The OFFICIAL Unofficial Achewood Message Board
Trivial Pursuits => Arts & Entertainment => Topic started by: V-Adore on October 03, 2003, 04:05:00 am
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Inspired by a post in the CAT TOWN thread...
Misheard lyrics: we all love them, we all hate them, we all have them. Sometimes they spoil the song; sometimes they actually make it viable. Sometimes you can't stop hearing them in the place of the real lyrics. What've been your most traumatic or nostalgic misheard-lyrics memories?
Mine, about half-nostalgic, half-traumatic:
When I was in fifth grade, I woke up every morning to an oldies station on my clock radio. One morning, I was woken up to "Age of Aquarius," a song I was suitably familiar with as a boomer-echo baby.. but I had a band test that day, under the hated Mr. Criswell, and so the song spontaneously mutated. "Mystic crystal revelation" became, clear as day, "Mr. Criswell's revelations."
I can still hear it sometimes.
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OK, so there are a couple but the only one I can think of off hand would be a Radiohead song...
There had to go look it up - Thinking About You.
Every time I hear the lines
"Been thinking about you
Your eyes are on my wall
Your teeth are over there"
for some reason, and looking at them and not listening to it now, I hear one line of it as "so rake a turkey".
If you have it at hand, check it out. I'd need to find the CD it's on which right now would take longer than I have left conscious!
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I believe that would be the "Pablo Honey" CD, although they're not in front of me at the moment.
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Carry a laser down this road that I must follow....
Is probably my favorite one, along with that George Harrison song that goes
All I've got to do is a- to love you
All I've got to be is a- be happy
All it's gonna take is a- big load of bacon
Look away, Look away, Look away
Or something like that.
And in church when I was a little guy, we used to sing this hymn that went
Lead On, Oh Kinky Turtle....
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And in church when I was a little guy, we used to sing this hymn that went
Lead On, Oh Kinky Turtle....
HOLY COW ALOHADAWG ARE YOU MY BIG BROTHER?
I swear to you, this is my brother's story. His name is Steve. Is your real name AlohaSteve?
Also when I was a kid Steve pointed out a misprint in the hymnal that isntructed us to sing "let the poople rejoice."
My own personal miseheard-lyrics story involved Stevie Nicks. You know the song..."Just like the white-winged dove sings a song (sounds like she's singin') -- whoo, baby, whoo, whoo..."
Well, I heard the lyrics as "one-winged dove." Which, being the analytical historian that I am, I interpreted to imply peace without honor, vis-a-vis Vietnam. It was only about a year ago that I realized that this was pretty much ludicrous and I'd been singing the wrong lyrics since I was five.
Another oft-misheard lyric is Eiffel65's "Blue." The actual lyrics are gibberish on the chorus, but I personally always heard them as "I"m blue, if I were green I would die" which I thought was awfully clever. Other variations here (http://www.amiright.com/misheard/artist/eiffel65.shtml).
And then, of course, there's everyone's favorite: "Excuse me, while I kiss this guy."
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For years when listening to Blitzkrieg Bop I thought they were saying "let's kick butt" at the parts where they were actually saying the title. And I just assumed I was hearing "shoot 'em in the back now" wrong but that turned out to be correct.
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Jane's Addiction, "Been Caught Stealing."
Instead of hey alright, if I get by, it's mine....
I heard hey alright, pumpkin pie, it's mine.
Visions of Perry Farrell sneaking up to people's windowsills and making off with their cooling pies.
I'm a goober.
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I'm actually quite happy about one of mine: The beatles' "I'm So Tired". Instead of
And curse Sir Walter Raleigh...
I always heard
And curse the walls around you...
I have yet to find a place to use it, but I rather like the line.
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Jane's Addiction, "Been Caught Stealing."
Instead of hey alright, if I get by, it's mine....
I heard hey alright, pumpkin pie, it's mine.
I'm a goober.
I'm a goober, too, although I thought it was:
Hey alright, fuckin' pie, it's mine
He definitely says "pie" there, maybe subconsciously he was hungry for pie.
I mean, who isn't?
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Until this moment, I thought the line was "It's all right, fuckin' bright, that's right."
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He does say something different the two times he comes to this line.
I won't even start with what I thought Paul Simon was singing in "Kodachrome" (before I knew the title of the song).
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He does say something different the two times he comes to this line.
I won't even start with what I thought Paul Simon was singing in "Kodachrome" (before I knew the title of the song).
I always got confused by that one.
And I could have sworn in Renee and Georgette Magritte... he sang something about penguins...
