On Demand
He Said What?
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Soundcheck got called out in February for intimating that the Beatles would insert drug references into their songs. Well, we admit that "I Want to Hold Your Hand" may be innocent enough, and now we want you to confess which songs you’ve misunderstood. Washington Post reporter Paul Farhi joins us for a look at misheard lyrics, or "mondegreens."
Soundcheck Blog: John Schaefer shares a mondegreen involving Paul McCartney (and his Beatle brain?)
Tell us: What's your favorite mondegreen?
Watch: Joe Cocker at Woodstock, with subtitles
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My mother used to sing "Small Headed Woman" instead of "More than a Woman," - the BeeGee's song.
My Favorite Mondegreen
I always thought Bob Dylan was singing "the ants are my friends" in the song "Blowin' in the Wind."
My favorite involves a friend of mine who was very troubled for some time by dave matthews. He thought the line "hike up your skirt a little more and show your world to me" from their hit Crash was actually "hike up your skirt, little boy, and show your world to me"
My favorite is my friend's mom, when I was a kid --she was singing the lion sleeps tonight:
My wings are wet, my wings are wet.
And the classic mondegreen for the holiday season is Silent Night:
.... All is calm all is bright, round John virgin, mother and child ....
where'd the word mondegreen come from?
What about this line - "Blinded by the Light, reved up like a 'douche"... I know that's not right but that's what it sound like.
My Dad used to sing Chumbawamba's song Tubthumping lyrics as "I've got no job but I'm an opera singer ain't no one gonna keep me down!" I thought that was a good one.
I heard "mondegreen" as "fondegreen", by the way
You and me and Leslie
(Groovin, by the lovin spoonful)
'scuse me while I kiss this guy
(Jimi Hendrix)
...and from the pledge of allegiance
"and to the republic for Richard Stands"
Simon & Garfunkel: "Apple Soup" for At the Zoo
(as heard by my 11 year old cousin in 1970 or so)
The Shirelle's - But Will You Love Me Tomorrow?
As a teenage girl, I heard,
"Can I believe the magic of your sighs" as
"Can I believe the magic of your size"
!!!!
:)
What about Lovely Day, by Bill Withers: When he repeats those two words over and over again at the end, it sounds like
"Domenic, Domenic, Domenic Do Me Nic"
Jimi Hendrix 'Purple Haze"
...excuse me, while I kiss this guy..."
Cream "White Room"
...in the white room with black cousins"
At the time the song was popular, I went to my 19 year old secretary named Collette and asked her if she liked Prince's new song: "Pay the rent Collette."
She replied, did you mean, "Little Red Corvette"?
My Mother thought that Elton John's "Benny and the Jets", was "Fanny on my Chest." She was rather shocked by the new trend in modern rock and roll.
A friend used to mis-sing the song Lucille as: "You picked a fine time to leave me, loose wheel" (instead of Lucille) -- a tragic trucker ballad!
Not a song but: "Hail Mary, full of grapes… " The fact that “blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus” followed shortly, made that seem to be true. Another one “Amazing Grapes, How sweet and sour…”
I was grape-obsessed, apparently.
One of my favorite Rock 'n' Roll misunderstandings is AC/DC's 'Dirty Deeds And They're Done Dirt Cheap.' WHen I was a kid, I always heard it as 'Dirty Beets And The Jungle Chief' thanks to the late Bon Scott's gutteral delivery.
Bee Gees More Then a Woman
I knew someone that thought that the Bee Gees were singing "Bald Headed Woman"
When I was 8 years old I thought the lyrics to Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give You Up were:
And I'm gonna give you up
And I'm gonna let you down
And I'm gonna run around
And desert you
I thought to myself, "what a terrible boyfriend."
CCR: Bad Moon Rising
Going up with 'golden oldies' i used to sing along with the lyrics "bathroom on the right"
Elton John: Tiny Dancer
This one is a crowd favorite... Hold me closer "Tony Danza".
I once mistook the lyrics of White Punks on Dope as "white hunks of dough"
fun show
greg
My mother thought ELO's song "Evil Woman" was "He's a woman."
My dad loves Creedence Clearwater Revival. I remember listening to "Bad Moon Rising" and thinking that "there's a bad moon on the rise" was "there's a bathroom on the right"
Not a song but, "Hail Mary, full of grapes… The fact that “blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus” followed shortly, made that seem to be true. Another one “Amazing Grapes, How sweet and sour…”
I was grape-obsessed, apparently
Two mondegreens from my life:
The Beatles: will you still need me, will you still feed me when I'm six feet four?
Enya's Sail away:
Save the wales, save the wales, save the wales.
Peter Gabriel jeux sans frontier
She's so popular.
or
She's so funky now.
nirvana smells: like teen spirit
Instead of: my libido; Jalapenos
In Madonnas song like "Like a Virgin", I heard "Like a virgin, fucked for the very first time".
