Misheard lyrics

...not that THAT makes any sense either

I was just thinking about this earlier, about how sometimes what you think the lyrics are is sometimes better than the actual lyrics, like I thought this System of a Down lyric: "pushing little children/with their fully-automatics" was "pushing little children/with the folly of their madness".

Um, yeah.

ahahahahahahahahahaha

And I still can't figure out the lyrics of 'Remember Me' by Blue Boy. Is it
"I'm the one who hurt you, baby, aight",
"I'm the one who had your baby's sight"
or "I'm the whore who hurt your baby's eye"?

Every picture tells a story, Tony. Every picture tells a story, Tony.

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.

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

Prong - Prove You Wrong

Heard: Dependence on no one, I just trust animals
Actual: Dependence on no one, I distrust and oppose

lol yours is better!

At a music festival last year my friend heard

We'd be lucky to survive, wrapped up in a dream
as
Women are here to survive not to penetrate

Brandy, you're a fine girl
what a good wife you would be
but my life, my lover, my lady
is deceased

doo doo doo
doo doot doo
doo doot doo

As I write this, I do not know if in ETBG's "Each and Every One", Tracey Thorn is being offered:
- the same thing in a different guise
- the same thing in different guys
- or maybe something else entirely?

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

― soref, Friday, March 15, 2024 7:20 PM (five months ago) bookmarkflaglink

Me too! This is astonishing to learn.

Just maddening to think about. You feel like urgently alerting Neil - "Do you realise you could significantly improve one of your very best songs with no effort on your part just by making a minor edit to your offical website?"

“Lido……oh oh whoa………Lido”

Surely the argument against that Pet Shop Boys interpretation is that thoughts, by themselves, can't make amends with other people?

Thought the chorus of Jet Boy by New York Dolls was “Lockheed was my baby”. It makes sense with the metaphor!

Boyz II Men - It's So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday

Heard: The good times that made us laugh, I wait 'em back (whatever that could mean. I also thought it might be an egregious pronunciation of "I want 'em back")
Actual: The good times that made us laugh outweigh the bad

Realized my mistake upon hearing the original by G.C. Cameron.

Maybe posted this before, but for many decades my Dad sang "I believe in Malcolm" along to the Hot Chocolate smash hit, as he thought it was about Malcolm X. When we pointed out that the next line was "Where you from, you sexy thing", he admitted that he hadn't quite thought it through.

In my younger years, I used to think the song in Grease was 'Bode Easkal Drabba', some kind of Latin motto for Rydell High. It was only many years later that I reliased the song is called Beauty School Drop-out.

I blame a poor quality VHS recording.

Bode Easkal Drabba!
Where you from, you sexy thing

xp lol Griff, that's amazing

For decades, I thought that the chorus to Peter Gabriel's "Animal Magic" included the lines

Look, I wave my wand
Watch the magic disappear

Just this week I learned that the line is "Watch the rabbit disappear." Ah well.

Seeing the fifth post on this thread reminds me that the first few times I heard "I'm Every Woman" (in the background, not really paying too much attention to it) I thought the lyric was "climb every mountain..."

How I Wrote Plastic Man?

Accidental British misinterpretation of Big Star's "O My Soul"

Sadly turns out Alex is singing "Go ahead and shake if you want", not "Come and have tea if you want".

But listen: they sound remarkably similar!

Alex was a refined Southerner he might well have been singing about tea.