The Ambiguous Lyric.

[GHT]

There's probably websites galore covering this subject, but do you have any personal recollections of a misheard lyric? Some can be seriously funny. Do share if you have, and if the ambiguity results in a swear word, well just use a few asterisks, we''ll get the gist.

When the late, Desmond Dekker, had a hit with his song, the Israelites, my wife asked me if Desmond was singing: "Me ears are alight." "Tell you what," I opined, "Get up in the morning slaving for bread, sir." "Sounds more like: "Get up in the morning, baked beans for breakfast."

A second example is that of Chip Taylor's song, sung by Juice Newton: Angel of the Morning.
The line that goes: "Just call me angel of the morning angel
Just touch my cheek before you leave me, baby
The lyrics underlined sounded, to my wife, thus: "Just smash my teeth before you leave me."

Years ago, at something like a Christmas function, the DJ played: "Ned Miller's, From a Jack to a King." Practically the whole audience sang: Farmer Jack, instead of From a Jack. Obviously a private joke, but it was amusing.

 

[Stanley Doble]

Here's an old one. Cher Gypsies Tramps and Thieves

Gypsies tramps and thieves, you hear it from the people of the town they're calling

Fleas, fleas, crabs and fleas, you see them on the people of the town they're crawling

lol


A personal one. In the song Sugar Shack I heard the line " she wears a black leotard and bedart hair". I could never figure out what bedart hair was until I heard a version by a different singer. Turns out it was "she wears a black leotard and her feet are bare." Only puzzled me for 35 years.

 

[LizzieMaine]

There are many people over the years in Boston, Milwaukee, and Atlanta who have sung the last line of The Star Spangled Banner as "...and the home of the Braves."

 

[Trapped in T-wilight Zone]

For what it is worth? When I was in Kindergarten, they tried to teach us to "sing along". I kept asking the teacher what the words really were and the teacher kept telling me to "just sing along with everyone else and it will be wonderful"! I thought it sounded terrible and some of it didn't make sense. I kept asking but the teacher never answered my question.
"School days, school days, dear old golden rule days. Reading and writing and 'rithmatic, Taco the tuna and his hickory stick"
I think I was in high school before I found out what the last line was.
And my high school teachers didn't usually answer my questions either.

 

[Trapped in T-wilight Zone]

By the way, I learned the last line when I found it in a book on my own.
And I swear, I think most of the class sang it the way I wrote it.

 

[Miss Moonlight]

Jimy Hendrix- Excuse me while I kiss this guy.
The lyrics are actually, of course, 'excuse me while I kiss the sky.' But this mishear is so common, there has long been a website of misheard lyrics named for it. KissThisGuy.com

And this one I never misheard, but a friend told me about someone in her high school who thought Stevie Nicks' Edge of Seventeen 'white winged dove' said, "Just a one winged dove..." and they would finish, "Going nowhere, flying in circles."

 

[GHT]

There are many people over the years in Boston, Milwaukee, and Atlanta who have sung the last line of The Star Spangled Banner as "...and the home of the Braves."

Listen to Canada's anthem: Is it:
Oh Canada, we stand on guard for thee... Or,
Oh Canada, we stand on cars and freeze?

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

Don't forget the Classic of this genre: The Bee Gees' More Than A Woman, aka Bald-Headed Woman.

 

[Espee]

And which is it really, in "A Hard Day's Night"?
"And why I love to come home, cuz when I get you alone, you know I feel all right"
or
"And why on earth should I moan..."?
I always thought it was the former... then I saw it in print as the latter (in 2015)... but I've also seen it in sheet music as the former... and I'll have to admit the "moan" of the latter would fit in with the semi-complaining mood of the song.
(Listening now, it does sound like the latter. If the former, Lennon sang it sloppy... and there are a few Beatles records with sloppy but "close enough for rock and roll" lines left in.)

 

[scotrace]

My daughter:

"I love that song, Cream Old Lady Marmalade."

 

[Edward]

I remember reading an interview with an NME journalist who recalled one of his friends mishearing the Bat out of Hell lyric about the "sudden curve" as "soddin' curve", and wondering why Meatloaf used "such a feeble swear"....

MegaDeth covered the Sex Pistols' Anarchy in the UK back in the 80s (singing it as "Anarchy in the USA"). I guess Dave Mustaine had never heard of the N.M.E. (New Musical Express) or, indeed, a council tenancy, as he delivered these as, respectively, "enemy" and "C**tlike tendency". That has to be one of the more embarassing mishears, having been captured on record....

I recall, aged about ten, hearing Duran Duran's Girls on Film as "Goats on Stilts".

Jimy Hendrix- Excuse me while I kiss this guy.
The lyrics are actually, of course, 'excuse me while I kiss the sky.' But this mishear is so common, there has long been a website of misheard lyrics named for it. KissThisGuy.com.

I've heard a story about Jimi being wildly amused when told of a foaming-at-the-mouth, anti-rock and roll type who heard it this way and preached against it. So amused that he deliberately baited that type by singing it that way himself at least once. I have noidea if this is apocryphal, but I'd like to believe it's true.

 

[GHT]

Robert Palmer: (not my scene)
Addicted To Love
Might as well face it, you're a dick with a glove.

I wonder if Madge realises this:
Madonna: Like a Virgin
Like a virgin touched for the thirty-first time.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

And here's a gem from 1928 by the inimitable Jack Buchanan. Try to correctly make out the lyrics.

[video=youtube;f0K5_2nm_Kk]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0K5_2nm_Kk[/video]

 

[HoosierDaddy]

[video=youtube;cylsLhQaPFw]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cylsLhQaPFw[/video]

 

[Stanley Doble]

I thought it was "might as well face it you're a dick head in love".

A guitar teacher told me when Guantanamera came out all his students wanted to learn it after they heard it on the radio. He got requests for Once On A Meadow, One Ton Of Metal and I don't know what all.

Speaking of requests what about the guy who phoned the radio station and said " I usually don't go for new songs but I like that one you played the other day, I'm Inclined To Knock Music". It was Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.

 

[Espee]

Last week I heard what was pretty obviously a Shakira track (it had that "break" in her voice over and over) and for a while I thought the lyric was "and the stork makes love to the hummingbird" which sounds somewhat impractical. By the time it ended, I realized it was "and the stars make love to the universe."

 

[AtomicEraTom]

lol lol lol

There are many people over the years in Boston, Milwaukee, and Atlanta who have sung the last line of The Star Spangled Banner as "...and the home of the Braves."

I don't think any song has more misheard lyrics than "Blinded By the Light"

 

[winterland1]

Creedence Clearwater Revival Bad Moon on the Rise. There's a bathroom on the right.

 

[robrinay]

Stand-up comedian Peter Kay has collected a few - Google - Peter Kay misheard lyrics

 

[HoosierDaddy]

Stand-up comedian Peter Kay has collected a few - Google - Peter Kay misheard lyrics

Such as my earlier post #14 on this thread...