Songs where the songwriter confuses A with B

in the 2nd verse of "Dollar", Scarface raps:

I takes her home
You sweat the shit
She rolls her eyes
Like the exorcist

In "Highlands", Bob Dylan confuses Aberdeen with somewhere that's actually in the Highlands. Maybe Aberfeldy, I don't know.

“Backstab the bitch/like I’m Myer Michaels” (Young Thug, No Cap)

In "Open House", Lou Reed confuses Czechoslovakian with Rusyn (or Ruthenian) when he sings(?) of the 'Czechoslovakian customs' of Andy Warhol's mother, Julia. As any fool knows, Czechoslovakia didn't exist till 1918 and Julia emigrated to the USA in 1921, aged 29, and, in any case, Rusyns are neither Czech nor Slovakian.

Not quite the same thing Danish hip-hop group Nik & Jay made several songs about going to the famous Danish beach Bellevue and watching the sunset. Bellevue faces east. Second time they made sure to say 'sun set over the ocean' to underline they'd never done it.

Ha, I was just about to bring up the similar geographic confusion in "The Night Chicago Died," but then decided it wasn't really an A-with-B situation.

Re Sarah Bernhardt's hand

There is a book I own that has various famous peoples hands as made via moulds. I suspected that was what Wire was singing about, and in the latest biog book they confirmed it.

Funnily enough, it does not include SB's hand.

Andy Partridge is fairly good at doing this, though fair play to him for owning up about it so cheerfully:

Todd Bernhardt: Okay, let's talk about "(Living through another) Cuba".

Andy Partridge: Well, first off I must apologize for my historical crapness here, because the Cuban Missile Crisis was not 1961, as I say in the lyric. It's one of at least three factual blunders I've made in my song lyrics over the years.

TB: What are the other two?

AP: Well, for this one, I should have said, "It's 1962 again and we are piggy in the middle." You know, Britain's little place between Great Big Russia and Great Big America.

TB: Right...

AP: And in the song, "This Is the End," I say, "They might drop Fat Boy on your town," but of course the atom bomb was not "Fat Boy" -- it was "Little Boy" and "Fat Man." So, I weirdly combined the two of them to make a non-existent atom bomb -- "Fat Boy".

TB: The new atom bomb! The Third Wave.

AP: Yeah. The one they're going to drop on Swindon, I'm sure, just to tidy the place up a bit! (laughs) To correct all the problems we have with our architecture. And also, in the song "Rip Van Reuben," the man who wrote the Wizard of Oz was L. Frank Baum, not L. Frank Richards. Frank Richards wrote the Billy Bunter school books. So, I should check my facts before I do my lyrics!

TB: You and I had also talked about another one when we discussed "I'd Like That." In those lyrics, you have all these historical couples, and you put together Helen and Hector, who were not really a couple.

AP: No. Dammit. (pauses) That one's poetic license!

From the Chalkhills website.

in 'Joy Without Pleasure', Daniel Johnston confuses joy with pleasure and pleasure with joy

In the intro to "The Tackro", Lee Perry poses the question, "Have you ever met anyone uglier than you, Van Cleef?", apparently under the impression that Lee Van Cleef's character in "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly" is The Ugly when, of course, he's The Bad and Eli Wallach is The Ugly. I don't think it's the only reggae song where this mistake is made either.

Pavement's "Give It A Day":
"Increase Mather told her Dad, 'I roundly disagree with you'"

Increase Mather was a man.

Another one — “Box Elder, MO” (he meant “MT”).

In the theatrical trailer, Angel Eyes is referred to as The Ugly and Tuco, The Bad.[17] This is due to a translation error; the original Italian title translates to "The Good [one], the Ugly [one], the Bad [one]".

Maybe they only showed the theatrical trailer in Jamaica!

K-Fed famously confused paparazzi for Pavarotti

In "Livin' In The Future", Bruce Springsteen confuses the future with the past.

also confuses himself with John Prine.

Taylor Swift's latest album has a lot of confusion about common phrases. "Paint me out to be bad," in The Man, confuses "paint me as" with "make me out to be." In London Boy, she's very confused about what "home is where the heart is" means. "They say home is where the heart is / but that's not where mine lives." She's agreeing with the platitude that she thinks she's questioning.

My my, on board the HMS Bellerophon, lying off Rochefort, a coastal town in western France, Napoleon did surrender.

OK, scansion needs some work.

confusing "military surrender" with "falling in love"

"Uma Thurman" by Fall Out Boy, where I'm pretty sure they confused Dick Dale's Miserlou with the theme for the Munsters.

In London Boy, she's very confused about what "home is where the heart is" means. "They say home is where the heart is / but that's not where mine lives." She's agreeing with the platitude that she thinks she's questioning.

I think she's tweaking the platitude – she doesn't consider London to be her home, even though her heart (a dude) lives there. Admittedly, it's not the greatest line.

In the New Order song, Crystal. Bernard Sumner confuses honey with something that cannot be bought for money.

Whereas Honey is easily bought within many food and heath stores.

