This is mega-annoying because it's a really cool song but I can't listen to it anymore.

Smells Like Nirvana

Lyrics:

What is this song all about?
Can't figure any lyrics out
How do the words to it go?
I wish you'd tell me, I don't know
Don't know, don't know, don't know, oh no
Don't know, don't know, don't know...

Now I'm mumblin' and I'm screamin'
And I don't know what I'm singin'
Crank the volume, ears are bleedin'
I still don't know what I'm singin'
We're so loud and incoherent
Boy, this oughta bug your parents
Yeah

It's unintel-ligible
I just can't get it through my skull
It's hard to bargle nawdle zouss
With all these marbles in my mouth
Don't know, don't know, don't know, oh no
Don't know, don't know, don't know...

Well, we don't sound like Madonna
Here we are now, we're Nirvana
Sing distinctly? We don't wanna
Buy our album, we're Nirvana
A garage band from Seattle
Well, it sure beats raising cattle
Yeah

And I forgot the next verse
Oh well, I guess it pays to rehearse
The lyric sheet's so hard to find
What are the words? Oh, nevermind
Don't know, don't know, don't know, oh no
Don't know, don't know, don't know...

Well, I'm yellin' and we're playin'
But I don't know what I'm sayin'
What's the message I'm conveyin'?
Can you tell me what I'm sayin'?
So have you got some idea?
Didn't think so -- Well, I'll see ya
Sayonara, sayonara
Ayonawa, odinawa
Odinaya, yodinaya
Yaddayadda, yaaahyaaah
Ayaaaaaah!

It brings visions of Rem Koolhaas searching hystericaly through his minimally futuristic loft for his knickers.

now another one for readers who understand Dutch (not many I guess). A friend of mine thought that in 'Vicious' Lou Reed actually sang the dutch word 'visjes' which means 'little fish'

Little fish You hit me with a flower

Ah well. I used to hear "I'll get another job at night" from XTC's "Earn Enough For Us" as "I'll get another job at *nine*". (i.e. back to work at 9 am the next morning, which makes sense)

Gary Numan, his love is real, but he isn't? ;-)

Maybe
I don't really wanna know
How you got engrossed
'Cause I just wanna play...

I marvelled at the way the guy with the eyebrows stretched out that syllable "gross", as if solely to disgust anyone who expected a sense of decorum from him. I had a new favourite great white hope. Of course, I soon found out the lyric was actually "how your garden grows", which is just so lame.

I never really got over that.

That's funny, I only count one per head.

It's great when misheard lyrics mean the opposite of the real thing. I spent months singing along to Wilco's "Radio Cure" as "distance has a way of making love understandable," when the lyric is "no way." Shucks.

What an interesting life I lead.

oops, but that's the way I heard that line, from Dylan's 'All Along the Watchtower', listening to Mad Sheer Khan's live version of the song on the radio tonight

Can anyone guess which one this is? These might be the real words, for all I know.

Jesus, I think you have ruined this one song for me. I used to love it but I have the feeling that since this day I'll be hearing John Foxx singing "underpants!" everytime.

It sounded like she was singing "Your toxic come dripping down my body" or summat. That can't be right though can it? I mean, she's not putting (or rather, her songwriters aren't) THAT much innuendo in her songs yet are they? Although that thing where she fiddles with her breasts in the video clip lead me to believe that it's not far off.

ihttp://img.photobucket.com/albums/v134/tracerhand/kingoftheroad.gif

MOTHERFUCKER! A recent detour to a Beastie Boys lyrics site disabused me of the following lyrics to "Hold It, Now Hit It:

As transcribed: "Every day I drink O.E. and I don't go to work."
As heard in my brain for the past 20 years: "Every day I take a wee and I don't go to work"

Goodgod y'all, is nothing sacred?

In Kristin Hersh's version of "Cuckoo" on Hips and Makers, I know it's "Oh the cuckoo / She's a pretty bird / She warbles / As she flies" -- but I always hear (prob bcz I want to hear) "... / She wobbles / As she flies".

As A kid I listened to Mariah Carey's Breakdown millions of times and I always thought the last line of the chorus was 'I tell my mother lies and then I breakdown and cry.'

