Songs where the songwriter confuses A with B

to be honest I choose to view the directions in that song as discrete items:

- coast to coast
- LA to Chicago
- across the north
- south to Key Largo

which could describe a trip from Boston to LA to Chicago to Philadelphia to Florida

^ a common itinerary for pimps and other assorted operators

not sure 'east california' is wrong, she could be taking a sly dig at the residents of west california there

You know, in the "Allentown" video when BJ sings "well the graduations hang on the wall," they show a shot of those photo collages with the senior portraits, and then into a montage of more "candid" photos.

Maybe he meant a "graduation photos" in the song and just left the word off.

In "My Girls," Panda Bear mistakenly uses one's social status as an example of a material thing, rather than an abstract concept.

In "Welcome to Heartbreak," Kanye West confuses heartbreak with jealousy, as well as confusing a child's report card with an item that one could reasonably describe as "brand new".

Re: "Punk Rock Girl" I think the "California Dreamin'" mix up is intentionally inaccurate.

In "My Girls," Panda Bear mistakenly uses one's social status as an example of a material thing, rather than an abstract concept.

although they do both fall on the self-oriented axis of Schwartz's circumplex model of universal values. I suspect that's how they got confused.

Slayer 'Silent Scream' - "Scattered, remnants of life/ Murder, a time to die/ Pain, suffrage..."

what about Bruce's "one legged dog" in the Wrestler song? it seems like he meant 3 legged :/

Sam Cooke's "Another Saturday Night" and every other song in which the singer confuses Frankenstein with his monster

In "Chicago Seven," Memphis Slim confuses the alleged conspirators behind the 1968 Chicago DNC protests with dead people, like the four killed at Kent State's protests in 1970:

"Everybody's talking about Chicago Seven, four more in Ohio, that makes eleven. Nobody seemed worried about all the black blood spilled, but they began to take notice when some of their own got killed."

Wire - "I'm Confusing A With B"

In "Bangkok", Alex Chilton confuses Indonesia with Thailand:

"Here's a little thing that's gonna please ya
Just a little town down in Indonesia"

I took my wife to a little town in Indonesia once.

Jakarta?

NO, WE WENT THERE BY PLANE LOLOLOLOL

^_^

in 'one in a million', axl rose confuses "small town white boy" with "insecure homophobic racist bigot"

― Charlie Howard

lol everytime this thread bumps I cant help laughing at this.

In "Do You Remember Rock'n'Roll Radio?", the Ramones confuse the end of the '70s with the end of the century.

In "My Girls," Panda Bear mistakenly uses one's social status as an example of a material thing, rather than an abstract concept.

this is next-level

"It's the end, the end of this centipede"

In Dig, by NOFX, Fat Mike confuses the value of gold in its raw form with the value of gold as a historic cultural artifact.

The excavation was a financial success
With artifacts of gold
The arrowheads went straight to the Smithsonian
The rest was melted down and sold

Even if you change the line to the right show, what exactly are Brooklyn Academy getting at there? I'm sure I would have heard about an episode of Seinfeld in which Kramer had "niggaz in his mouth".

― Dorianlynskey, Wednesday, November 26, 2008 10:17 AM (2 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

http://i.imgur.com/zi7hd.gif

Wire, "Practice Makes Perfect"

"'Cos you see up in my bedroom
I've got Sarah Bernhardt's hand"

... she had a leg missing not a hand

he sings "leg"

okay wow he doesn't maybe. he mumbles maybe "hand" like he's embarrassed tho, i don't think it's a mistake.

I am Whiney and I am PARODYING YOUR VIEWPOINT IN ALL CAPS (some dude) wrote this on thread most pathetic excuse for wordplay in Young Money's "Bedrock" on board I Love Music on Aug 25, 2010

"I could move through a room full of vultures nice
and I still turn heads...POLTERGEIST!"

-Fabolous on RichGirl's "Swagger Right," which is especially terrible because the movie he's thinking of is The Exorcist, not Poltergeist

In "Livin' In The Future", Bruce Springsteen confuses the future with the past. At least, I think he does:

Don't worry darlin', now baby don't you fret
We're livin' in the future and none of this has happened yet

I mean, if the things he mentions haven't happened yet, then he must be living in the past, right? Maybe I'm the one who's confused.

Maybe they're living in the future and the things that happen, happen even further into the future?

maybe by living in the future, he means that the lives they believe they are living are somehow holographically projected into the future, but their actual selves are safely in a better time in the past.

i don't know how you'd parse that other than 'these are things that could hypothetically happen, they have yet to happen'

holography. time travel. alternate dimensions. cryogenic preservation.

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.