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alt title(s): I Thought They Said
Yotsuba sings about the true nature of life.
She got a new apartment
It's out on the escarpment
And in her glove compartment
Are my songs
She hasn't even heard them
Since she found out what the words meant
She decided she preferred them
All wrong
Barenaked Ladies, Testing 1-2-3
Tom Petty has been described as Bob Dylan's interpreter; oddly, neither of these two mush-mouthed singers are particularly famous for producing mondegreens , the phenomenon of misheard song lyrics. Sometimes it's lack of correct enunciation, sometimes it's the speed or pitch that a lyric is delivered at, but often, a song lyric or recited poem will become famous not for what it says, but for what it sounds like it says to the uncareful ear.
The term "mondegreen" was coined by writer Sylvia Wright in 1954, in an essay she wrote for Harper's Magazine. She wrote:
"When I was a child, my mother used to read aloud to me from Percy's Reliques. One of my favorite poems began, as I remember:
"Ye Highlands and ye Lowlands,
Oh, where hae ye been?
They have slain the Earl Amurray,
And Lady Mondegreen." The actual line is "And laid him on the green", from the anonymous 17th-century ballad "The Bonnie Earl O'Murray"."
On television, this can happen during commercial jingles, a Theme Tune, or even as the pivotal event in a Three Is Company plot.
It should be noted that a mondegreen is not quite as simple as a mistake or mishearing: they arise from the verified phenomenon that the breaks a listener hears between words often do not actually exist, but are inserted by the listener's mind (this is why you perceive speakers of foreign languages to be speaking fast and running their words together): had Hendrix actually been singing "kiss this guy," rather than "kiss the sky," it might well have sounded exactly the same, and thus is a common mondegreen with such lyrics.
Intentional mondegreens are a staple of filk, parody, comedy and "novelty" songs; for example, the band They Might Be Giants uses several in their songs as a reference to their childhoods in the 1950s and 1960s. Weird Al Yankovic is also known for referencing common mis-hearings of popular songs in his lyrics, often in ways which sound almost identical to the original. This is distinct from the more general use of parody lyrics, as the mondegreens are usually common, pre-existing ones which the lyricist is referencing, rather than a complete invention, as a way of playing with the trope.
Several animutations are based around a long series of intentional mondegreens, usually involving faux "lyrics" accompanying a confusing (often foreign-language) song. Someone who has read the faked lyrics often has trouble associating the real ones with the song afterwards. Finding soramimi (Japanese mondegreens, vaguely translating to "tricks of the ears") in songs from other languages is such a popular pastime in Japan that one well-known comedy show devotes a regular segment ("Soramimi Hour") to it. For instance, the refrain of the Scorpions' "You Give Me All I Need" was interpreted as "Yukimi onanii" — "watching the snow fall while pleasuring yourself." A soramimi of "Moskau" by Dschinghis Khan, can be found here.
In July 2008, the 2008 update of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary finally enshrined the word "mondegreen" in its pages. To celebrate this momentous event, Merriam Webster Online began soliciting examples from the public as part of a short-lived publicity campaign. A series of books (and page-a-day calendars) of mondegreens were put together by Gavin Edwards, the first of which is called ’Scuse Me While I Kiss This Guy and Other Misheard Lyrics.
Sometimes caused by bad diction, or bizarre lyrics. The lyrical equivalent of Malaproper. A game on Never Mind The Buzzcocks called "Indecipherable Lyrics" is based on the teams trying to deliberately come up with entire verses' worth of mondegreens for particularly mumbled songs. See also Something Something Leonard Bernstein.
Note: Examples below should be famous mondegreens or ones referenced in other works. Your own misheard lyrics need to go into the Troper Tales section.
Examples:
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A
- "Cheney's got a gun" instead of "Janie's got a gun" in the titular song by Aerosmith, a mondegreen which became strangely appropriate after the Dick Cheney shooting incident of 2006.
- And was subsequently turned into a parody song by The Bob Rivers Show.
- "Rock heel sway, talk heel sway" ("Walk this way, talk this way", Aerosmith, Walk This Way)
- "Do it like a lady" instead of "Dude looks like a lady" (both seemed equally appropriate in Mrs Doubtfire)
- Or "Do the Lucky Lady."
- This Troper always used to hear "You look like a lady."
- Doubly funny because the song itself is based on a mondegreen — the original version said "Cruising for a lady," but after one of the band members misheard the text the group decided to go with that instead.
- This troper thought the line from Love in an Elevator was "Gettin' it up while I'm going down." which works just as well.
- A common one for Quarantined by At The Drive In is "Have chicken with jello! Have chicken with jello!" (it's actually "have trigger, will travel"). Even more amusing if you think of it as an invitation to eat chicken with a former Dead Kennedys member, as opposed to just an odd combination of foods.
- Considering that this is At The Drive In we're talking about, are you SURE that's not the lyric?
- "Smilin' face and eleven eyes". ("and laughin' eyes", Beating Around the Bush by ACDC)
- "For those about to rock..... FUCK! .....we salute you!" (Originally "FIRE!" in, obviously, For Those About to Rock (We Salute You), another song by AC/DC.)
- "T.N.T." can become anything that you want it to become (this troper's favorite is A.M.D.).
- "Dirty Deeds! Thunderchief!!" ("Dirty Deeds! Done Dirt Cheap!!") also (Dirty Deeds! Done With Sheep!!)
- American Dragon: Jake Long—the line in the theme song, "it's destiny, what's up, G?" is repeatedly close-captioned as "his destiny will walk up sheets."
- "Evil one-eyed dragon/It's the American Dragon!" ("People, we're not braggin'")
- One line of the Aqua Teen Hunger Force theme song sometimes gets transcribed as "Ice on my fingers and my toes, and I'm a 'tard." It's really, "I'm a Taurus". Think about it: "ice" is slang for diamonds. Ice on my fingers and my toes and I'm a Taurus.
- "Fuck you wo tokashite" ("Boku o tokashite", Angela, How many?)
- "The mistaking of may" ("The mistake you don't make"), "Steal the feelings, don't focus, all the flames come" ("Steal the feelings, don't focus, on the flames girl"), "Cause one and wine and would inform me to, but it's 5! It's 5!" ("Could've sworn that wine/And one and four make two, but it's 5! It's 5!"), "Until the sunset gets a rest" ("Until the sunset gets all red"), "Hold the passion don't fade, and you decided he's your spouse" ("Hope the passion don't fade since you decided he's your spouse"), and "We were dealing, joking, dance for change, oh" ("Wheeling, dealing, joking things will change, girl") from Architecture in Helsinki's song It'5!
- "Australians are all ostriches" ("Australians all, let us rejoice") from the Australian national anthem.
- Let's put the whole song in here, okay?
"Australians all own ostriches,
4 minus 1 is three.
With olden royals, we're fair and loyal,
Our home is dirt by sea.
I learned to bounce on nature strips
In booties stitched with care.
In mystery's haze, let's harvest maize
And plant azaleas there.
Enjoy full trains and let us in
And dance Australia yeah!"
- "Australians let us all ring Joyce, for she is young and free..."
- "We've god damned soil and wealth for toil, Our land is dirt by sea..."
- "Australians all eat sausages, for breakfast, lunch and tea, with golden forks and silver spoons, our land is KFC..."
- Australians all, let us rejoice, four minus one is three...
- Also from Australia is the band Augie March, whose song, Thin Captain Crackers, Word Salad Lyrics aside, begins with "Here on the hill above the settlement", which sounds awfully like "Here on the hill above the Centrelink" - the public front of the government welfare system.
- "Strike Oedipus is killin' me strong" or "Stray cannabis is killin' me strong" from Mariah Carey's Always Be My Baby ("Time can't erase a feeling this strong"). This troper would like to note that she did not listen to this song by choice; it was always on her sister's favourite radio station.