To be fair, he could be listing these as distinct features of love. (1) It's like honey. (2) Additionally, you can't buy, it with money.

Not a song per se BUT William Carlos Williams once wrote, "Your thighs are appletrees whose blossoms touch the sky. Which sky? The sky where Watteau hung a lady's slipper."

He appears to have been thinking of "The Swing," by Fragonard.

In the Muppet Movie song "I Hope that Something Better Comes Along," Rowlf sings about "the little feet of tadpoles," but tadpoles don't have feet, as Kermit points out.

"She made a monkey out of ol' King Kong" -- such a good lyric since King Kong was a gorilla.

I think she's tweaking the platitude – she doesn't consider London to be her home, even though her heart (a dude) lives there. Admittedly, it's not the greatest line.

What does the original proverb mean? If it is "no matter where I roam, my heart will always be at home", then this tweaking makes sense. If it is "no matter where I'm from, wherever my heart is atm - that's my home", this seems like a pointless thing for her to say; if anything, it undercuts the romantic message.

I believe it's the latter - and it may be pointless, but I think that's what she means. Whether she's visiting London or is at home, London isn't her home; but her "heart" lives there.

It would almost be better if she were misreading!

In Madison Avenue's "Don't Call Me Baby", the singer says, "You're sure misunderstood" in reference to a particular man's eligibility to refer to her as 'baby'.

What she means is that he's 'misinformed' about his position. It would also work to say, "You've surely misunderstood". This has bugged me since 1999.

In 'It's Alright' Sterling Void confuses "dictation" and "dictatorship". This has bugged me since 1989.

It's surprising is that Neil Tennant just rolled with it in the PSB cover version. I'd have thought it'd be the sort of English up with which he would not put.

I think "Tom Sawyer" by Rush is more about Huckleberry Finn, but I'm more than willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.

"What they say about his company..." Who? Becky Thatcher? The daughter of the county judge? What are they saying about her? Tell me.

Acc to this, it was based both on Tom Sawyer (as an individualist) and Pye Dubois's "Louie the Warrior": https://www.loudersound.com/features/the-story-behind-the-song-tom-sawyer-by-rush

Lil Yachty re: his like "My new bitch yellow / she blow that dick like a cello": "I fucked up. I thought Squidward played the cello. He don't. That's a flute. I fucked up."

(also, he actually plays the clarinet)

"What you say about his company is what you say about society" - my guess is this more about respecting individuals' non-conformity and freedom of association (e.g. Tom skipping school and hanging out with whoever he wanted); I don't think Peart was racist at all but I'm not sure this was really meant to be a statement about racism, except in the sense that everyone should have the same individual freedoms.

"Dictation" can mean "the act of commanding arbitrarily" so it is correctly uses in "It's Alright".

Perhaps, but the phrase is not idiomatic and sounds a little strange. Anglophones do not describe North Korea as a place where "dictation is being forced". We call it a dictatorship.

"What you say about his company is what you say about society" -- My interpretation was more like, whatever horrible things they would say about Jim, well, you could say the same damn things about society as a whole.

That would probably be a more meaningful statement. I'm just not sure it's what Peart intended.

He was obsessed with themes of solitude, individualism, non-conformity, and liberty at that time, including on much of the rest of the album, and it's what comes across in his quotes about this song as well.

Darren Hanlon's "Cheat the Future": "Over three hundred thousand stars make up the solar system"
I saw him perform this live, and beforehand, he explained that he realized too late that the solar system has just one star (and was mixing up "galaxy" and "solar system").

I think a lot of "Tom Sawyer" can be explained by the fact that it was slapped together rather quickly. It doesn't make tons of sense, just sounds sorta cool.

Usually Peart's lyrics are quite transparent, but "Tom Sawyer" makes no sense to me. Unlike the New World Man or the Digital Man, I don't even know what we're supposed to think about this character.

Back to the main topic, I think Kanye does this a lot in a kind of troll-y way. The one that comes to mind is "I keep it 300, like the Romans."

Lyrically, "Tom Sawyer" is credited to Pye Dubois and Peart, and was apparently adapted from Dubois's poem, which I can't find rn, so that's probably why it's different from Peart's usual style and may not all fully cohere. I don't think it's incomprehensible that the character is a tough-minded free thinker whom we are not supposed to put down as arrogant, though.

but did he con his pals into painting that damn fence?

Ha, I think that might be what "he gets high on you/And the space he invades, he gets by on you" is getting at - he looks out for himself, even at your expense sometimes. It's about today's Tom Sawyer, so a modern-day warrior who is like Twain's hero.

The space he invades is clearly a reference to the popular arcade video game "Space Invaders."

However I suspect Peart was actually thinking of Frogger.

It doesn't make tons of sense, just sounds sorta cool.

Very willing to let this be the final word on this subject!

In "Durham Town (The Leavin')" Roger Whittaker, when singing of the river whose banks he used to sit on as a boy, confuses the Tyne with the river that Durham actually stands on, the Wear.

In "Lee Remick" by the Go-Betweens, Robert Forster confuses Ireland, where he claims the eponymous heroine comes from, with the USA, where she actually came from.