Great segment. My mother used to sing def leopard's "Pour some sugar on me" as "awesome sugar omelet" -- which I suppose she found less offensive when it was blaring over and over out of my pre-teen bedroom. I mean, there's no drug or sex references in "awesome sugar omelet."
A few favorites: One that isn't a song... As a child, I heard my parents talking about a book and movie I thought was called "Tequila Mockingbird." More true-to-form mondegreens from songs: My mother for many years couldn't understand why James Brown sang "I'm black and I'm brown." A somewhat "mass" mondegreen: Many people of my generation (who grew up in the nineties) always thought Metallica was singing about "Amstel Light" in "Enter Sandman."
CCR- "there's a bad moon rising-"
I heard as "there's a bathroom on the right"
I knew it was wrong but couldn't hear it any other way-
My sister used to sing, "Big Ol' Jeff left the light on," in place of "Big Ol' Jet Airliner (Steve Miller Band).
My mondegreens mostly come from hearing English words in foreign-language songs: for example, for the song "La Dolce Vita," I used to hear "Don't your feet hurt?" Another example would be the song "Vamos A La Playa," where I would substitute, "Mama Stole the Pliers" because that's what the lyrics sounded like to me.
My girlfriend used to sing Steve Miller's Band Jet Airliner like this: Pick out Jed in a line up.
boys of summer
"saw a dead head sticker on a Cadillac"
=
"saw a dead head sticking on a Cadillac"
whiter shade of pale: I always heard the word "methedrine" instead of drinks.
there is the famous story in Readers Digest: a kid in KG drew a picture of an airplane with Jesus, Mary and Joseph and a bear in each portal. Flight to Egypt: The Holy Family and Gladly the Cross-eyed Bear.
I always heard Hendrix's "Scuse me while i kiss the sky," as "'Scuse me while i kiss this guy," thinking it was all part of the omnisexuality of the time....
When my son, Jonathan, was 3 years old he loved to sing the song, Shoofly, Don't Bother Me, as he heard it--Shoofly, daposimes!
In the 1960's my height challenged freind, Michael, was singing thehit by the Four Sesons, Big Girls Don't Cry as Big girls, small fry!
My girlfriend used to sing Steve Miller Band's Jet Airliner like this: Pick out Jed in a lineup instead of "Big Ole Jet Airliner"
The Rolling Stones must have learned the lyrics to Route 66 by listening to someone else's recording of it. They sing "Flagstop Arizona, don't forget Anona", while the original is "Flagstaff, Arizona, don't forget Winona".
My friend mike thought that David lee roth said "such good friends I would be" not "such good photography" in the song 'I'll wait' by Van Halen...a mistake appalling as much for its degree of mondegreenness as for its ignorance of decent grammar.
Paul Young's "Every time you go away you take a piece of me with you" was changed to "Every time you go away you take a piece of CHEESE with you" by my younger brother who always took string cheese on car rides.
I always heard Elton John's lyric from Take me to the Pilot as "I'm a hellion in rhythm” as opposed to the correct “I’m held in your prison”.
Until a few years ago I thought the song "Our Lips Our Sealed" by the GoGo's was "I love Cecil". I thought it was a hugely subversive lesbian song.
Another Steve Miller Band: I always thought "Jungle Love" was "Chug-a-Lug" as in "Chug-a-Lug you're driving me mad, you're making me crazy." I thought it was about the evils of drinking
I thought "You make me feel like a natural woman" was "You make me feel like a man should a woman" until about 2 years ago.
I'm a musician, and when I'm in the proces of writing songs, I tend to sing a bunch of nonsense. Sometimes this leads to a "real" lyric that kind of sounds like the nonsense. Reverse Mondegreening? Who knows!
Here's one I don't think is mangled, but I'd love to know what they are really saying:
In the Beach Boys' "Catch A Wave," it sounds exactly like they are saying:
> Now take a listen from a top notch surfer boy
> Catch a Wave
> Suck my big bone
> But don't you treat it like a toy
I can't believe they have such a squeaky clean reputation and are singing "Suck my big bone," but if you listen to it it is impossible to hear anything else.
Any ideas?
- Ben
You can find a website dedicated to mondegreens here (iibc, it has been around for at least 6-7 years)
http://www.kissthisguy.com/
I could never understand why Bruce Springsteen was singing about a "brick in disguise." Later learned it was a "brilliant" disguise.
Thanks for this show. Was feeling grouchy all day and you had me laughing out loud while I sat in traffic rather than cursing. Happy TG!
Big hit when I was in college, Whitesnake, "Here I Go Again". I always heard, "Like a twister I was bron to walk alone, Goin' down the only road I've ever known..." David Coverdale was actually singing, 'like a drifter'. Felt real dumb.
