Music Lyrics You Didn't Hear Correctly

[Tim Smith]

Did you ever hear a song on the radio and never really heard the lyrics so you made up what you thought it said? 

Or maybe you heard a song and thought you knew the lyrics only later to find out you had it all wrong?

I remember my first exposure to rock and pop in the late 70's.  All I could pick up out of one song was "Maggie" That was the loudest word in the song. And concerning Pink Floyd, I picked up " we don't need no education" and "all we are is just a......nother brick in the wall"  Oh and " you can't have any pudding if you don't eat your meat!". To me Meatloaf was just some guy screaming. I couldn't make out any of what he said. Boston's More Than A Feeling, I only picked up " More than a feeling" the rest was unrecognizable.

Tom Petty- uah ya blah blah LIKE A REFUGEE. He was particularly difficult to understand. " Somebody been kickin' you arooooooung son" or something like that.

My hearing tests ok and was even better back then. Am I the only one who wondered about a bunch of these lyrics? What they actually said?

[craigb]

47 minutes ago, Tim Smith said:

Am I the only one who wondered about a bunch of these lyrics? What they actually said?

Yes.

 

 

 

(?)

[Notes_Norton]

Flies In The Vaseline - The Eagles.

 

I was gigging at the time, heard it played during breaks, in a noisy club. I understood the line, "They had one thing in common, they were both good in bed" followed later by "Flies In The Vaseline. Turns out it was "Life In The Fast Lane".

There's A Bathroom On The Right - CCR

[paulo]

My dad used to play a (Carpenters?) song when I was a kid that to me went....

Jam ball eye goldfish pie fill a gum boat.

Edited September 6, 2022 by paulo

[Zargg]

A friend of mine used to sing loudly "sa ba do" to Metallica's Sad but true until we told him (after a while).

I've probably done this myself without knowing it when I was younger. I stopped shouting in public (for a while) when I got older.

[craigb]

2 hours ago, paulo said:

My dad used to play a (Carpenters?) song when I was a kid that to me went....

Jam ball eye goldfish pie fill a gum boat.

Still better lyrics than Muskrat Love! ?

[Wibbles]

11 hours ago, Tim Smith said:

Did you ever hear a song on the radio and never really heard the lyrics so you made up what you thought it said? 

Or maybe you heard a song and thought you knew the lyrics only later to find out you had it all wrong?

Known as mondegreens:

A mondegreen is a mishearing or misinterpretation of a phrase in a way that gives it a new meaning. Mondegreens are most often created by a person listening to a poem or a song; the listener, being unable to hear a lyric clearly, substitutes words that sound similar and make some kind of sense. The American writer Sylvia Wright coined the term in 1954, recalling a childhood memory of her mother reading the Scottish ballad "The Bonny Earl of Murray" (from Thomas Percy's 1765 book Reliques of Ancient English Poetry), and mishearing the words "layd him on the green" as "Lady Mondegreen"

[Rain]

English not being my native language, LOTS of them, although I got a whole lot better after living here for a while.

Things would get a little crazy when we would cover songs and I had to figure out the words - before the days of internet, and without anyone who natively spoke English to help, if they weren't printed on the sleeve, I was left to figure out what I could and extraoplate the rest. Which was embarassing, but, I had to sing something...

I remember reading a John Lennon biography in 1990 and the author was saying that in the early days, when Lennon could not understand the lyrics of a song they were covering, he would just make up his own (sometimes completely absurd).  That was then end of my complex. The things I sang (and mumbled) on stage from that point on, man... lol

Oddly enough, maybe because Diary of a Madman was the very first album I ever bought and it had the lyrics printed on the sleeve, I developed a knack for understanding Ozzy's lyrics. I was fluent in Ozzy before I was fluent in English.

 

[Notes_Norton]

12 hours ago, Wibbles said:

Known as mondegreens:

A mondegreen is a mishearing or misinterpretation of a phrase in a way that gives it a new meaning. Mondegreens are most often created by a person listening to a poem or a song; the listener, being unable to hear a lyric clearly, substitutes words that sound similar and make some kind of sense. The American writer Sylvia Wright coined the term in 1954, recalling a childhood memory of her mother reading the Scottish ballad "The Bonny Earl of Murray" (from Thomas Percy's 1765 book Reliques of Ancient English Poetry), and mishearing the words "layd him on the green" as "Lady Mondegreen"

And a golfer's wife called him on the phone, and asked the golfer, "Where are you now?"

He answered, "I'm on the green".

[mettelus]

LOL, all the time. Very appropriate post since a couple days a song went through my head, and I am singing the damn thing making lyrics up for the tune. Without the lyrics you cannot even look it up. I am pretty sure the first three words are the title (also the chorus), no music with the first use... "I am [third word sounds like ah-mean, two syllables]." No friggin' clue what that third words is. Tried to look that up and finally realized I shouldn't be singing anything I don't know the words too anyway ?

[craigb]

1 hour ago, mettelus said:

... I shouldn't be singing anything I don't know the words too anyway ?

Nonsense!  That's just called "Making the song your own!" ?

 

The real test is when you sing the wrong lyrics then, once you find out what they're actually singing, you like YOUR lyrics better! ??

[Tim Smith]

Whew! This makes me feel much better now that I know it all isn't some kind of an impediment to my hearing syllables.

