Hearing It Wrong

I remember I used to like browsing around kissthisguy.com for that.

I have trouble hearing lyrics. Just physically making out the words, especially with all the other sounds obscuring them. Even when we’re not talking about someone who thinks shouting is a form of singing. Or distorting the voice with effects. And I’ve learned that often it’s better not to pay attention to the lyrics. I’ve had too many good songs with catchy music ruined by listening to what they’re actually saying. (Prime example: Meat Loaf’s Anything For Love. “But I’ll never forgive myself if we don’t… go all the way. Tonight. I would do anything for love, but I won’t do that.” Dude, that’s not love. )

I do have fun with mondegreens, though. Sometimes just deliberately mishearing the words to come up with something fun and new. For example, I commissioned this piece based on one, and it makes me happy.

DCFC

2 Likes

Judging by that fight in the movie, he’d be more afraid of pinball machines. :laughing:

Drops of Jupiter by Train

“Van Halen is overrated.”

Well, he’s right about the inconsistent Hagar era. I’d say Cherone but we all agreed that brief era sucked.

2 Likes

TIL!

(I’ve only heard that chorus, AFAIK.)

2 Likes

Has no-one said this yet? Colour me surprised, then, I guess I’ll be the one to do it!

The actual term for a misunderstanding leading from the mishearing of a song lyric is mondegreen. Little fact there for those of you do pub quizzes and the like, in case it ever comes up.

5 Likes

You forgot to tell the origin of the word.

There’s an old Scottish ballad called “The Bonny Earl of Murray” in which a young girl once misheard the line “and laid him on the green” as “and Lady Mondegreen”. Not the first example of someone mishearing lyrics, certainly, but that girl was American writer Sylvia Wright, and she coined the phrase as a result of that mishearing. The word joined the English language officially when it was added to the dictionary in 2000.

2 Likes

That little tidbit would be right at home in the Single Random Facts thread :laughing:

Well this is officially how I’ll be singing the song from now on

2 Likes

Is Crow saying “bat guano” or “that’s one O”? I hear the former every time.

2 Likes

Weird Al’s entire Smells Like Nirvana showcased how hard it was to understand Nirvana’s lyrics.

4 Likes

For the past 30 years I always thought Cyndi Lauper’s Girls Just Want to Have Fun lyric “When the Working Day is Done” was: “What in the World Can They Ask 'em”.
*Shrug

3 Likes

I haven’t listened to that one in a long time, but I still remember some of the lyrics.

“And I’m mumbling and I’m screaming
Still I don’t know what I’m singing!”

And then later on, “Buy our album, we’re Nirvana!”

3 Likes

Money for nothing, and your checks for free.

2 Likes

Bank of America’s new slogan…

EDIT: Ooh, I think the quote-obliterator has gotten smarter.

1 Like

I wasn’t guilty of mishearing it that way, but I love one misinterpretation of Jim Croce’s Bad Bad Leroy Brown.

(the misinterpretation)

He got a raisin in his shoe.

(the correct lyric)

He got a razor in his shoe.

3 Likes

Rage Against the Machine singing, “We’re the renegades of funk,” will always sound to me like, “With a random case of funk.” :slightly_smiling_face:

2 Likes

Jarrod Alonge did a series of misheard lyric videos on YouTube addressing mostly hardcore music. Most of the videos are hard to find but they are seriously funny. I really don’t like hardcore but my kid did so It’s especially funny to me.

1 Like

I always thought the chorus from Seal’s Kiss From A Rose started “Baby, I compare you to a kiss from a rose on the GRAVE.”

I mean, that’s a very Gothic, bittersweet image. Fits the whole opening of the song and the theme of darkness and light merging together., right?

Then I find out it’s “kiss from a rose on the grey.”

Grey what?

6 Likes

Hey man, amongst the hippest folks in showbiz, this legendary multi-talented megastar is called simply, The Grey

2 Likes

Til Tuesday has a song that in the chorus always sounded to me like the girl was saying “Richard Scary”. Which I knew had to be wrong! My coworker said “Naw, she must be saying “This is scary.”

Then my other coworker shouted from the office “No, it’s ‘Voices Carry’! That’s literally the name of the song!”

6 Likes

Mr. Mister - Kyrie Eleison

I thought they were saying, “Give me a laser”

4 Likes

That would have been a much better song.

3 Likes