Songs where the songwriter confuses A with B

In "Punk Rock Girl" by the Dead Milkmen, I was always confused by the fact that he says "someone played a Beach Boys song on the jukebox / It was California Dreamin' / So we started screamin' / On such a winter's day."

California Dreamin' is by the Mamas and the Papas, of course-- but I found out much later that the Beach Boys also did it. But who the hell has ever heard that version?

Oh yeah, there's this one Tool song on "Opiate" where he says that his drugged-out friend thought he was a "fire drill." I'm almost positive he meant "fire hydrant."

In "Bald Headed Hoes," Willie D says "There should be a crime against bald headed hoes," when he means to say "there should be a LAW against bald headed hoes."

Then again, later in the song, he advocates violence against the titular figures, so perhaps he did mean what he said after all. It's hard to say.

In "You're Beautiful" singer/songwriter James Blunt confuses baring your soul with being a bit rapey
Good stuff

(x-post) >> California Dreamin' is by the Mamas and the Papas, of course-- but I found out much later that the Beach Boys also did it. But who the hell has ever heard that version?

Never knew this! Wiki sez BBoys did two cover versions. One was released on a Radio Shack sampler cassette Rock 'N' Roll City in 1983, and a re-recorded version appeared on the CD Made in The USA (1986.) I kinda doubt the Milkmen were aware of this, and always assumed they made the transposition just cuz it seems funny (or natural) that the narrator wouldn't know (or care about) the difference.

I kinda doubt the Milkmen were aware of this, and always assumed they made the transposition just cuz it seems funny (or natural) that the narrator wouldn't know (or care about) the difference.

The latter might be true, but I'm pretty sure that they had a sort of encyclopedic knowledge of music trivia, as evidenced by many somewhat obscure musical references in their back catalog.

The Supremes' "Back in My Arms Again" confuses Romeo with the Casanova promiscuous type: "And Flo, she don't know / Cause the boy she loves is a Romeo."

D&D Allstars: 1-2 Pass It -- KRS One says "Your lyrics are stiff like David Koppel" -- I assume he meant news anchor Ted and not an obscure reference to a British photographer

haha Myonga, I never thought about that!

foxy's verse on affirmative action ftw:

[Foxy Brown]
In the black Camaro
Firm deep all my niggaz hail the blackest sparrow
Wallabee's be the apparel
Through the darkest tunnel, I got visions of multimillions
in the biggest bundle, in the Lex pushed by my nigga Jungle
He money bags got Moet, Sean Don
Bundle of sixty-two, they ain't got a clue what we about to do
My whole team we shittin hard like Czar
Sosa, Foxy Brown, Cormega, and Escobar
I keep a fat marquis piece, laced in all the illest snake skin
Armani sweaters Carolina Hebrera
Be The Firm baby, from BK to the 'Bridge
My nigga Wiz, operation Firm Biz, so what the deal is
I keep a phat jew-el, sippin Crist-ies
Sittin on top of fifty grand in the Nautica Van, uhh!
We stay incogni' like all them thug niggaz in Marcy
The Gods, they praise Allah with visions of Gandhi
Bet it on, my whole crew is Don Juan
On Cayman Island with a case of Cristal and Papa Chula spoke
Nigga with them Cubans that snort coke
Raw though, an ounce mixed wit leak that's pure though
Flippin the bigger picture, the bigger nigga with the cheddar
Was mad dripper, he had a fuckin villa in Manilla
We got to flee to Panama, but wait it's half and half
Keys is one and two-fifth, so how we flip
Thirty-two grams raw, chop it in half, get sixteen, double it times three
We got forty-eight, which mean a whole lot of cream
Divide the profit by four, subtract it by eight
We back to sixteen, now add the other two that 'Mega bringin through
So let's see, if we flip this other key
Then that's more for me, mad coke and mad leak
Plus a five hundred, cut in half is two-fifty
Now triple that times three, we got three quarters of another key
The Firm baby, volume one uhh..