- "A Vergazo Me Agarro." ("Out of Nothing At All." From the song by Air Supply.)
- "I was in jail before we met". ("I wasn't jealous before we met", Lay All Your Love on Me by ABBA.)
- "Portaloo, couldn't escape if I wanted to". ("Waterloo, couldn't escape if I wanted to", Waterloo also by ABBA.)
- Also from "Waterloo": "I feel like a wing-feathered goose." ("I feel like I win when I lose.")
- In the fadeout of "Summer Night City", a number of fans have claimed to hear Benny and Bjorn sing "fucking in the moonlight" (rather than "walking in the moonlight"). This mondegreen has persisted partially because of the "suspicious" fact that later releases have often faded out a few seconds earlier than usual, as if to cut out the line. It still comes up on forums every now and then on a slow day.
- "You can't help but face it/You're a dick with a glove." Robert Palmer's Addicted to Love
- The theme song for All In The Family ends with Edith and Archie singing, "Gee, our old La Salle ran great." It has been misheard as "We were all a salad race."
- "I'm not Jesus, Jesus wasn't fat! I'm not Jesus, I will not fuck you!" ("Jesus wasn't there" and "I will no forgive") from Apocalyptica's I'm Not Jesus featuring Corey Taylor on vocals.
B
- "There's been owls pukin' in my bed" ("I've been out doing in my head" from Help Me Rhonda by The Beach Boys.)
- The Beatles, natch.
- "Lucy and this guy with diamonds" or "Lucy's in a fight with Linus" (Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, by The Beatles)
- Interestingly enough, a mis-hearing of this song's titular line is what let to the writing of Judy in Disguise (with Glasses).
- "The girl with colitis goes by" (Lucy again — "The girl with kaleidoscope eyes"). This variation appeared in a Baby Sitters Club book, of all things.
- Michelle Branch thought that the Beatles song "Chicken to Ride" was wonderful as she was growing up, only to be bitterly disappointed when she learned it was actually "Ticket to Ride." She determined to make cooler lyrics for it.
- "some day monkey won't play piano song, play piano song" ("sont les mots qu'i vont tres bien ensemble, tres bien ensemble", Michelle by The Beatles). The Powerpuff Girls did an episode Meet the Beat-Alls where four villains joined forces and became legendary - Beatle references visual and verbal abound, together with this mondegreen.
- "And his Klingon wife doesn't understand" ("And his clinging wife doesn't understand" from Paperback Writer.)
- Face it. We wouldn't have half of their musical library if Bob Dylan hadn't misheard 'I can't hide' (I Want To Hold Your Hand) as 'I get high.'
- "But when I'm tired and lonely, she gives good head" ("But when I'm tired and lonely, she sees me to bed", Billy Idol, Rebel Yell)
- "Businessmen they drink my wine, ploughmen dig my herb" ("Businessmen they drink my wine, ploughmen dig my earth", Bob Dylan, All Along The Watchtower — reinforced by the fact that numerous covers of the song actually use the mondegreen, though the famous cover by Jimi Hendrix does not.)
- "The ants are my friends, they're blowin' in the wind" ("The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind") from Blowin' in the Wind by Bob Dylan.
- "Give me blood, or a band-aid" ("You give love a bad name", Bon Jovi You Give Love a Bad name)
- Also, "Shot through the heart, and you're too late" instead of "you're to blame") in the line right before that one. Clearly we both thought it was a song about a medical emergency.
- Alternatively, "Shot to the heart and you're too vain", which was how this troper used to hear it.
- "All I want is to have my piece of pie." (Peace of Mind by Boston)
- "Straight from the water/Straight from the wall of children!" ("Home" by Marc Broussard)
- "Diva is a female version of a hot slut." ("Diva is a female version of a hustler", Diva by Beyoncé.)
- "All the singer ladies." ("All the single ladies", Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It) by Beyoncé)
- "All the cigarettes" is another example of that same line.
- "All the single lettuce"
- "Somebody get the door." ("Soy un perdedor," from Loser by Beck.)
- This one was lampshaded in a VH-1 special on the best songs of the 90s, where various musicians and critics sang what they thought Beck was saying instead of the Spanish line.
- In defense of everyone who has ever misheard this line, Beck's pronunciation is quite slurred and off. If you heard it pronounced properly, most wouldn't recognize it as the line from the song.
- "Bald-Headed Woman" (More Than A Woman, by the Bee Gees)
- Same band, different song: "You come to me on a submarine" (should be "summer breeze"; How Deep Is Your Love
- "But still I complain that I never saw Lost" ("But still I can't claim that I'm innocent, lost", Noldor by Blind Guardian)
- Another by Blind Guardian: "While I'm on the toilet" ("Hold on, too late", Imaginations from the Other Side)
- When Brian Wilson was writing the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds album, his lyricist Tony Asher told him about a title he'd thought up for one of their songs: "Carol, I Know." Wilson thought he said "Caroline, No." After they cleared it up, they both agreed that mondegreen was better than the original and Caroline, No became the title.
- "My Candelabra" (My Kinda Lover by Billy Squier)
- "You can't live your life on the BBC", Baby Seat by Barenaked Ladies. As one might expect from the title, it's "...in the baby seat".
- The perfectly sensible "Son can you play me a melody" instead of the actual "Son can you play me a memory" from Billy Joel's Piano Man. *
This one was intentional, though: It's implied to be a Freudian Slip.
- Speaking of Joel, "We Didn't Start The Fire" is a rich, powerful vein of Mondegreens.
- In the song Crazy, Britney's obviously saying "I'm so excited. I need to pee," but apparently it's "I'm so excited. I'm in too deep."
- A more recent Spears song relies entirely on a mondegreen as the point of the song - "All of the boys and all of the girls are begging to / if you seek Amy" makes no sense until you realize what "If you seek Amy" sounds like if you say it rapidly. The rest of the song is actually about the search for some chick named Amy, just to make the lyrics sound cleaner.
- The radio edit changes it to "if you see Amy," thus robbing the song of any sense.
- Another Britney one: Oops I Did It Again has the lines "Oops, you think I'm in love/That I'm sent from above." Way back when, some girl wrote in to Disney Channel to say she thought it had been "medicine from a dove."
- "I don't understand the point of fingers." ("All of us stand and point our fingers."), from Black Fingernails, Red Wine by Eskimo Joe.
- "I will soothe your pain/I will ease your strain" ("I won't soothe your pain/I won't ease your strain" from Eyes on Fire by Blue Foundation)
- Bigod 20's "The bog," a futurepop/industrial song about being eaten by a swamp creature (which sounds like the Watcher from The Fellowship of the Ring) features a lot of easily confusable lyrics. "Walk through Legoland to small shops for the duck" ("Walk through meadowland with small shot for the ducks") and "Back into the dog" ("back into the bog") — turns it into a surreal song about shopping for toys for waterfowl and learning to drive with disastrous canine consequences.
- "Keep pudding on the plane." ("keep putting on the play", Sunrise, Sunset by Bright Eyes.)
- The Butthole Surfers' Kuntz consists entirely of samples of a Thai song, focusing mostly on looping a line that sounds like the title. As it turns out, the actual song is about an "itch that won't go away", and the part they keep repeating means "itch". They'd later do something similar with another foreign song (not sure of the language this time) for the unreleased Junkie Jenny In Gaytown.
- "They were all in love with Di, and they were drinkin' from a fountain that was pourin' like an avalanche comin' down the mountain."— I was sure that Marky, Sharon, and that ever-present football player rapist were all just really into the royals.
- The Beyoncé Knowles song Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It) has a line "all the single ladies" that you can mishear as "I'm a cigarette" or "I'm a Sycorax".
