Misheard lyrics

Slowdive, slowdive, you're taking me over.

"Like your Chick Corea depended on this ..." - Red House Painters, "Mistress" (should have been 'cheap career')

"You are everything to me/You are Wayne's World" - Containe, "You" (should have been 'you always were')

moral to the story: never assume a proper noun is the correct lyric.

R Kelly's Remix To Ignition: "I'm like so what, I'm drunk" - "I'm like Bill Ward on drums".

"Anything you want, kid..."

Michael Jackson: "Smooth Criminal"

(In reality it goes: "Annie are you okay?")

"I fell in love with some Dago"

Madonna: La Isla Bonita

A bunch of U2 ones from a dear friend:

"Where the sheep have no name" instead of "where the streets have no name" (Where The Streets Have No Name)
"I have pierced holy lips" isntead of "I have kissed honey lips" (Where The Streets Have No Name)
"Hell, damnation" instead of "Elevation" (Elevation)
"Gonna take a walk with your sister Lorraine" instead of "Johnny take a walk with your sister the rain" (Mysterious Ways)

"No it's not like any other love / this one is different because it sucks"

"You can go your own way / You can call it thunder and 'oh-nee-baaaay" (i know that one falls apart but when I was a wee lad that's how my sister and I sang it in the car)

"Living on a Cheerio pole" - male background vox on Material Girl - sang more as a joke, in retrospect - another Kerry-and-James-back-of- the-car-on-family-vacation classic

and another from that same era: Rick Astley's "Never gonna Give you Up" sang as "Then I'm gonna give you up, then I'm gonna let you down / then Im gonna run around and dessert you"

We'd also do this weird thing with our hands along with the opening descending keyboard riff in "Carribean Queen" that made it look like we were casting a spell and it never failed to make us giggle uncontrollably. Man, my parents were into some shitty music.

"Carribbean Queen" shitty? You take that back!

And I'm not having any of this love on the run, either. No more!

I SWEAR I just heard Mr. Neil Young sing: "Love is a nose / you'd beter not pick it."

heh. good timing.

"Have a nose...what kind of fool am I?"

from Robert Plant's "Heaven Knows." my aunt used to babysit me when i was little, you see. she played guitar, and was avidly into Led Zep and Pat Benatar and Heart, amongst other things. she was more amused by this than i think i was, and one night we stayed up rewriting all the lyrics to the song, starting with what i'd heard. i don't remember them all, although "the finesse of the old grey goose" was involved somewhere...

Cutting Crew - "I just died in your arms tonight. . .it must have been something I ate"

Kiss - "I want to rock and roll all night. . .and part of every day"

for years i thought sm said "skull and bones on the island of chrome" on frontwards

Wait, I thought it really was something about a douche, until just now. I feel a little better about the song now.

I guess everyone knows by now that "I am the son and heir of nothing in particular" is more or less out of Middlemarch. I happened to be reading it in college either right before or right after I heard "How Soon Is Now?" for the first time, so that made an impression on me.

(I never finished the book though.)

I thought "Hold me closer tiny dancer" was "On the close up, tiny dancer" (describing her being photgraphed or filmed or something).

Also, I think I've said before that I thought "Smoke on the water" was "Slow comin' home girl."

I was very sad to discover that the Red House Painters lyric is not "New Jersey ate the whole world."

I had a girlfriend once who thought the song 'Heartless' was actually 'Hog Legs'.

"shut the light, shut the shade
you don't have to pee, afraid
i'll be your baby tonight"

Doobie Brothers, "Long Train Running": I misheard the refrain of "Without love/Where would you be now?" as "Well now, look/We're the Doobies now!" - thought it was kind of a "Hey Hey, We're The Monkees"-type theme song.

I misheard Ian Curtis' "Day in, day out, day in, day out &c" as "The in, the out, the in, the out" for years. I always thought it was about sexual frustration; imagine my disappointment.

A friend of mine once showed me a Sebadoh lyrics page that transcribed "Together or Alone" thusly:

"It was never my intention
To blindly feed the boy cocaine"

*loses shit*

Ooh, made me think of my own Sebadoh one:

"volunteer your fear of the blue sky"

Both of those are DISTINCT improvements!

1) It's my life
Don't you forget
Covered in crap
It never ends

I didn't realize it was "Caught in the crowd" until I heard the No Doubt version. I like mine better. Angst/depression/etc.