My college Roomate:
"I'll Never Be your Beast of Burden" by the Rolling Stones became "I'll never keep your Pizza Burnin'"
The best, though, was a friend singing quietly with her Walkman on in College, "I've been to Paradise, but I've never been to Maine"
Let's not forget about the man who has truly made his living (a rather successful one it seems) from the theme of this program - Where would "Weird Al" be without this?
My father-in-law was convinced for a while that Bob Dylan was singing about Tiger Lovin' Blues in the more widely recognized "Tangled Up in Blue." Sadly, I feel that album was one of Bob's better enunciated.
Kiss:
I want to rock and roll all night, and part of every day.
I have been frustrating my wife, friends, and band members for years:
Cream/Badge: "Then I told you 'bout our kid, now he's not a tomato."
Janis Joplin/Bobby McGee: "Yeah Bobby baby helped me win the cold war."
Bruce Springsteen/Tenth Avenue Freezeout: "Tenth devil in the freezer aisle." (I don't know about the other nine)
U2/Where the Streets Have No Name: "I want to feel sunlight on my face. I see the toasters disappear without a trace"
And the great Van Morrison song about spiritual reconciliation: "Can I just have one Mormon dance with a Jew, my love."
I would say that this type of phenomenom has happened more in rock-and-roll especially after the mid-'60s. The singers of previous decades took much more care in enunciating the lyrics to pop music whereas in the rock genre it almost became a sense of pride in not doing so. Witness Mick Jagger, Michael Stipe, John Fogerty, et.al.
Wow. Great comments, everyone. I love the Bee Gees "Small headed woman" and Kiss wanting to rock n roll all night, "and part of every day." Such paragons of moderation, those Kiss guys.
For those of you who asked, and didn't hear the answer in the show, the word "mondegreen" is itself a mondegreen: it's a mishearing of a line from an old Scottish poem. The American writer Sylvia Wright, as a child, heard this ballad, in which "they have killed the Earl o' Murray, and laid him on the green." She heard it as "they have killed the Earl o' Murray, and Lady Mondegreen." So she coined the term, sometime around the middle of the 20th century.
My husband:
"blinded by the light
revved up like a douche
a Weimaraner in the night."
awesome.
This goes way back to the early '60s when the Crystal's song, "He's a Rebel" was a big hit. (Cher had success with it too, much later).
It had this line: "He's a rebel 'cause he never ever does what he should." I thought the line was: "He's a rebel and he never had a gun, but he should. I think my lyrics are more edgy.
The folk song where "mondagreen" comes from is "The bonny earl of Murray (pron. as Mur-e)" who was laid on the green.....hummm. that came out wrong.....
My favorite mondagreen (after "Oh, come all ye face-full") comes from the old song "Beautiful Brown Eyes"....
The lyric is:
Tomorrow we might have been married,
But your drinkin'/gamblin' has kept us apart.
I'm not 100% sure that these are the accurate lyrics, but this version is how I arrived at my mondagreen:
I suspect that in the 50s, you didn't talk or sing about drinkin' and/or gamblin' so the word that was substituted was "ramblin." Certainly no one in my family talked about rambling, drinking or gambling, so I didn't have a clue what that word was. I sang the song nevertheless. Being a very young child and it being the 1950s, my version of this song was:
Tomorrow we might have been married,
But the Kremlin has kept us apart.
How could one not prefer this version!
This may not be applicable, but for over sixty years I thought the the lyrics were a happy, but nonsensical:
Marsie doats and Dosie doats and Little Lamsie divey', Kiddily divey do, wouldn't you. Instead of Mares eat oats and Does eat oats, and little lambs eat ivy, Kids will eat ivy, wouldn't you (ewe). Was I the only one duped since the nursery years?
Huey Lewis & the News: I thought that "I want a new drug" was "I want a new truck, one that does what it should . . . " My sister rolled on the ground for days when she realized what I was singing. I still like my lyric better. :) Corine
So . . . are you going to publish the actual lyrics? Particularly interested in "Blinded by the Light."
Hi
In I am the Walrus, I am pretty sure the line is 'everybody oom-pah oom-pah stick it up your jumper' a common piece of nonsense verse
thanks for the show - just found it - fascinating and eclectic
Stevie Ray Vaughn's "Thats a cold shot (babe)" sounds just like "Lets a-go shop ping"
In Bungalow Bill by the Beatles I've always heard, "all the children sing," as, "hold it, you're insane."
Growing up as a Hebrew speaker, my teenage ears heard the Coasters' "Charlie Brown" lyrics
Just you wait and see
(Why's everybody always pickin' on me)
as
Just you wait and see
(Why's everybody always pickin' old meat)
As a kid I was fascinated, and a bit appalled, by what I thought were the bestial lyrics in title track of AC/DC's 1981 (US) release: "Dirty Deeds Done To Sheep".
It's 'Sweet land a fliberty" Isn't it?
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