Misheard lyrics

hahaha up til this moment looking it up, i thought it was "reoccuring like the reverend al green"

Kendrick Lamar, Money Trees

Heard: Everybody gon' respect the shoe/But the one in front of the gun lives forever

Actual: Everybody gon' respect the shooter/But the one in front of the gun lives forever

Black Sabbath

Heard: Can you help me? Thought you were my friend.
Actual: Can you help me occupy my brain?

I figured out the right lyrics decades ago, but was reminded of it today

Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy

Heard: the only cola that I support would be a union C.O.L. that costs your flaming allowance!
Actual: the only cola that I support would be a union C.O.L.A.(Cost Of Living Allowance)!

not sure why that's tickling me so much, but bravo

Maybe you only heard it on the radio but the lyrics came with the album so you could fully enjoy their hilarious po-faced politicisms. (I kid, slightly, but that one is a highlight.)

I read a Christgau review of an early Emmy Lou Harris album a few months ago and then absolutely misheard it this morning as "I would rub my asshole / in the bosom of Abraham"

Listening to New Order for the first time in years after reading Hooky's book and remembered this one:

"Oh Allah is like the flowers..."

"Let me take you down"
"(Why?)"
"Because I'm going to!"

"And I wanna liquefy everybody gone by". Is it "gone by" or "gone dry"? I've always heard it as "gone by".

My first exposure to 'Wild Horses' was hearing the Sundays' cover back in my teen years, and because enunciation wasn't always Harriet Wheeler's strong suit, I heard her sing something like

Oh, let's do supper
But don't ache and pain
A lovely disorder
Just like Lois Lane

I always heard the woman’s voice in the refrain of Take Me Home Tonight by Eddie Money as “Feed my little baby”.

I was just listening to a podcast yesterday where the host had (in childhood) heard it the same! It was on Rob Harvilla's 60 Songs that Explain the 90s, but I can't remember which episode I was listening to at the time.

the woman in question: Ronnie Spector!

that was the part I only just learned like a year ago, or that the lyric before was "just like Ronnie sang" (though Eddie Money sings so mush-mouthed sometimes that's probably why)

it is the 'My Heart Will Go On' episode, and the thought of it made me die laughing. that you, Rob?

Sara
Sara
Stop operatin’ your eyes

For years I thought that the line in Dylan's 'Jokerman' about "a small dog licking your face" was actually "a small dark look in your face".

I discovered a few minor Dylan mishearings on "Isis" while watching the Scorsese Rolling Thunder film the other day. A song I've been singing along to for 25 years, mind you.

"where the creek used to rise" I had as "where the creek hits the rise."

"You mystical child" as "Oh, I missed ya, good child."

"In the drizzlin' rain" as "with your dress all in rags."

I used to hear the lyrics of "Tangled Up in Blue" wrong and have never quite reconciled the written lyric vs. my sense of what the lyric *ought* to be. E.g.:

We drove that car as far as we could, abandoned it out west
Split up on the docks that night, both agreein' it was best

vs.

Split up on a dark sad night, both agreein' it was best

For years I thought that the line in Dylan's 'Jokerman' about "a small dog licking your face" was actually "a small dark look in your face".

Huh… I guess I did too, until just now.

I used to hear the lyrics of "Tangled Up in Blue" wrong and have never quite reconciled the written lyric vs. my sense of what the lyric *ought* to be. E.g.:

We drove that car as far as we could, abandoned it out west
Split up on the docks that night, both agreein' it was best

vs.

Split up on a dark sad night, both agreein' it was best

― ; (Ye Mad Puffin), Saturday, January 1, 2022 5:46 PM (twenty-nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Damn, I've thought it was "docks that night" for decades.

woah. also in the "docks" camp.

I feel obligated to inform the Swedish Academy.