(Chamillionaire)
Ay big time
I'm tryna see the president dead (presidents dead?), that's what I said
But not the one in the white house man, the one with the green presidents head
Blue or red I'm still ridin', ladies be tellin' me that I'm sexcist
And I guess it's, 'cause I always love the money over dresses
Always been about them horizontal lines through them S's
That's a dollar sign, Impala flyin' watch how she undresses

(Jay-Z)
Thirty-eight revolve like the sun round the earth
Try to play hard get you found round the dirt
Six shell casings found round your shirt

Elliott Smith saying "Duracell Bunny" in Rose Parade.

no bullshit it originally was the duracell bunny, energizer ripped it off

The Duracell Bunny predates the Energizer Bunny, which actually began as a parody of the Duracell Bunny commercials and toys that became a collectible item. There are differences in appearance — the Energizer Bunny wears sunglasses, has larger ears, is a different shade of pink and has a different body shape. Also, while the Energizer Bunny is a single rabbit, the Duracell Bunnies are a species. The Energizer Bunny is always depicted with a drum, as the Duracell Bunny toys of which it is a parody had drums. The actual Duracell Bunny advertising campaign has moved beyond this, and Duracell Bunnies are usually depicted as doing something other than beating a drum.

Oh word. I just remember reading some interview with him where he copped to having the other bunny in mind when he wrote it.

In "King of Rock," Run-DMC confuse the Beatles with the Police.

Also, in "Bled White," Elliott Smith confuses the F train with the N or R. Perhaps he was at 34th St., where they intersect.

dunno if anyone's noticed this, but in the song 'ironic', alanis morrisette confuses things which are annoying (e.g. 'rain on your wedding day') with things which are ironic.

In "King of Rock," Run-DMC confuse the Beatles with the Police.

-- Douglas, Tuesday, 24 June 2008 18:44 (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

At time of recording, there were three members of The Beatles.

^^^ good find! maybe she did it on purpose to be "ironic" lol

X-Clan

My style is deep, deeper than atlantis, deeper than the sea floor travelled by the mantis.

Jay-Z has always been an adamant opponent of the Copernican model.

in the song 'gold digger' kanye west confuses 'ska punk' with 'hen fap'.

^^

the post that had to be made

Far out, I never heard of no "Duracell Bunny" till now! I missed that ad campaign entirely.

That Foxy Brown verse is kind of o_O

Isn't the Alanis Morrisette thing common knowledge?

At time of recording, there were three members of The Beatles.

This is another one where they copped to being straight-up wrong, guys genuinely thought there were always three Beatles (unlike the 417 that quantum mathematics have established as co-existing within the Schrodingerian fifth position).

How can I go on / When every alpha particle hides a neon nucleus

In the song "Richard", Billy Bragg confuses the noble gases neon and helium.

what a loser

this thread is really primo material btw... good work all around

(Lil Wayne)
Young moolah baby
I got money on money on money on money
on top of more money on top of my shit like flies
open that ferrari f 5 like eyes up and down ocean drive
jumpin up out that maybach with a bitch way back to tease them thighs
she got a tattoo on her booty and it say 305
DJ Khaled say it's a movie now don't forget your lines,
Cause you dont want me to edit before we roll the credits
bitch give me my credit
i'm so energetic
i'm f**kin like a rabbit smokin on lettuce
whatever i want i get it
i meant it if i said it
and i say i keep it pumpin i aint talkin unletted
if you want it come get it
cause boy i'm ready
i get that fast fetty they should call me Tom Petty
got two bitches one peanut butter one jelly
i'm a American gangster already

richard petty is the NASCAR driver, tom petty is a singer/songwriter

A) Halloween
B) Not Halloween

Bushwick Bill (My MInd is Playin' Tricks on Me)

early morning april 4th a shot rings out in the memphis sky

that beach boys 'california dreaming' got what felt like alot of airplay on mtv at the time, here's the horror - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAQ-AeUlijU. big al jardine showcase. lotta sax. i think it was the followup to the slightly bigger hit 'getcha back' - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1Pk9kwcGKk - really really shoddy production on these things, the vocals on 'getcha back' are just stunningly schlocky. really w/ these, roth's 'california girls', 'wipeout' (the best of this bunch by many miles), and then of course 'kokomo' the beach boys were hustling pretty hard for a hit then.