- "Honours to the left", anyone?
- "angel of Adam Shaw" ("I saw an angel, of that I'm sure", You're Beautiful by James Blunt). The line is oddly enunciated.
- "I listen to lunch, boy" ("I'd miss you too much, boy" from To Die For by The Birthday Massacre.)
- "Despite the harm you've done, you swallowed your injection well, amplified" ("Despite the harm you've done, you swallowed your rejection well, amplified." from Falling Down.)
- "We follow the sound/ It's meaningless now" ("We follow the sound/ It's leading us down" from Nothing and Nowhere)
- "A false devotion/ Was set in motion" ("A fool's devotion/ Was set in motion" from Looking Glass).
- "Looking like a call to my suicide" ("Looking like a compromised suicide" from Kill the Lights).
- "Your hands are always reaching out of favor/Your kind are only good for that behavior" ("Your hands are always reaching out of favor/Your kind are only good for bad behavior" from Falling Down)
- "She's too cold to shiver/ And it's cold" ("She's too cold to shiver/ In this cold" from Shiver.)
- "She watches him as he is sleeping" ("She watches him as he is leaving," from Over.)
- "Reflect this kiss to which I saw/ Goodnight" ("Reflect this kiss to wish us all/ Goodnight", from Goodnight.)
- "I'm not the only one/ Who's pleading" and "It's underneath my skin, it won't die" ("I'm not the only one/ Who's bleeding" and "Gets underneath my skin, it won't die" from Science.)
- In Brazil, Billy Idol's "Eyes Without a Face" is commonly heard as "Ajudar o peixe" (help the fish). The Gratuitous French preceding it is misheard often as well.
- "Is there any jam?" ("please I need ya", Blur's Song 2)
- Another butchering of the chorus: "As I lie in my basement/All the time I was never sure I would meet ya/Pleased to meetcha!"
- "Come on up, Verizon" ("Come on up for the rising," from "The Rising" by Bruce Springsteen
C
- "There's a bathroom on the right" (the line at the end of each verse of Bad Moon Rising by Creedence Clearwater Revival — "There's a bad moon on the rise"). John Fogerty has been known to sing the mondegreen at concerts, for a laugh.
- Well, it would explain the "rivers overflowing," I guess...
- "Donuts make my brown eyes blue" ("Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue" by Crystal Gayle)
- A recent ad for Cingular used this: two men are walking down the street and mangling the chorus of "Rock the Casbah" by the Clash. One sings it as "rock the cashbox", only to be briefly stunned when his friend sings it as "stop the catbox". He then agrees with that interpretation.
- A geek version: "Lock the taskbar" for "Rock the casbah".
- Ironically, "Rock the dance floor" from Will Smith's "Will 2k" has been mondegreened into "Rock the casbah".
- From the Clash's "Death or Glory"; ..winds up making payments on a Nova or a girl (..winds up making payments on a sofa for a girl).
- A very special example for all you Portuguese speakers: this site has a list of these. And it is big.
- Also in Portuguese: in Brazil it is known as "Virundum" (after the national anthem's opening lines, Ouviram do Ipiranga), and the the most popular is a song which is misheard from "tocando B.B.King" ("playing B.B.King") to "trocando de bikini" ("changing bikinis").
- "Silver horses rent out movies in your dark eyes" ("Silver horses run down moonbeams in your dark eyes" from "White Room" by Cream)
- "He drinks the ladder drink/He drinks the cyber drink" ("He drinks the lager drink/He drinks the cider drink", Chumbawumba's "Tubthumping")
- "We don't want to die" (Actually "You know what's inside", Catherine Wheel, "Shallow")
- "Dynamite cigar" ("Danneman cigar", Cold Chisel, "Cheap Wine". The chorus to this song is also often heard as, well, pretty much anything other than what it is).
- From...Catholicism, "Agnus Dei" (the Ominous Latin Chanting version of "Lamb Of God") makes an amusing Mondegreen about a newbie rabbit hunter:
"On this day, he told us they caught a bunny, miserable novice." (& on the 3rd repetition) "...Don't I know this part, Jim?"
"Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis." (& on the 3rd rep) "...dona nobis pacem."
"Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us." and "...grant us your peace."
- Caramelldansen! The original Swedish lyrics misheard in Japanese is what contributed to it becoming such a widespread meme.
- This Doctor Who fanvid is entirely based off misheard lyrics from Caramelldansen. Some are a bit of a stretch, but it's very funny.
- Due to its chorus of "u-u-ua ua", Caramelldansen is often referred to in Japanese as "ウッーウッーウマウマ" (u- u- uma uma, roughly translating to "hor— hor— horse horse")
- Youtube user yukisnowcraft also has a relatively popular, more anime-based Misheard Lyrics video for the Caramelldansen. Misa in the club, anyone?
- But wait, it gets better. An official Japanese version was made, by Caramell themselves. This official version is actually a Japanese soramimi! They did the same thing that Japanese people did. They actually wrote Japanese lyrics that sounded like the Swedish originals and sang them for real. Yup, it's on Youtube. And yes, they sing "ウッーウッーウマウマ". And it is awesome.
- Sadly, the official English lyrics are completely different, and are based on neither the sound nor the meaning of the Swedish original. Arguably a Macekre of the original. This youtube user had a better idea, and at least copied the sound somewhat, with lyrics that sounds somewhat like the less nonsensical misheard ones.
- "Days like this are sweet / I'm fuckin' endlessly" ("Days like this are sweet / I'm talkin' in my sleep", "Life is Sweet" by the Chemical Brothers. In fact, this whole song is pretty much a Mondegreen minefield; guest singer Tim Burgess' vocals are so notoriously incoherent that transcription websites litter the lyrics with question marks.)
- "I believe that the hotdogs go on" ("I believe that the heart does go on"), in "My Heart Will Go On" by Celine Dion.
- Cream's song S.W.L.A.B.R is often misheard: We'll get "But the rainbow has appeared," instead of the real line, "But the rainbow has a beard," which is actually stranger.
- "Captain N! The Gay Master!" ("Captain N! The Game Master") as noted by the Nostalgia Critic in his Captain N review.
- Kate Ceberano's song Bedroom Eyes sounds more like 'Petrol Eyes' the way she sings it.
- This troper's local radio station once had a caller who requested a Stevie Ray Vaughan song about going shopping. Eventually, the DJs were able to deduce that the caller was in fact referring to the line "And that's a cold shot, babe" from the song "Cold Shot."
- 'Strange brew, Kudos inside of you.' ('Strange brew, kill what's inside of you' from Strange Brew by Cream.
- From Coldplay's "Viva la Vida" we have such gems as "be my me oh my soul, my seal" instead of "be my mirror my sword, and shield" and "mission fairies in a fiery field" as opposed to "missionaries in a foreign field."
D
- A commercial for T-Mobile plays with this trope: A guy sings along with Def Leppard's "Pour Some Sugar On Me", and mondegreens it into "Pour some shook-up ramen." His girlfriend is, of course, incredulous, and turns to T-Mobile for help for some reason. In fact, quite a few commercials play with this; one, for Comcast's "On Demand" service, has a man mangling the lyrics to "Born to be Wild" in the shower — and having Mr. T burst through his wall and reprimand him. No, seriously.
- "Bring out sausage bells" ("Ring Out Solstice Bells", Jethro Tull)
- "I got booty for sale" ("I'm not foolin' myself", from "Foolin'" by Def Leppard)
- "Slow Uncle Walter/The fire engine guy" ("Smoke on the water/Fire in the sky", Smoke on the Water by Deep Purple). On the other hand, slow response by the local fire brigade would explain why the "gamblin' house" burned to the ground.
