budo jeru, Saturday, November 22, 2025 5:22 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

About a billion times less if I calculate correctly.

― ledge

So drowning everybody is still an option (also classic biblical callback)

"cities", talking heads - "memphis, home of elvis & the ancient greeks"

david byrne either didn't know memphis was in ancient egypt (not greece) or he maybe thought well "egyptians" doesn't scan too good &/or the mistake might make the line funnier or something

"Think of London, small city" ... seems he is making a few jokes in this song.

Plus, Egypt was conquered by the Greek Alexander and ruled by Ptolemaic Greeks for centuries, so

This has been haunting me overnight. Inspiral Carpets' "Saturn 5" has the line "there's a popular misconception / says we haven't seen anything yet".

Now, I think the singer is trying to say that things are going to be better in the future. The verses are sung from the point of view of the 1960s while the chorus is someone looking back at the past. But that's literally what "you ain't seen nothing yet" means. It's not a misconception. It literally means that things are going to get better in the future. The line should be "despite a popular misconception / we haven't see anything yet".

I can't tell if the lyricist misunderstood the saying, or if he didn't realise that misconception was the wrong word, comma, Mikey Madison Criterion Closet. Unless the whole sung is being sung in the present day by someone looking back at the 1960s, and he's trying to say that things were pretty good in the past as well, but I don't think that's what was intended.

It's not often I am haunted by the Inspiral Carpets.

Unless the whole sung is being sung in the present day by someone looking back at the 1960s, and he's trying to say that things were pretty good in the past as well

that's how I've always heard it - "saturn 5, you really were the greatest sight" & "Take me once more, take me to heaven again" sound highly nostalgic.

My favorite of these is the Eagles, Already Gone.

Just remember this, my girl, when you look up in the sky
You can see the stars and still not see the light

They literally have it backwards. When you look up at the sky you are seeing the light, not the stars.

Possible that when they say “the light” they mean it metaphorically? But yes they have it backwards in a literal sense.

have we talked elsewhere on the board about the line in the Velvet Underground's "The Gift," when Sheila Klein describes the weather as "absolutely maudlin"?

i always assumed i was mishearing that, but today i looked it up and apparently that's what she is saying (and John Cale is reading)

so the question is, did Lou Reed think that word meant hot/humid?

describing the weather as overdramatic doesn’t seem that weird