Lol

For 25 years I thought the line in "Maybe Partying Will Help" was "what about the people who don't have what I ain't got" but apparently it's D. Boon's singing "what I have got" with a weird inflection?!?! I always thought the double negative was purposely opaque.

Cheese On Fire
And Cheese Burnin'

Amy Holland - Cheese On Fire

Ramones - Somebody Put Something in My Drink

Another night out on the street
Stopping for my usual seat
The bartender bleats

(Oh, bartender, please)

Suzi Quatro - Shine My Machine

You can't knock the rock 'n' roll rocket
It's what keeps this city alive

but really:

You can't knock a rocker for rockin'
It's what keeps this city alive

Hers is good too, but I think I'll cling to what I've been hearing for 15 years. After typing it out, I also think "rock 'n' roll racket" might do even more favors for the rest of the song's lyrics.

At the drive-in/In the old man's barn Ford

Gorillaz - Rhinestone Eyes

I got a feeling now my heart is frozen
All the birdseeds and Michael Rosen

In XTC's "Easter Theatre," I'd always heard one line of the chorus as:

"If we all breathe in and roll away the stone"

...which makes a semipagan springtime song actually about Easter.

Faith No More - Death March

It's Dove Bars Death March, baby!

I just discovered today that the Climax Blues Band sang "Kept on looking for a sign in the middle of the night"

I always heard "Kept on looking for the sun in the middle of the night"

Which I think I still prefer.

I wonder why
He's the greatest dancer

Oh, what, wow

I don't blame myself for not hearing that unusual exclamation correctly.

You and I and everyone, alive
We can run into the fire
I’m a trust fund baby
Yeah, I’m a trust fund baby

I went down to Miami,
I let a girl name a salmon.

I remember long ago thinking the “you know I’m such a fool for you” line in Let it Linger by the Cranberries as “I’m searching for food for you” which gave me a pretty skewed wilderness-survival impression of the song

loooool

so that's where they got their band name!

I know of a Cranberries cover band called the Craisins.

For years I thought the "it's a game, it's a game, well let's call it a shame" couplet in "Goin' Through The Motions" by Blue Oyster Cult was "it's a girl, it's a girl, well let's call it a-Shirl."

higher and higher and higher and higher and higher and higher
kissing the spider

For as long as I’ve been alive, I thought the lyric was “my regal robes of the forest / would be satin, not cotton, not tinse”.

I always thought that “tinse” was some actual fabric, or a reference to tinsel. The word Bert actually sings is “chintz”.

I had always heard it as chintz, but had no idea what that meant until looking it up just now. I knew that the adjective "chintzy" usually means cheap/lousy. Actually refers to woodblock-printed cotton originating in India. It's one of those things where I'm scrolling through GIS results like, "ohhhhh, so that's what that's called."

https://www.vam.ac.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/2015HN5366_jpg_l_93a4c450a85b16fe802d93e616d43963.jpg

Bob Marley - Jammin'

Jah seated in Mount Zion
And rules all creation
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/26/58/78/26587861afe4afbd77f92ff00f99eff5.jpg

(yeah, we're...)

from green earrings by steely dan

"the rings of randy's eyes"

― i also enjoy in line skateing (spazzmatazz), Sunday, June 8, 2014 8:11 PM (nine years ago) bookmarkflaglink

Came here to post this, glad I ctrl+F'd first. Though I hear "Randy's eye" singular lol

I always thought the line in The Pet Shop Boys "Being Boring"--"We dressed up and fought and thought 'make amends'"--was "We dressed up in thoughts and thoughts make amends". I was wrong, but I still think mine is better.
― The Illiterate (moriarty), Sunday, 14 January 2007 03:34 (seventeen years ago) bookmarkflaglink

I also thought it was "we dressed up in thoughts and thoughts make amends" for the last however many decades I've been listening to this song for, and it was always one of my favourite PSB lyrics, but their official website says "dressed up and fought and thought 'make amends'", so I guess that must be what Neil is actually singing