- "The smell of that chick just put my spine out of place" ("This mellow-thighed chick just put my spine out of place," David Bowie, Suffragette City)
- "And isn't it a world worth taking over?" ("And there's a little world worth taking over" in David Byrne's "Wicked Little Doll") Not much of a change.
- Then again, just look at the official lyrics for the .hack//SIGN opening theme "Obsession". Is it any wonder mondegreens exist with Mind Screw lyrics like this?
- This troper even thought the lyrics were in presumably coherent Japanese, and she's a native English speaker. Then again, given the fact that "loveache" isn't even a word in English, and "missing my headache" makes no sense at all, perhaps this is less surprising than her assuming it was just in another language...
- "Missing my headache" makes perfect sense for anyone recently divorced/separated when it wasn't their idea.
- Dream Theater has inspired several intentional mondegreens on You Tube, thanks to lead singer James La Brie's rather, ah, creative approach to diction.
- This one may be the best. "This water's spitting up ground beef..."
- "It's the right time... for raw meat!" ("Roll To Me", Del Amitri)
- In Animal Crackers, Groucho asks Chico to play a song about Montreal: "I'm a dreamer, Montreal." This is a mangled reference to the De Sylva, Brown & Henderson song "Aren't We All?"
- "Davy, Daaaaavy Crockett, king of the wild frontier!" The Davy Crockett theme song was misinterpreted very often by its audience outside of the South at the time. The line "killed him a bear when he was only three", coupled with a very Southern intonation, sounded a lot like "killed in a bar when he was only three" or "killed by a bear when he was only three"...
- "Deck the Halls with Boughs of Holly" was once mondegreened in Walt Kelly's comic strip Pogo as "Deck Us All with Boston Charlie".
- Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers' "Islands in the Stream" sounds just like 'Ireland's Industry' (!) Apparently, it was quite popular to sing it with those lyrics. (As This Troper did today...)
- "Well I dig a little dog about an hour ago..." ("just got into town about an hour ago") In defense of everyone who heard it that way, Jim Morrison does sound mind-blown drunk.
- "Because you left me" ("Because You Loved Me"). The former is easy to hear when Celine Dion sings the latter, and changes the entire meaning of the song.
- One example that isn't a song per se. The name of Eric Clapton's band Derek and the Dominoes makes no sense — there isn't a Derek in the band, and dominoes aren't generally something one would name a band after — until you realize that it was originally supposed to be Eric and the Dynamos, and somebody slurred the words badly enough that the new name stuck.
- Maybe. Another source states that they wanted to call the band "Del and the Dominoes," with Del being Eric Clapton's nickname. Del and Eric were then combined, and we have Derek and the Dominoes.
- A VHS tape containing the Disney short "Clock Cleaners" was banned from Wal-Mart in the 1990s because Reverend Donald Wildmon thought that Donald Duck shouts "Fuck you!" during his argument with the main clock spring in that short (he really shouts "Says you!"). To avoid this controversy, most DVD releases of the short dub over the seemingly offending line with audio of Donald saying "Aww, nuts!", despite it not making sense in the context of the argument.
- Similarly, Donald has also been accused of calling Daffy Duck a nigger in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, when he is in fact saying, "You doggone stubborn little..." Unlike the above instance, this line is left untouched on the DVD release.
- Two other examples of Donald's speech being mistaken for curse words in "Mickey's Circus" when trying to take a fish back from the baby seal it sounds like he says "you son of a bitch!" but he is actually saying "you snake in the grass!" and in "Spare the Rod" after being bitten by one of the cannibals it sounds like he says "you little bitch, I'll kill you" but he actually said "you little wretch, I'll kill you".
- The Dundee Weaver, a traditional Scottish Bawdy Song performed by The Dubliners, is notable for having a Mondegreen version available on various lyric sites which is complete gibberish. Dick Gaughan talks us through it.
- And of course there's Rihanna's famous song, Disturbia. This Troper still has no clue what the first line of the chorus is, because there are so many different lyrics posted for it, though based on the clearer version from The Cab, I'm assuming that it's "Throw on your brake lights." But "Throw on the pretty lights", "Look at the pretty lights," "Throw on your pretty lies," and "Throw on your pretty lace," have all been heard. Just listen to it. I cannot possibly hear "brake" at all, but apparently it's there!
E
- "Hold me closer, Tony Danza." ("Hold me closer, tiny dancer" from Tiny Dancer by Elton John)
- This mondegreen is referenced in an episode of Friends, wherein Phoebe is convinced that "Hold me close, young Tony Danza" is the actual line.
- From the same song, "Count the head lice on the highway" (Count the headlights on the highway)
- Exdeath in Dissidia Final Fantasy has become a walking joke in the fandom thanks to his guttural and throaty voice distorting most of his lines. ("Get the fruit!", "To the asylum beyond!", "Embrace the sins of eternity", and "Naive weekly" are the most well-known ones.)
- His lines in the Japanese version are also subject to misinterpretation by English-speakers, such as "Cripsy/tasty arrow" when using High Guard (the line actually translates to "Prepare yourself!"), "He wants to play!" with Cyclone ("You are powerless!"), and "You're-a comin' to me!" when using Flare ("Imbecile!").
- "She's got electric boobs" ("She's got electric boots", Elton John, Bennie and the Jets)
- "...Her mom has two" ("...A mohair suit", same song)
- "You can't blame me and your pen pals" ("you can't plant me in your penthouse.", Elton John Goodbye Yellow Brick Road)
- 'Sail away, sail away, save a whale' (Orinoco Flow (Sail Away), by Enya.)
- "I'm blue, if I were green I would die, if I were green I would die..." ("I'm blue da ba dee da ba di da ba dee da ba di", Eiffel 65, Blue (Da Ba Dee))
- "I'm blue, and in need of a guy, I'm in need of a guy, . . . "
- What about Electric Light Orchestra's tribute to Rennaissance-Festival going gals? You know: "Medieval wo-man! (Duh nuhnuhnuh nununua!)" Wait... whaddiya mean there's no "Medi?" What would just an "'Eval' Woman..." Oh. Wait. IIIIIII get it now.
- "Don't bring me down, Bruce!" ("Don't bring me down, groose", which is a made-up word. ELO realized so many people were hearing this that they actually started singing it live.), from Electric Light Orchestra's "Don't Bring Me Down".
- "I am the Disco! I am . . . the Taco Bell!" ("fire in the Disco/Fire in the/taco bell", Electric Six, Danger! High Voltage)
- "Just when I close my eyes I can see they're alright" ("Just when I close my eyes I can see them arise", All the Clowns by Edguy)
- "and the dog is constipated" ("and it doesn’t cost a penny", Electric Light Orchestra's Illusions in G Major)
- "Sweet dreams are made of cheese" ("Sweet dreams are made of this", Eurythmatics song with the same name as the line)
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- "Ain't no woman like the one-eyed Gott" (from The Four Tops' song — Ain't No Woman (Like the One I've Got))
- "The funk's your brother" ("the funk soul brother" from Rockafeller Skank by Fatboy Slim)
- "Give me back my Pizza" ("Give me back my peace of" (as in peace of mind), The Foo Fighters But Honestly). If you happen to listen to the song while hungry you're even more likely to misunderstand it.
- Taylor Hawkins once admitted in an interview with MTV that he used to think the line "What do you do when all your enemies are friends?" from the song Monkey Wrench was actually "What do you do when all your enemies are French?"
- 'Take my love, take my land, you can take me where I stand' (It's actually 'Take my love, take my land, take me where I cannot stand' from the Firefly theme.)
- "I'm a little man/And I'm also evil/Also, into cats." ("I'm a leading man/And the lies I weave are/Oh so intricate", Fall Out Boy's This Ain't a Scene, it's an Arms Race)
- This (NSFW). Fall Out Boy might as well be made of Mondegreens.