Remember trying to pick apart a Rush song for the first time? I remember thinking, I have no idea what he just sang, but the music was incredible.

The vocals were cool too, I just had no idea what any of it was. Over the years some of the lyrics from these bands has finally begun to sink in.

I suspect millions might have bought  albums because they liked the music and only read the lyrics on the album cover. Even THEN we might not get exactly what this was about all depending which 'maybe' goes to prove that constructive words, grunts and various syllables added something to the whole pie even when misunderstood or not understood ?

[CoveCamper]

" 'Scuse Me While I Kiss This Guy".

[paulo]

 

[Tim Smith]

On 9/8/2022 at 11:54 AM, paulo said:

 

Hilarious.

Possibly some of this is the result of removing too much sibilance at the mic?

I dunno.

[craigb]

I just heard one song that I got the lyrics wrong on originally:  Caribbean Blue by Enya.  

The first time I heard it I thought the line was "Do I believe the sky above is tired of being blue?" 

I actually kinda like my version! ?

[Starship Krupa]

There's a website dedicated to documenting these: https://www.kissthisguy.com/

Legend has it that Jimi Hendrix made a joke out of it and would go over and give Noel Redding a peck on the cheek after delivering the "kiss this guy" line.

As a lyricist who labors at least as much over the words as I do the music....I know intellectually that most people pay much less, and in some cases, no, attention to lyrical content, but I pretend otherwise. I guess I write lyrics for myself and for the minority of listeners who, like myself, pay a GREAT amount of attention to lyrics. The words of some of my favorite lyricists have been life-changing, life-saving (and as a depression sufferer, I will say that that is closer to literal than you might think), and have helped form my outlook on life.

My childhood was during the 70's singer-songwriter boom, and the words of James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, Gordon Lightfoot ("If You Could Read My Mind" good lord), Carole King, and others gave me insight into adult feelings and relationships, things to watch for as I got older. It still weirds me out that people treat "Fire and Rain" as this campfire singalong thing when it's about his friend dying from a heroin overdose, the breakup of his band due to drug abuse, and his own recovery from addiction. The "Suzanne" in the song was a junkie girl who he met in rehab at the Austen Riggs psychiatric hospital. When he sings "the plans they made put an end to you," that "end" was Suzanne dying from a heroin overdose. Taylor couldn't even do the song live for years because it broke him down emotionally. Even as a pre-teen, the line "I always thought that I'd see you again" haunted me, realizing that in life, there might be people I'd lose permanently. And sure enough, unfortunately not uncommon in the music scene, it proved prophetic in adulthood. And it comforts me to know that I'm not alone in losing people I love to addiction. It helps me deal with the loss.

Going through breakups? "If You Could Read My Mind," "Too Late Baby." Yikes. Cathartic. And, uh, Joni, thanks for giving me insight into the minds of commitment-phobic narcissistic women. Brilliant artist, wouldn't want to date her. ?

And I encourage music fans who have a hard time making out the lyrics of their favorite songs to look them up and find out what they really say. I say this because it's been so rewarding for me. You can find out that REM's "The One I Love" isn't a love song, it's a vicious middle finger to an ex.: "another prop has occupied my time" are not words of love.

People play "Every Breath You Take" at their weddings, completely oblivious to the fact that it's a threatening statement to an ex-lover informing them that he's going to stalk them. I guess brides just focus on the "I'll be watching you" line and think how sweet it is that he's pledging that he'll be watching them forever.

The aforementioned Tom Petty was a brilliant lyricist, he's worth checking out in this way.

Anyway, having said that, I freakin' love Mondegreens and have plenty of my own, some of which I like better than the actual lyrics.

10CC's "I'm Not In Love" (which, BTW is kind of the opposite of the REM song) in the break where the studio receptionist says "be quiet, big boys don't cry, big boys don't cry..." I was convinced that she was saying "break boys, take five." Y'know, talking to the band, telling them to take a break. ?‍♂️

Depeche Mode's "Policy of Truth," despite being a favorite song, I still hear it as "all upon a sea of truth."

[Larry Jones]

In my early days of playing covers I had no way of looking up lyrics. I just had to get the words off the radio, like everyone else. I'm sure I "misheard" a lot of words and phrases, so I sang whatever sounded right to me, and in decades of doing that I was never called out for it, leading me to believe that very few of us actually know what we're hearing.?

Edited September 18, 2022 by Larry Jones

[Glenn Stanton]

then again, there are lots of recordings where what was sung is not what the lyrics sheet said as a means of circumventing the record label and radio/tv censors... ? 

[Wibbles]

The Skids - Into the valley (misheard lyrics)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Proper lyrics:

into the valley
betrothed and divine
realisations no virtue
but who can define
why soldiers go marching
those masses a line
this disease is catching
from victory to stone

ahoy! ahoy! land, sea and sky
ahoy! ahoy! boy, man and soldier
ahoy! ahoy! deceived and then punctured
ahoy! ahoy! long may they die

out of concealment
blank and stark eyed
why so uncertain
this culture deceives
prophesised, brainwashed
tomorrows demise
all systems failing
the placards unroll

ahoy! ahoy! land, sea and sky
ahoy! ahoy! boy, man and soldier
ahoy! ahoy! deceived and then punctured
ahoy! ahoy! long may they die

time for the audit
the gathering trial
a collectors dilemma
repositioned and filed