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.

LOL, it might be! I thought Pope Chap was a dismissive Rasta name for a Catholic - given that they really do not like Catholics very much.

As long as we live
You're chewin' me, baby
There ain't nothin' wrong with that

dissed on the setlist!
the nude drunk drivers!

And when I felt like I was a narcotic and under someone's bed

Just remembered another from when I was a kid:

Animals like Cheerios and
They feel the heat, the heat between me and you

(I think Al Jarreau's 'Mornin'' had given me the false impression that Cheerios were a common reference in pop songs.)

That's really good.

For a long time I thought "And She Was" included this line:

And she was lying in the grass
And she could hear the highway breathing
And she could see an earmuff factory
She's making sure she is not dreaming

My (now)wife laughed at me for that, but then we discovered that her version of "I Guess That's Why They Call it the Blues" went as follows

Laughing like children
Living like lovers
Rolling like flounder

haha my Doves Cry mishear was

“Add the most tri-curious poses...”

Which, come on, it’s a pretty believable Prince lyric

Xzibit, Paparazzi: "I don't believe the hype about Wolf Dickens"

I'd never heard of wolf (woof?) tickets (still not sure about them tbh); never heard of wolf dickens either obv but I figured he was just some rapper that xzibit had beef with.

"Night and day, uuh, stopping off at you, boy" (Chic, 'Le Freak')

Would never have guessed that it was a jazz reference: "Like the days of stompin' at the Savoy"

alan alda's all we are

― reggie (qualmsley), Wednesday, June 28, 2017 5:23 PM (three years ago)

Nah, I'm pretty sure it's "Oh no, Zoe goes"

Don't know much about history
Don't know much biology
Don't know much about the science pope
Don't know much about the French-eyed pope

Indiana Wants Me by R Dean Taylor was playing on an oldies station the other day. My wife was under the impression he was singing "In the end of Wall Street".

Meanwhile, my dad thought for years that Oliver's Army was in fact called I Love A Zombie.

My mate, back when, thought the Dr Feelgood track "Milk and Alcohol" was a song about Al Capone

Always thought "Like to Get to Know You" by Spanky and our gang went

Well I'd like to eat yr butthole
Yrs i would
Well I'd like to eat yr Butthole
If i could

Well do I have some good news for you

Don't know much about history
Don't know much biology
Don't know much about the science pope
Don't know much about the French-eyed pope

― OrificeMax (Old Lunch), Tuesday, October 27, 2020 11:20 PM (three days ago) bookmarkflaglink

This has been making be laugh for a good couple of days

Look, I said I didn't know much about history.

Oh yeah, I also remembered the other day that, for an embarrassingly long time, I thought the line in the Friends theme song was 'your love life's the old way'.

We share the same biology
Regardless of our geology

my friend was convinced that Metallica's Unforgiven went

"new blood joins this earth
and quickly he's subdued
to constipate his grace
the young boy learns their rules"

Not so much misheard as mis-scanned, but in 'Laughing' by the Guess Who, I just realized I've long heard

You took away everything I had
You put the hurt on me

as

You took away everything
I had you put the hurt on me

So I guess it's not a song about sado-masochism after all.

OH, Neanderthal's Metallica post reminds me (and I thought for sure I'd posted this before but I guess not in this thread) that I used to think the opening lines of 'Enter Sandman' were

Say your prayers
It's a won-
-derful gift, my son
To include everyone

'Say your prayers, little one' obvs

“I walk in Coleraine, with my telescope in my hand…”

for years I thought the Mr Belvedere theme began

"Streets on-a China
Never met him before"

so I spent childhood thinking that Bob Uecker found Mr Belvedere on the streets of China and took him back to the US to be his butler

hard lol

There were plenty of lyrics in Christmas songs that never made any goddamn sense to me as a kid (or even now, tbph) so it never occurred to me to question who Crispin Even was or how the snow got deep inside of him.

real heads know it's all about Deep In Crispin Even 3

I recall now upon hearing the song that there was a brief window of time when I thought the lyrics were

Find your tenderoni
Tenderonious, all right

flappy bird at 1:12 19 Jun 18
Aqua sea foam shame
Sunburned freezer burn
Choking on the ashes of a renerade

lol i thought it was aqua sea foam shame until...right now

oh n/m it is lol

I mean it has to be literally hundreds of times that I've heard the song over the past thirty years, and I'm only just now realizing that the line in 'Outshined' is not 'the grass is always greener where the dogs are shedding'?!?!?!

I think it’s meant to sound like what you thought it was, but the lyrics booklet gives plausible deniability for a Parental Advisory loophole, perhaps? (I’ve never seen a cover with the label at any rate.)

OHHHH, thank you! I'm not a complete dipshit. The lyrics sheet totally says 'shedding' and I was credulous enough to believe what it told me when I pored over that thing a million times. Plus it wasn't bleeped on MTV.

Soundgarden were definitely the kind of band to toe that line, they were/are very wry and self-aware MFers.

"We were saying Fool On, Kevin's Mom!"

Hard-headed funk, you all!

I always thought in "Won't Get Fooled Again" it was "And the party on the left/is now the party on the right," but it's actually "And the parting on the left/Is now the parting on the right." Which I think is meant to convey the same meaning, but ... I don't see why it's not "party." Is Pete actually talking about ... the way people part their hair?

to this day I heard "this mellow thighed chick just put my spine out of place" in Suffragrette City as "the smell of fried chicken put my spine out of place", even though I'm aware that is wrong.

Always thought "Like to Get to Know You" by Spanky and our gang went

Well I'd like to eat yr butthole
Yrs i would
Well I'd like to eat yr Butthole
If i could

"We're having meatballs..."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gr-zG-IXDyo

Kid Charlemagne - "Did you realize / that you were Italian in their eyes?"

married women lack our vision
everybody wants to rule the world

hon hon hon honky im king of the pizza! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTgaY3Tc0ek

For years I thought the first line of Keep Your Dreams by Primal Scream was "I believe that syphilis can burn your soul away." Not all that far-fetched considering the word "syphilitic" shows up in at least two other songs on the album.

In Scott Walker's "Montague Terrace (In Blue)" this is what I always hear:

The girl across the hall makes love
Her thoughts lay cold like Sharon Stone

Listening to ABBA's "Super Trouper" and just heard:

I was sick and tired of everything
When I called you last night from Costco

I always thought the part Kate Bush sings in Games Without Frontiers was "she is so funky yeah" not "jeaux sans frontieres"