- "I'm just a-nudging your bedpost, but you just don't notice at all" is apparently, "I'm just a notch in your bedpost, but you're just a note in a song." Who knew?
- In the Fosters Home For Imaginary Friends special, Destination Imagination, after Mr. Herriman frightens the villainous imaginary friend into a rage, Bloo remarks that Herriman has "peeved him off". The way he says "peeved", though, apparently sounds so much like "pissed" that even the close-captions misinterpret it as that.
- "Coronation under the broom" ("One Nation Under a Groove" by Funkadelic).
- "f'in cry" (Stewie's line in the Family Guy theme song, "Laugh and cry"). A clearer version was used from about the third season onward.
- In The Flight Of Dragons, the closed captioning for the official VHS releases frequently substitute the word "horn" for the actual word "hoard".
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- One particularly famous one is "Gladly, the Cross-Eyed Bear," which is actually a hymn titled Gladly the Cross I'd Bear.
- And from the Alanis Morissette song You Oughta Know: "It's not fair/To remind me/Of the cross-eyed bear that you gave to me"
- Subverted in They Might Be Giants' Hide Away Folk Family: "But sadly the cross-eyed bear is put to sleep behind the stairs"
- "It's something, and nothing, don't you know? I miss you, I'd kiss you, don't you know." ("Excite me, ignite me, oh, and you know, I miss you, I kiss you, oh, and you know" from Goldfrapp's song Black Cherry.)
- "You wanna be so mean, she would love to watch. I wanna love some more, I'll never be insane, a broken heel like a heart, I wanna walk again." ("You wanna be so mean, you know I love to watch. I wanna love some more, it'll never be the same, a broken heel like a heart, I wanna walk again" from Ooh La La by Goldfrapp).
- "Live under the rainbow, you could" and "Drear, rain, you're not too late" (It's actually "Listen to the radio, are you calling?" and "Dream, dream, you're not too late." from Road To Somewhere)
- "Are you human, or rodent?" (It's actually "[...] or a dud?", from Human)
- "Much to her surprise, he had to mesmerize" (Actually "[...] he had two mouths for eyes", from Little Bird)
- "Alex The Seal" (Our Lips Are Sealed by The Go-Gos).
- "See the young man sittin' in the old man's car, waiting for his turn to drive." Broadway by the Goo Goo Dolls. Replace "car" with "bar", and "drive" with "die" to get the actual lyrics.
- "...But no one ever had a chance to penetrate a virgin" ("...But no one ever had a chance to penetrate or break in...", Gotta Knock A Little Harder from Cowboy Bebop: The Movie) Doesn't help that the next line starts "But let me tell you, some have tried..."
- "Life would be ecstasy / You and me and Leslie" ("...you and me endlessly" from Groovin' by The Young Rascals). The fact that the singer bizarrely emphasizes the second syllable of "endlessly" is a large part of the problem.
- "I've got juice, it's multiplying" ("I've got chills, they're multiplying", You're The One I Want from Grease)
- According to Ira Gershwin, "Fascinating Rhythm" (the title of one of his songs) was known to his father as "Fashion on the River."
- "She wears a rubber coat for the coming of the nuclear winter" ("She wears her overcoat for the coming of the nuclear winter", Green Day, Last of the American Girls)
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- "I've been eating marigolds" ("I believe in miracles" in Hot Chocolate's You Sexy Thing)
- or "I believe in Malcolm". The next line is equally prone to mishearing ("since you came along, you saxophone" is popular instead of "[...], you sexy thing")
- "There's no poop on it tonight." ("There's no pool party tonight", The Huntingtons, No Pool Party)
- "I'll pay you back with entrails" (The Hollies, "Pay You Back With Interest")
- "When I wake up / Eat my makeup" ("When I wake up / In my makeup", Hole, Celebrity Skin)
- The mother of all mondegreens: "Hokuspokus" as a bogus "magical" formula was originally derived from the latin phrase "hoc est corpus meum" (this is my body) used in the Catholic mass.
- Hava Nagila got a Russian "fonetic translation" by Alex Khvostenko, "odna mogila" ("one grave"), the title song of his last album "The Grave Life". Sounds close, but lyrics are roughly "One grave, anywhen (x3) - will receive me. Too soon to bury us...", etc.
- "Excuse me while I kiss this guy." ("kiss the sky.", Jimi Hendrix, Purple Haze)
- Again, Jimi Hendrix himself has been known to say it that way at performances on occasion, and point to a guy just to make the point. Another Ascended Mondegreen
- His motion capture performance in Guitar Hero: World Tour also acknowledges the mondegreen. He even says "Excuse me while I kiss THAT guy" with the finger point (the song they used in the game was a live recording, where he deliberately said it.)
I
- A famous half-case: Iron Butterfly's In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida was originally In The Garden of Eden. In one version of the legend, singer Doug Ingle was drunk/high and slurred the words. In another version, drummer Ron Bushy misheard the title when he was writing it down. Either way, the mondegreen became the official title.
- Parodied/Referenced on The Simpsons, as Bart introduces it to church as a thinly disguised hymn (In the Garden Of Eden, by I. Ron Butterfly). Doubly amusing, because Homer gets the joke ("Hey Marge, remember when we used to make out to this hymn?") before Lovejoy does ("Wait a second...this sounds like Rock And/Or Roll!"), which perhaps says a lot about the Reverend's sex life.
- "Take your pants off and make it happen" ("Take your passion and make it happen", from Flashdance (What A Feeling))
- The educational game ''I.M. Meen'' features a wizard who likes to trap little bookworms inside his book. The musical intro to the game posesses the following lyrics: "when they open up this book, they're sucked inside instead!" Low quality videos on Youtube tend to give Meen a slight lisp, making the word "sucked" sound like another word.
- Intentional mispronounciation of "Anna Molly" to sound like "Anomaly" by Incubus in the eponymous song.
- In the In Flames song Pinball Map the line "Who was sent to glorify" always sounds like "Homer Simpson couldn't fly" to this troper's brother.
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- One of the more famous mondegreens, as noted above, is "'Scuse me while I kiss this guy" ("'Scuse me while I kiss the sky", Jimi Hendrix, Purple Haze). Hendrix, aware of the mondegreen, was actually known to pause at this point in the song and kiss one of his male band members during concerts.
- In at least a few live recordings, he very clearly says "kiss this guy".
- The version of Purple Haze in Guitar Hero World Tour is a live recording and includes the modified line.
- Well, it wouldn't be "Kiss the sky" -- he's Jimi Hendrix, not Jimi Giraffe.
- The Archive of Misheard Lyrics, whose website URL comes from this mondegreen, is possibly the biggest archive of mondegreens in existence.
- In his final tour in 1988, Frank Zappa did a version of the song, where whoever's singing clearly says, "'Scuse me while I kiss this guy!"
- In his stage act, comedian Michael Winslow used to do a version of this song, changing the lyric to "'Scuse me while I kiss this fly", followed by screeches of "Help me! Help me!"
- "You can't take this guy from me" ("You can't take the sky from me", from The Ballad Of Serenity, by Joss Whedon)
- "I got candy in my heels tonight, baby" ("I got canned heat in my heels tonight, baby", Jamiroquai's Canned Heat)
- "GAY HO!!! GAY HO!!!" (Actually Jai Ho), from the Slumdog Millionaire soundtrack.
- Or "Jive ho."
- Or "Tally ho!"
- Or "Dra Ho!", ala Dan Hibiki
- The John Desire cover of Hot Limit by T.M. Revolution has a ton of these, in no small part thanks to the fact that it was originally a Japanese song that was translated into English and sung by an Italian band. The Flash video We Drink Ritalin has a collection of Mondegreens from the song. To compare, these are supposed to be the actual lyrics.
