Songs where the songwriter confuses A with B

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