"just because of love what does?"

-devin the dude

I heard Unbelievable at Skate King and thought the chorus was "you're ugly and bald"

the fact that I heard it at Skate King was very relevant btw

Torche - "Across the Shields"

Can't be right:

Harsh mad anger all the time! Soothsay big on your dime! Send all your kingdoms porn! And pray mother keep us all!

I don't know if its right or not, but i like those Torche lyrics.

For a really long time I thought ZZ Top was singing "Every girl's crazy 'bout a shy gas mask." In fact, I found the actual lyrics quite disappointing.

As heard in my brain for the past 20 years: "Every day I take a wee and I don't go to work"

Still prefer this.

there's another, longer thread on this

Misheard lyrics

http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/lotr/images/d/de/Sword.jpg

well i crossed my old man back in Aragorn, don't take me alive

The Jags - 'Back Of My Hand'

When I was younger, I kept hearing "you're not unreadable, you're not unbeatable" as "get out of Weinerville, get out of Weinerville"

alan alda's all we are

Someone in this usually very quiet Huntington Beach neighborhood is gettin' all crunk this Saturday evening, presently to the sound of C+C Music Factory's 1990 single 'Gonna Make You Sweat.' This has reminded me that, when the song was current, me and my ten year old friends had a joke that the lyric was actually, "Everybody, pants down!"

I thought for years that the line in 'Daydream Believer' was 'my shaving razor's cold and it stinks'. That's when it's time to buy a new one, Davy. Gross.

"i'm just liberal nerves and feelings" - Joni Mitchell, "People's Parties"

Nelly Furtado:

"I am like a bird, I'll only fly away. I don't know where my phone is."

she's little miss prissy
and she love you, gene, baby, all the time
baby all the time!

Let's dance
Let's shout
Shake your body and do the brown

invest in a stool softener, man

or, y'know, drugs are bad

i did see this humorous transcription of Two Chainz's verse on Rick Ross's "Fuck Em":

"I'm chain smokin loud
Like it's a newborn"

I've got a Japanese edition of R.E.M.'s Monster with a lyric insert included - of course, as with all R.E.M. albums before 1998, the UK/US edition didn't include the lyrics, so someone clearly was hired to write down what they thought was being sung. Stipe's lyrics are hard to make out in general, particularly when you consider that Monster's production is quite murky in places, so of course the lyrics printed in the book are completely wrong!

Here's an excerpt from 'Circus Envy':

Here comes that awful feeling again
Make way for monstor (sic) jealousy
The strove man kicks in ending my breakfast
Cereal Bowl, I spell your name with Oaties
Oh, I messed it, messed it, messed it up

I got my car stolen there in the haystack
I am tired of your dark warm circus eyes
Put pepper in my coffee, I forgot to bath
Encore man

definetely an improvement.

Radiohead’s Airbag:

“I’m back to say the n-word”

irl lol

Arpaidiohead

Holland-Dozier-Holland - why can't we be lovers

"...I can't picture you, baby
You and I being apart..."

what i'm hearing, every time...and it makes me even feel guilty:
"...I can't control you, baby
You and I being apart..."

Sooooooo... it turns out that in 'Watch the Corners', J. Mascis sings "All at once the time flew" and NOT "All I want's a Tamiflu".

Apparently the main character of Joni Mitchell's "Raised on Robbery" was "drinking for diversion", not "drinking forty virgins." To the extent I ever thought about it I guess I thought it was the name of a drink or something?

Ohhhhh, I just remembered a real good one from my childhood:

I'm only human
A flesh and blood hombre

Lol

Haha

I keep picturing a zombie cowboy.

When I was a youngster, I thought McCartney was telling Jude "Chew leather under your skin."

Oh boy, another blast from the past. From Miami Sound Machine's '1,2,3':

If you need some Coke
Sing 'I can do it'

so apparently there are some people who think the lyric in "Pepper" by Butthole Surfers is:

"some will die in hopper suits and fiery auto crashes
some will die in hopper suits while sifting through my ashes"

to this I ask.

wtf is a hopper suit, genius

https://mojim.com/usy169194x5x35.htm

https://muppetmindset.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/bcc3f-hopper3.jpg

Ooh, good reference

Someone on Reddit recently asked about that 80s song that they thought went, "caribou clique, now we're sharing the same dream, now our horse can be as one, no more love on the run"

Used to think growing up that 'The Price of Love' (Everly Brothers, covered by Bryan Ferry) started:

"Wine is sweet and Jenny's bitter
Drink all you can, but you won't forget her..."