- Here we have a tongue-in-cheek translation of Joe Cocker's cover of With A Little Help From My Friends.
- Quite a few of Michael Jackson's songs that would take a while to list so here's a popular one: "The chair is not my son" (The kid is not my son) from Billie Jean.
- This troper once heard people sing "No-one wants to beedy-feedy", whatever that means. (No-one wants to be defeated, from Beat It). But then again, this troper has one personal mondegreen: "See the nations turn their swords into blushes" (See the nations turn their swords into plowshares, from Heal the World).
- Ask ten people what the lyrics to Smooth Criminal are, and you'll likely get ten different answers.
- Pop Up Video devoted an entire chorus of the song to misreadings of "Are you okay, Annie", such as the immortal, "Are you Wookiee, Annie?"
- John Mellencamp's Authority Song has spawned a number of these, such as the line "I fight authority and authority always wins" being heard as "I fight with Dorothy and Dorothy always wins."
- The Running Gag/punchline of Spike Jones' version of The William Tell Overture is "Feitlebaum", but it was so consistently misheard as "Beetlebomb" due to the low quality of recording technology at the time that Jones eventually gave up and went with the misheard version.
- John Williams: "Corn on ... the cob ... Corn on ... the co-ob ..." As the real lyrics (to that particular part, anyway) are Sanskrit ("Korah Matah, Korah Rahtahmah"), I can't say I blame the ears of the listeners.
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- "Carry a laser down the road that I must travel" ("Kyrie eleison, down the road that I must travel", Mr. Mister, Kyrie)
- "I like stinky chicken" (from an Applebee's Restaurant commercial jingle regarding their Steak and Chicken grill)
- Many people mishear the refrain to the Killers song Human as "Are we human? Or are we denser?" instead of "... Or are we dancer?", possibly because the mondegreen makes much more grammatical sense.
- "He said 'honey, gold, jewels, money, women, wine, carpet shine'" ("[...] cars that shine", Kula Shaker, Hey Dude)
- "No self respect no honour, no family no cash, no church and no religion, and nowhere to undress" ("[...] I'm only human trash", Krokus, Down the Drain)
- "Nobody says you're a fucker, they only say you oblige" ("Nobody shares your burden, they only say you're blind", from Fire)
- "Mother's got another half and so does she" ("Mother's got a lover half as old as she", from Mad Racket)
- It has been said that Kraftwerk's Autobahn, "gefahren, fahren, fahren, mit der Autobahn" ("travel, travel, travel on the motorway") is in part a nod to the Beach Boys' Fun Fun Fun.
- Greg from Dharma & Greg had a habit of this. "I want to Rock and Roll all night... And part of every day!" Dharma tries to correct him ("...Party every day"), and he drunkenly replies, "If you party every day, how can you get enough rest to Rock and Roll the next night?"
- Walt Kelly's Pogo once had the delightful holiday ditty "Deck Us All with Boston Charlie".
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- "And there's a wino down the road / I should have stolen Oreos" ("And as we wind on down the road / Our shadows taller than our soul" From that paragon of rock... something, Stairway To Heaven by Led Zeppelin)
- Also, "I want to go where things are less than sharp" ("Our only goal will be the Western shore" from The Immigrant Song). Actually a good bit of the song is mondegreens.
- Also in Stairway: "If theres a bustle in your hedgerow, Don't be alarmed now/ it's just a sprinkling for the May Queen" ("...it's just a spring clean for the May Queen". It makes the same amount of sense.)
- "When she gets there she'll know if the stars are all close..." ("When she gets there she'll know if the stores are all closed...")
- "They beat me up when I'm feeling blue" ("They pick me up when I'm feeling blue," Sweet Home Alabama, by Lynyrd Skynyrd)
- "The bright blessed day, the dogs say Good Night" ("... The dark sacred night" from Louis Armstrong's What a Wonderful World)
- "Last night I dreamt of some bagels" ("Last night I dreamt of San Pedro", Madonna's La Isla Bonita)
- The Kingsmen's original Louie, Louie is made of these... mostly because nobody could really understand any of the lyrics at all because of the poor recording. Purported lyrics to the song (which were usually dirty) were passed around college campuses, and the FBI (that's the Federal Bureau of Investigations, folks) was eventually called in to unravel the mystery behind Louie, Louie.
- "Mr. Saturday Night is special" ("It's the Saturday Night Special", Lynyrd Skynyrd's Saturday Night Special)
- "So hard to be a ninja" ("So hard to be an angel", Colin Linden's "Big Mouth")
- "I buy sausage" ("Aimai san senchi ", Lucky Star's Motteke Sailor Fuku)
- "I feel like Dick Cheney" ("I feel the light betray me", Linkin Park's Papercut)
- "I'll get him hard, show him what I've got." ("I'll get him hot, show him what I got," Lady Gaga's "Pokerface.")
- This is close enough that it wouldn't matter...except when Mika made this mistake, it kind of torpedoed his attempt to neuter the lyrics.
- "Bye old mechanic man" / (Lordi's Biomechanic Man)
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- "Sod 'em all, I'm a Care Bear" ("So damn easy to cave in," The Manic Street Preachers' Faster)
- "Wrapped up like a douche" ("Revved up like a deuce" (coupe) in the Manfred Mann version of Springsteen's Blinded By The Light)
- The Vacant Lot comedy troupe has a skit dedicated to this song's mondegreens: "ripped up douches"; "loofah sponges" and the "foreman of the night;" and one that's completely incomprehensible.
- "Ain't no one gonna break my spine" ("Ain't nothing gonna break my stride", from Matthew Wilder's Break My Stride)
- This Maxwell advert mishears Israelites.
- "I try to fart like a whale" instead of "I try to front like, oh well" from Mariah Carey's I Stay In Love, as heard on the Bob and Tom radio show.
- "DICKRASH!" (Metallica's Whiplash)
- "I was alive when they smiled and said 'You won't feel a thing'" ("It was a lie when they smiled and said 'You won't feel a thing'", Disenchanted by My Chemical Romance)
- The fans of the musical Les Miserables have many Mondegreens that are recognized in the fan community. Notable ones are:
- "This is better than an au pair - ah!" ("... an opera")
- "One more day to revolution, we will nip it in the butt" ("... bud", sung by the Foe Yay Licious Javert, no less)
- "God I'm high" ("God on High," though as it starts the song Bring Him Home, This Troper thinks the song much improved for the Mondegreen.)
- "On my own, pretending he's inside me..." ("... beside me")
- From The Monkees' Shorty Blackwell comes the concluding proclamation "I am Mike!"...except the line is "I am I!"; Micky is singing the song.
- Pick up a bazooka-type weapon in Metal Slug 3. "Rocket lawn chair!"
- "And I feel like a disco ho!" ("and I feel like I just got home", Madonna's Ray Of Light)
- "Safe big mommy in the nards" (Menards commercial jingle: "Save big money in Menards")
- "We don't like guns with tacos." ("We don't like endless cycles." Motion City Soundtrack Don't Call It a Comeback)
- "...and a bottle of ten gallon wine." ("... Ten dollar wine.", Motion City Soundtrack, Future Freaks Me Out)
- "My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of the icing..." ("..., of thee I sing...", from My Country, 'Tis of Thee)
- Angelica once mondegreened the entire song on an episode of ''Rugrats, something like this: "My country tears of thee, sweet land of lizardy, of thee I see. Land that my father buyed, land of my chill and pie, From every mountain slide, let freedom ring." She also did something similar with "America the Beautiful" on another episode, which started out "O beautiful, for spaceship eyes..."