2) I thought that when the Doobie Brothers sang "Take me in your arms/Love me, love me a little while," it was "Take me in your arms/Lovely lovely Louelle." At the time, I had never heard of a woman named Louelle, but I was like 7, so I figured what did I know? More than 25 years later, I heard it in the car and said, "You know, I've heard of exactly one person, ever, who was named Louelle. Maybe they're saying something else." Once I empowered myself, it didn't take long to detect the lyric. I'd still like to actually meet a woman named Louelle, though.

"don't go out tonight/it's bound to take your life/there's a bathroom on the right." CCR, er, "Bad Moon Rising." Those books of misheard lyrics were assembled by a distinguished journalist who asked all his friends to supply him w/examples, and then compiled 'em and collected a check. Definitely a pre-internet approach to "writing" a book.

I'm Tom Waits for every dame
We are--Jack, the King of All

Look at me--
"Her Monty Knee"
It makes up for the shortcomings of being poor

When you're 15, you want a rapport
You do unto others, and run like a mother
I don't want a rapport anymore
No, I don't want a rapport anymore

God save Mrs. Mopp
and good old notoriety

My sister just confessed to me that she always thought the Kinks were saying "God save Donald Duck FOR THE BILL AND VARIETY," as if those were the two things worth saving about him -- his goddamned duck bill and varied repertoire of...duck sounds? Who knows, she's insane.

Oh, and Blur - "This is Hullo"

"Come on little bitch and do the twist"

Not so much misheard but misinterpretated - English not being my native language: the song Stoned by Canadian rockers Sword. It's chorus contains the line 'goddamn I'm stoned again'. It deals with smokking pot of course, but young little me had just seen the Monty Phyton movie The Life of Brian - in which someone gets stoned to dead - and read the lyric just a little different...
Strange song, really strange ;-)

the line in "Gossip Folks" that I'm convinced says "I ain't got an HP" probably doesn't

Suede - "Sleeping Pills"

"I'm a water slide
You're an air slide"

Water slide = wet pussy, air slide = stiff, "inflated" penis
Made sense at the time

For some reason that line in Televison's "Marquee Moon":

"Life in the hive puckered up my night"

Always sounds to me in my head, like:

"Life in the hamburgers of my night"

Neither of them make much sense.

I have forest data, twisted forest data.

"Sodomy, it's such a part of you..."

When I was about ten, a friend of mine insisted that the chorus in "Boogie Nights" by Heatwave is "Dance with the boogie guitar." I told him it was "Dance with the boogie/Get down," but he said that didn't make any sense. He didn't know about the expression "Get down!"

"sumo holes hurts more and more
means that our love will always be..."

"'seulement entre toi et moi'
means that our love will always be..."

April Wine

Tom Petty's "Refugee" I thought he was saying "rolling like a breakfast bean".

Creedence Clearwater Revival: "Down on the corner/out in the street/ where the pope boys are playing/singing yip yup happy beat" I found this a mystery because I couldn't imagine what a "pope" was.

In Master P's "I Got the Hook Up"
I thought he was saying, "I got the hook up, so how can you hear me?"

I later learned he was saying "I got the hook up, holla if you hear me"

My confusion was based on the premise that, if Master p had the hook up, then their should have been no difficulty in hearing him. I articulated this confusion to a group of self described "rap heads" and was promptly laughed at.

I swear I was at a friend's earlier today and heard the new Britney Spears song on TV. As hard as we listened, she seemed to be saying "Your toxic cum dripping down my face" or something similar.

This isn't true, is it?

And if she keeps walking like that she will need a new spine soon.

my friend karly was classic for this. she heard "brimful of asha on the 45" as "i'm a real fruit pasher and i'm 45". and in "end of a century" by blur she thought "we kiss with dry lips when we say goodnight" was "we kiss vaginas when we say goodnight".

I just died in your ass tonight

Like a virgin +"[{€0 for the very +irst time

"The ants are my friends, they're blowing in the wind" - my friend Trish reinterprets Bob Dylan at the age of 5.

For most of my childhood I thought Sade was singing "Ooooooh Bopper Ator"

..and "Oh Sherry, I'm outta love, Hose gone, Hose gone"

I posted these around here somewhere before:

I thought the backup singers were singing "Lot's wages" on "Showbiz Kids."

I thought Huey Lewis was singing "Now the oboe may be better tweeting, but the heart of rock and roll, the heart of rock and roll is still beating."

Clinic, in the song "Welcome" seem to sing "Now you're welcome, now you're welcome with a smore." Damn, nobody's ever welcomed me with a smore. (It's actually "with us more")