I always thought that the lyrics at the start of Miss America by Blur were 'Miss America sits in the shower/She's plucking owls from the sky', but apparently it's 'hours'?

I just pulled out Peter Brown's Do You Wanna Get Funky With Me, which I most certainly owned and played to death as a kid, and realized that I used to think it was "The Yamaha is the Playground for the Devil"....

Earl Sweatshirt, "2010":
"Triumph over plight and immense loss"
I'd heard "Triumph over plight in a men's large".. as if he was writing his theme tune.

A souped-up homeboy from the old town

in Top Billin' it sounds an awful lot like Milk says

Gizmo's cuttin, up for thee
Suckers that's down with me

but of course what he's really saying is

Gizmo's cuttin, up for thee
Suckers that's down with nei-
ther one of us

somebody told me
that you had a boyfriend
who looked like a girlfriend
and I had better be wary of that yeah

my goofball friend growing up used to laugh at Metallica's "Unforgiven" because he thought James was singing "to constipate his grace".

he didn't seem to believe me that it was "through constant pained disgrace"

oh crap I posted about this 15 years ago upthread. lol

ledge writing better lyrics

How could I forget this one? I first heard it on oldies radio, actually.

http://www.amiright.com/misheard/song/driveinshow.shtml

In context.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCLcMvgLF2Q

about 1:20 into the smashing pumpkins “rocket”

MILLER LITE!!!!!

Madonna - Crazy for You

all I can hear is "Trying hard to control my fart"

Talking Heads - 'Air'

'Air can hurt you too' = 'Air in her tutu'

"There's a bathroom on the Rhein"

source: my daughter

"i'll drive that stake
through the centre of my heart
lonely vampire inhaling its fart"

(no shade in the shadow of the cross by sufjan stevens)

Pearl Jam - Dissident

"When she couldn't hold, no, she farted
A dissident is here
Escape is never the safest path
Oh, a dissident, a dissident is here"

(it's of cousre "folded", but Vedder's pronunciation and the context made a good case)

It’s thirty years since I first heard “Here Come The Warm Jets”, and I only just today decided to google the lyrics

Now he'll barbeque your kitten
He is just another learner lover

This has always been and will always be, for me:

Now he’ll barbecue your Lenten penis
Just another learner lover

Highlands Industry
That is what we are
No one in between
How can we be wrong?

how can weave be wrong

Did you realize that you were Italian in their eyes?
-- "Kid Charlamagne" (Steely Dan)

I guess it rains down in Africa...

Just got reacquainted with one from my childhood, from Dishwalla’s “Counting Blue Cars”:

He had many questions
Like children aloft in dew

tems "me+u"

"i don't think u listen, ur a lizard"

we can remember flatulent pain (simple minds, glittering prize)

the 49ers radio play-by-play guy thought the “Soul Makossa” part in “Wanna Be Starting Something” was Michael asking “is it the same side the mic was on”?

That's creative lol.

So much more preferable to the litany of dorks who insist it's "ima say it one more time, I'm not gonna stop!"

I knew an idiot in high school who claimed to love the song "Tubthumping" and would loudly sing

"I got no doubt
But I get up again"

You make me feel
Like my troubled heart is a million miles away
You make me feel
Like I'm drunk on stars and we're dancing out into space
See lesbians
See lesbians

Rhinoceros by Smashing Pumpkins

The one part towards the end always sounds like

“Open your eyes to these mustard eyes”

Eurythmics, "I Could Give You (A Mirror)"

opening line, "How could you be so cold / with nine arms to hold you"

thought the yardbirds song was "misty, you're a better man than i", like calling a guy "potsie" or "fonzie" in the u.s.a.

Turns out in "Bad To Worst" Burning Spear is singing "even myself knows that too" and not, as I just heard, "even Marcel Proust wrote that too".