- This trope is actually the basis of the chorus in the second Death Note OP, "What's Up People?" The lyrics say "san'ka" and "fuan'ka", but the vocalist intentionally skews his pronunciation, turning them into "sucker" and "fucker."
- "I'm innocent 'til dawn" ("I'm dancing 'til dawn", Must Get Out by Maroon 5)
- "Someday you pee on a tree frog" ("Someday you feed on a tree frog") Snake Eater by Cynthia Harrell in Metal Gear Solid 3.
- "...feeling my face explode" ("feeling my faith erode") in Muse's Hysteria. I still sing it with the face lyrics.
- In one iteration of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 theme song, it sounds like Cambot is telling the viewer to "kill yourself". In fact, he's saying "show yourself", but his tone is rather sharp.
- "Hang on, Snoopy/Snoopy hang on!" ("Hang on Sloopy/Sloopy hang on", Hang on, Sloopy by The McCoys)
- "I've got two chickens to paralyze" (Two Tickets to Paradise, Eddie Money)
- No, no, it's "I've got testicular parasites, testicular parasites"
- "I'll be, your crying soldier" ("... shoulder") in Edwin McCain's I'll Be.
- Anyone managed to decipher more than a few lines from Loveless lately?
- Oh, the band was wise to this. They often put non-sensical lyrics into their songs because they knew people wouldn't be able to make anything out anyway.
- "And so I must play this broken banjo" ("... this broken man's role", A Man Without a Dream by The Monkees)
- Metronomy lampshades this in their video for "A Thing For Me"
- "Mairzy Doats", written by the team of Milton Drake, Al Hoffman and Jerry Livingston and performed by many different groups, is an intentional mondegreen; the lyrics as originally published consist of jumbled baby-talk, but actually say "Mares eat oats and does *
(Note: That's "does" as in female deer) eat oats and little lambs eat ivy."
- This particular tune is referenced in Piers Anthony's Mode series, in which the main character has a stuffed toy that she named "Maresy Doats" after the song.
- Macy Gray's song "I Try" features this gem: "I wear goggles when you are not near", otherwise known as "My world crumbles when you are not near"
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- "So don't rush into the sea if you're naked" ("So don't you rush into the situation", from *NSYNC's I'll Be Good For You)
- "Why I don't wake and see the perfect sky as told" ("I'm wide awake and I can see the perfect sky is torn", Torn sung by Natalie Imbruglia)
- "I want to fuck you like an owl" ("I want to fuck you like an animal", Nine Inch Nails, Closer)
- "I'm still alive" or "I steal the hive" ("I stay alive", also from Closer)
- Naruto's 4th season has the opening theme Go! (also often called Fighting Dreamers) which featured a lot of Gratuitous English. Multiple different fansubbers mistook one of the chorus lines to be "You Punch Like a Drunken Rider," when it actually wasn't even in English or Japanese but a very gratuitous mix of both. (The actual line is "Buppanase Like a dangan LINER!" which translates effectively into "Fire like a bullet train".)
- Two words: "Fighting Zebras!"
- "Oh, you've got crayons" ("... gray eyes", New Order, Temptation)
- "What have I become, my Swedish friend?" ("What have I become, my sweetest friend?" in both the Nine Inch Nails and Johnny Cash versions of Hurt)
- Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit. When MTV aired the music video, they subtitled lyrics into the video. (Unfortunately, even MTV got the lyrics wrong. It's no wonder why Weird Al's parody pokes fun at the fact the lyrics are nigh-impossible to understand.
- "Space is pony.." ("If you know this place is holy...", Nelly Furtado, "Say It Right".)
- Full Dark Chest of Wonders by Nightwish. A brain degauss complete with illustrations. Not much less sense than the original, but still.
- For that matter, just about anything by Nightwish, at least up to a certain point in time, is subject to this. It's how this troper, a huge Nightwish fan, actually learned about them.
- In defense of anyone who has ever misheard a Nightwish lyric (which is probably everyone who has ever listened to one at all), the lyrics to a lot of the songs are often Engrishy.
- This troper used to believe that the lyric in No Doubt's "Spiderwebs" was not "screen my phone calls", but "scream my buns off".
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- O-Zone's Dragostea din Tei has been intentionally 'misinterpreted' in other languages, the Japanese version even includes Shout Outs to One Piece, Street Fighter, and Sazae-san.
- Another video takes a misinterpreted "razor blades" in the chorus and runs with it.
- 'Dragostea din Tei' turns really easily into 'have a slutty day'.
- "She ain't no butthead Jane" or "She ain't nobody's Jane" ("She ain't no ball and chain", Me and My Old Lady, The Offspring)
- "AUTO-BAAAAAR, HA HA HA HAAAAA!" Dun-nuh. Dun-nuh, dun-nuh, dun-nuh. "Ice? Ice? Ice?" ("All Aboard" and "Ay-ay-ay" respectively, Ozzy Osbourne's Crazy Train)
- "Your sides harmonize with mine", "On this day, complete", and "Flower bomb perfume" from Owl City's If My Heart Was A House ("Your sighs harmonize with mine", "Unmistakeably", and "Flower balm perfume").
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- Peanuts once subverted this trope: a story arc has Sally preparing for a Christmas pageant in which "I come out and say, 'Hark!', then Harold Angel starts to sing." Everyone assumes that she's simply confused by the name of the song...until a kid named Harold Angel actually shows up.
- "45 virgins and a pelican" or "45 versions of a pelican" ("Glorified version of a pellet-gun" from Glorified G, by Pearl Jam)
- ...that puts a remarkable new spin on Islam...
- Pearl Jam themselves noticed a potential mondegreen for the chorus of Betterman: In the Vitalogy liner notes, "Can't find the butter, man" is written in a small typeface beside the song's actual lyrics (the refrain is, of course "Can't find a better man").
- Speaking of Pearl Jam, this troper still can't figure out exactly what a "speeplespopatween" is supposed to be.
- "This is an American City" (This is an Emergency by The Pidgeon Detectives)
- "Maybe I'm just like my mother" ("Maybe you're just like my mother", Prince, When Doves Cry).
- The band The Lightning Seeds are named after a mondegreen for Prince's Raspberry Beret ("Thunder drowns out what the lightning sees")
- "I've been waiting for the Snowman for all my life" ("I've been waiting for this moment for all my life", Phil Collins, In the Air Tonight)
- Now I'm wondering if Paul Jenning's story might have been inspired by that.
- "Breathe! Spit! (or sweat), Walk!" ("Re! Spect! Walk!", Pantera, Walk)
- "I have sheep in my soup" ("Ai shiteimasu", Baby Love Child by Pizzicato Five)
- The artwork to the Pixies' Gigantic single amusingly plays off a potential mondegreen for the song: The front cover is a close up of a baby, while the back has a leather glove on it. It just seems typically inscrutable of them, until one realizes the lyric "a big big love" sort of sounds like "a baby glove".
- "So let me hear you scream if you'll whip me" ("So let me hear you scream if you're with me", My People, by the Presets.)
- Pod People. "Hear the Engines Roll". End of story. Heck if anyone knows what the real lyrics are.
- In Persona 3 , there's a song called Burn My Dread, which can easily be mistaken for "Burn My Bread".
- The Police song So Lonely is often known in Britain as Sue Lawley, after a TV presenter popular at the time. It's also easily mishead as "Salami! Salami!".
- I just feel like adding the two most known and bizarre examples from Polish language:
- "Oceans Apart" from Richard Marx's Right here waiting for you is interpreted by most polish speakers as "Osiem Zapalek" which means "Eight Firematchers".
- "Can't Touch This" by MC Hammer which is "Piec Ciastek" ("Five cookies") and most people even refer to this song like this!