Y'all niggaz is scared, I'm your worst nightmare squared
That's double for niggaz who ain't mathematically aware

Nice, or possibly Smooth

"Like Dizzy Gillespie played the sax"

In The Crazy Word of Arthur Brown's rendition of "Fire", Arthur Brown confuses being the god of hellfire with being Arthur Brown.

In "Tambourine", Eve seems to think the Taj Mahal is a palace, rather than a mausoleum:

"Doin it big like I live in da Taj Mahal,"

that beach boys 'california dreaming' got what felt like alot of airplay on mtv at the time, here's the horror - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAQ-AeUlijU. big al jardine showcase. lotta sax.

jesus, what is up with that video? if you turn the sound off, it's like a long-long david lynch short.

In "Tambourine", Eve seems to think the Taj Mahal is a palace, rather than a mausoleum:

Only learned that fact myself in the last year. :(

"I'm a venereal disease like a menstrual bleed." - Lil Wayne

In Eve's defense, living in the Taj Mahal would be pretty sweet even if it were an abbatoir

i dont know if thats relavent here, and it was written with full awareness,but "left of the dial" - the replacements:
"pretty girls are growing up
playing make up,wearing guitar"

Re Dead Milkmen and "California Dreamin'", Made in the USA was a popular comp, and lots of people heard that cover, but CD jukeboxes were exceedingly rare in 1988 and it wasn't a single.

OK, maybe it was a single. The important thing is that someone needs to flesh out the entry for "Jukebox" on Wikipedia.

"Y'all niggaz is scared, I'm your worst nightmare squared
That's double for niggaz who ain't mathematically aware"

Ha, wow. Who was that?

Cannibus

It's OK, because my nightmare is 2.

"The Night Chicago Died" is about a shoot-out between the Chicago Police and gangsters tied to Al Capone. It was inspired by the real-life Saint Valentine's Day Massacre,[2] although that involved Capone's men killing seven of Bugs Moran's gang members and had nothing to do with the police. No confrontation large enough to leave around one hundred police deaths ever happened. Al Capone was arrested in 1932 for income tax evasion.

The song's events supposedly take place "on the East Side of Chicago". Chicago has three commonly referred-to regions: the North Side, the West Side and the South Side. There is no East Side, as Lake Michigan is immediately east of Downtown Chicago. While there is an area of Chicago known as "East Side", it is a neighborhood on the Far South Side on the Illinois/Indiana state line. East Side is also several miles away from where Capone lived on Prairie Avenue in Chicago. Furthermore, in the 1920s, East Side was known for being a quiet, residential, and predominantly Eastern European neighborhood—a sharp contrast from the site of the bloodbath described in the song.

Songwriters Peter Callender and Mitch Murray said in interviews (most notably on Beat Club shortly after the song's smash success) that they had never been to Chicago before that time, and that their knowledge of the city and that period of its history had been based on gangster films. (Callender defended his interpretation of Chicago's geography by saying, "There's an East Side of everywhere!")

As reported by History.com:

"...in England there were at least a few young men that didn’t have all the facts straight, and in the 1970s their pop group from Nottingham turned their romantic misunderstanding of American history into a historically dubious yet gloriously catchy hit record. Though it was never intended for the American market, Paper Lace’s "The Night Chicago Died" crossed the Atlantic and became a #1 hit on the U.S. pop charts..."[2]

Paper Lace sent the song to the mayor of Chicago, Richard Daley, who greatly disliked it.[3] A member of Daley's staff is quoted as saying that Paper Lace should "jump in the Chicago River, placing your heads under water three times and surfacing twice. Pray tell us, are you nuts?”[4]

The Antartica route was discontinued in 1981, after lots of Journey fans who showed up at the train station asking to go "anywhere" ended up freezing to death there.

Play Don't Stop Believin' on a piano with a lot of jagged passing chords and a plaintive growl, rhyme "believing" with "bleeding" somewhere, and you could mistake the lyric for early Tom Waits.