Indeed he did but I was young and had no fuck*ng idea why penguins would come into it then.
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I'm actually quite happy about one of mine: The beatles' "I'm So Tired". Instead of
And curse Sir Walter Raleigh...
I always heard
And curse the walls around you...
I have yet to find a place to use it, but I rather like the line.
Wait, you mean they aren't saying "the walls around you"? NO WAY!
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Wait, you mean they aren't saying "the walls around you"? NO WAY!
'S true: check some of these (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=%22and+curse+sir+walter%22)! Although this guy (http://www.saywhat.sphosting.com/b/beatles/imsotired.shtml) heard "the walls around you" too. We should all go live on a farm together!
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Add me to the "curse the walls around you" crowd.
~Paul
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So wait...
You thought the line was:
And curse the walls around you HE was such a stupid get?
Really?
He (the walls) was?
I think it doesn't help that they sing "Raleigh" as "Rally," but I can't imagine anyone actually thinking that it was "the walls around" as opposed to "sir walt".
The and Sir sound nothing alike.
Now I think you're just making your mishearings up.
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Another one that occurred to me today: in R.E.M.'s "Begin the Begin," I consistently misheard "the only vote that matters" as "the only bird that matters." And honestly, I still prefer mine -- it repeats earlier bird-hand symbolism of the song and simultaneously means virtually nothing, which means it's a pretty good early R.E.M. lyric.
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Here's a few lame ones:
My best friend's twin sister was convinced that "Mirror in the Bathroom" by the (English) Beat was "meet her in the bathroom."
Before I knew the title, thought that Primus "Too Many Puppies" was in fact "Too Many Poppies." I dunno, it seemed to make sense at the time. Maybe I thought it was some sort of anti-heroin message (cut me some slack, I was still pretty naive at 17). "Too many poppies/re trained to kill"?
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So wait...
You thought the line was:
And curse the walls around you HE was such a stupid get?
Really?
He (the walls) was?
Actually, the exact way I misheard it was And curse the walls around me for such a stupid git
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Looking at that link for misheard lyrics JL posted, I could list about three hundred alone from By The Way that I misheard. But then that's because Keidas never sings that clearly, and his lyrics tend to make little sense anyway, let alone poetic sense.
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Well, I was thinking this morning that we haven't flogged this particular dead hoss again, and in the interests saving time I thought I'd post this odd site, which in addition to detailing misheard song lyrics ad nauseum (and in some cases, inducing nausea with a single entry) has catalogued them in a way that allows some ranking and scoring!
And so we have the most misheard song of all time - "Blinded by the Light"
and many, many of the most creative misheard appropriations of the word "douche" imaginable.
This the same site JLD Posted earlier, but a page dedicated to my favorite misheard lyrics of all time -
Enjoy! (http://www.amiright.com/misheard/artist/manfredmannsearthband.shtml)
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I had actually never heard of Blinded By the Light until I was watching the Vacant Lot and one of the sketches was about a group of guys getting into a huge fight over the lyrics. Apparently my lack of culture knows no bounds.
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I had actually never heard of Blinded By the Light until I was watching the Vacant Lot and one of the sketches was about a group of guys getting into a huge fight over the lyrics. Apparently my lack of culture knows no bounds.
I feel your pain (well, sort of), since I am apparently the only person on the planet Earth who hears the first few lines of "Help Me Rhonda" as intended and not as "since she put me down, there're owls puking in my bed."
(How do you get that, anyway? Or is this a thing I will never, ever get?)
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Although I am not sure what the real words are, I did not picture large birds pelting me with pellets of fur and bone from the first line of the song.
That said: What the hell are the real words?
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What the hell are the real words?
Well since she put me down I 've been out doin' in my head (http://www.cabinessence.com/brian/lyrics/summer_days.html#6)
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Huh?
"Since she put me down I have been out doing in my head"
Does he mean out doing-in my head? Like heavy drinking? or doing her in his head? out-doing in his head?
Knowing the real words doesn't help here. The owl puking makes more sense to me.
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I always thought it was "since she put me down, I've been all through it in my head." Like he's been working through it, you know?
... Okay, who has Brian Wilson's phone number? Let's settle this.
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Oh- um, I can't vouch for any reliability of those lyrics.
If you can find better ones, please post them!
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According to the lyric sheet in the "Ultimate Beach Boys" collection CD, the lyrics are exactly as V-Adore posted.
That site is just plain WRANG, yo.
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It IS the only one that actually makes sense...
Not that I expect the Beach Boys to make sense.