It would be called "Streetlight People"

Just a city boi

Born and raised in North Hanoi

Once there was this girl who
left her small town to take the midnight train
But when she bought her ticket
She didn't know where she was going
She said it didn't matter
Just take me anywhere

Mmmm Mmmm Mmmm Mmmm Mmmm Mmmm Mmmm

Collected via social media:

Maybe I'm being pedantic but the new Dua Lipa song, Houdini, uses the line "Catch me or I go Houdini" to imply she'll disappear. But Houdini was primarily an escape artist. Outside of the metamorphosis trick, which was a swap, he never disappeared himself. It feels like the song writer had no idea other than the name means magician.

(primo pedantic post, imo)

Houdini plays the mamba

Melle Mel confuses salty with bitter

I've brought this up elsewhere, but in "Hot Stuff" by Donna Summer the songwriter seems to confuse making other people's phones ring with having your own phone rung.

Sittiin' here eatin' my heart out waiting
Waiting for some lover to call
Dialed about at thousand numbers lately
Almost rang the phone off the wall

Someone offered the explanation that this may be the British usage of "ring," as in another word for call, and in fact the lyricist is British (Pete Bellotte, I think). Always sounded funny to me though.

that reads like two separate thoughts to me - first two lines are "i'm waiting for a lover to find me," second two lines are "i'm actively out here looking for lovers as well"

But whose phone is being rung off the wall?

The LOL Britishes explanation seems likely but awkward, ungrammatical and not something anyone would say irl.

Man, if it was Donna Summer, I'd bet all thousand numbers rang her back.

oh boy, ranging phones, that's where i'm a viking

wait, what is confusing? to ring somebody means to call them in USA too

If I heard someone say "My phone was ringing off the wall" I would assume they meant they were getting lots of calls, not making lots of calls.

ring my phone
off the wall

Americans only started saying they "ring" someone in the Internet Age when the English language has flattened out worldwide and Americans have adopted English idioms and vice versa. No one in America in the 1980s said they would "ring" someone unless they were PBS-watching Anglophiles.

I'm in the phone booth, it's the one across the hall
If you don't answer, I'll just ring it off the wall

"almost rang the phone off the wall" of all her friends' kitchens guys come on jeez

Me, in a song I wrote:

"I sent my coals to Coventry"

Which I was sure was an idiom but appears to be a conflation of "Send someone to Coventry" and "Send coals to Newcastle"

Americans only started saying they "ring" someone in the Internet Age when the English language has flattened out worldwide and Americans have adopted English idioms and vice versa. No one in America in the 1980s said they would "ring" someone unless they were PBS-watching Anglophiles.

Oh, just saw President Keyes' post, sorry

I think there's a slight distinction there between ringing an object and ringing a person, with the latter being definitely rare in the US of the '70s/'80s

(Also Blondie didn't write that song, but they were certainly Anglophiles!)

I don't think you "ring" an object in the UK either though? People don't say "ring my phone", they say "ring me".

HP Baxxter has no problem ringing up da laydeez:

"I’ve always been the party pleaser
There’s not a doubt, I’ve checked all the ladies out

Ring me up!
Skip to the dip now!
What we say?
Jigga Jigga!

Ooooohh! Ho-ho!
Davay-davay-davay!
Jigga Jigga!
Allright!
Aaaaaarrrghh!"

whether he has confused A with B, however, remains moot

ring a ring of roses?

songwriter confuses the bubonic plague with making a telephone call

You can, however, ring someone's bell

xpost

anita baker - ring my bell

the white stripes - my doorbell

I did indeed circle both of these with a marker pen

oh, XP

xp to Tom Well I was thinking it's easy to slide from a common phrase like "ring my bell" to "ring my phone" and there's no confusion if Donna Summer is ringing someone else's phone. But in the phrasing of "Hot Stuff" she's first calling lots of different numbers and then one particular phone is being rung off the wall, so I was trying to imagine if in UK usage you can ring your own phone off the wall (actually someone else suggested the possibility first in another thread). But you said before that would be awkward phrasing, so maybe not.

She's making so many phone calls that the resonance of the ringing coming through the earpiece is going to sonically blast her own phone off the wall.

You can certainly ring a bell, true! Also the changes.

anita baker ward - ring my bell

He could play a guitar just like ringing a bell

In "Safe From Harm" I'm pretty sure Massive Attack didn't mean to say "what happened to the deliberately treated small details of my childhood days"

Haha I have always wondered about that line