- "Why do we lie to her so much?" ("Why do we like to hurt so much?" - That's What You Get by Paramore)
- This troper knew it was "hurt" but still heard "like" as "lie"
- Ken Lee ("Can't live [without you]", Without You). Made famous by this clip from the Bulgarian version of Pop Idol.
- "Softly, gently, night unfurls its blender" ("... splendour" from The Phantom Of The Opera).
- "When I grow up, I wanna see the world, drive nice cars, I wanna have boobies" ("... I wanna have groupies", When I Grow Up, by Pussycat Dolls); the misheard version makes more sense than the actual one, considering that is a female group.
- Male groupies? Lesbian groupies? Simply decorative/supportive/nice to have around groupies?
- The 'boobies' line was included in an article about PCD- when a later issue of the magazine published a letter which corrected the lyric, I was surprised. Now everytime I hear it on the radio, I listen really hard, and I still can't hear the word "groupies".
- As noted above, "On the porch, geese salute" has been misheard from the line "In a Portuguese saloon" from Tom Waits' song The Part You Throw Away.
- To this day, the band Polaris and the people who made the show refuse to divulge that one mysterious line in the theme song of The Adventures Of Pete And Pete. The infamous line is right after "You're looking happily deranged" and many believe it to be "Could you settle to shoot me?"
- "Stairway scare, Dan Dare, Who's there?" ("Always scared and death looms ever", Pink Floyd, Astronomy Domine). Interesting because it reflects the early development of the band: the original angsty line was written by Syd Barrett, and the band allowed it to mutated into a slightly more flippant version in the following years.
- There are lots of these concerning "hidden messages" in Pink Floyd's music. One that drives me up the wall is that a lot of people insist that if you crank the volume really high on "The Great Gig in the Sky" you can hear a voice say "If you can hear this message you're dying"; in fact if you can't hear it you need your ears checked, it's quite clear at perfectly normal volumes that it's "I never said I was frightened of dying".
- The children's novel In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson has the protagonist mangling the Pledge of Allegiance on her first day of school in the US:
Shirley: I pledge a lesson to the frog of the United States of America. And to the wee puppet, for witches' hands, one Asian, in the vestibule, with little tea and just rice for all.
- Other people think the Pledge of Allegiance mentions someone named Richard Stands.
- Calvin once began with "I pledge allegiance / to Queen Fragg / and her mighty state of hysteria" and then gets sent to the principal's office.
- There was a joke, before the "Under God" line, about a kid saying "One naked individual with liberty and justice for all."
- Folk singer John Prine, in a live version of his song "That's the Way that the World Goes 'Round," mentions a fan who told him she liked the lyrics "It's a happy enchilada, and you think you're gonna drown." Actual lyric: "It's a half an inch of water, and you think you're gonna drown." Rather than correcting the fan, he told her he was glad she liked the words.
- "My anus will fix it, you're addicted to love" ("Might as well face it, you're addicted to love", from Addicted to Love by Robert Palmer
- "Noisy walk to freedom" ("No easy walk to freedom" from Peter, Paul, and Mary's song of the same name.
Q
- Queen:
- "I worked hard every day of my life; I worked till I ate my balls." ("I work hard every day of my life; I work till I ache my bones." Somebody to Love)
- "Somebody to love....white. Meat. Somebody to love....white. Meat.
- "She keeps a mower and shotgun in a pretty cabinet" ("... Moet et Chandon...", Killer Queen)
- "She's a killer queen, got my virginity". Much more interesting than the actual "Gunpowder, gelatine", I might add.
- "Spare him his life for his mum's sausages!" ("Spare him his life from this monstrosity!", Bohemian Rhapsody)
- "Beelzebub has a devil for a sideboard" ("Beelzebub has a devil put aside for...", Bohemian Rhapsody)
- "I've paid my jews, time after time" ("I've paid my dues, time after time", We are the champions)
- Subverted by Freddie Mercury, in One Vision. You would expect the last line to be "Just gimme, gimme, gimme one vision." which is what the liner notes will say. Instead, as a prank, he sings "Just gimme, gimme, gimme fried chicken", as the band was having fried chicken and tea on a break. They kept the pranked take on a dare from Mercury's boyfriend, Jim Hutton.
- "Who dares to love forever/ Oh, I like my style" ("Who dares to love forever/ When love must die?", Who Wants To Live Forever?)
- There are several in Spanish, perpetrated intentionally in the Argentinian show Todo por dos pesos. For example:
- "Cuida los chanchos, Mabel / Cuida los chancho', es tu deber" [1] ("Take care of the pigs, Mabel / Take care of the pigs, that's your duty" instead of "We are the champions, my friends / And we'll keep on fighting 'till the end").
- "Es caro el mousse, es caro el mousse / me faltan cuatro mangos" [2] ("The mousse is costly, the mousse is costly / I'm missing four pesos" instead of "Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you do the fandango?")
- ''"¡Más Quico!" [3]("More Quico!", referring to a famous Mexican character, instead of "Bicycle!")
R
- "On Sundays, I elude the eyes that monitor my fate" ("On Sundays I elude the eyes, and hop the turbine freight", Red Barchetta, by Rush)
- "I could suck a duck" ("I could suck it up" in ''Beast of Burden" by The Rolling Stones)
- "Y'know, I'm not a woman" ("Y'know, I met a woman", Rolling Stones, Fool to Cry) Sure, Mick.
- "I've had enough of Canada" ("Light another candle, and...", Morning Bell, by Radiohead)
- Another, possibly intentional, mondegreen from the same song; its unclear whether Thom Yorke is singing "Cut the kid's hair" or "Cut the kids in half", a situation exacerbated somewhat by the massive differences between the Kid A version and the Amnesiac version.
- "No laughs and no surprises" ("No alarms and no surprises", No Surprises, also by Radiohead). This troper wondered if the lyric site was just wrong because of how convincing the former sounded, but three different sites said the same thing.
- Music critic Chuck Eddy has pointed out that REO Speedwagon's Time For Me To Fly can be interpreted as a song about the Protestant Reformation, based on the fact that in the line "I've had enough of the falseness of a worn-out relation", it sure sounds like they're saying "religion" instead of "relation."
- "Olive, the other reindeer ..." (Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer: "...All Of The Other Reindeer..."). Inevitably, a book called Olive, The Other Reindeer was published in 1997, and was turned into a Christmas Special in 2003 by Matt Groening of The Simpsons fame. John Linnell also wrote a song called Olive, The Other Reindeer.
- "Round John Virgin..." ("Round yon virgin mother and child", from Silent Night)
- Rum Stein by Rammstein.
- REM's The End Of The World As We Know It blends Mondegreen and Word Salad Lyrics for an awesome, yet incomprehensible, piece of music.
- Beyond the chorus, the one lyric everyone knows out of that song is "LEONARD BERNSTEIN!".
- "And her skin's the color of soda" ("And her skin's the color of mocha", Ricky Martin, Livin' La Vida Loca)
- Kate Ryan's "Je t'adore", the Belgian entry for the Eurovision Song Contest 2006, generated many "shut the door" jokes.
- Johnny Rivers' Secret Agent Man is easily misheard as Secret Asian man.
- And has been parodied as such at least twice, by the Capitol Steps as well as Da Vinci's Notebook.
S
- Silversun Pickups' It's Nice to Know You Work Alone easily sounds like he's saying, "it's nice to know you wear cologne". Worse off, the line coming before the offending line says, "Sit back, and breathe".
- And in Panic Switch, part of the chorus line is 'Do your fingers itch, are you pistol-whipped?'. For a long while thought it was 'Do you think I'm sunshine passed away?'.
- "But I get no offers/Just a come home from the horse on Seventh Avenue" ("... just a come-on from the whores on Seventh Avenue", The Boxer by Simon And Garfunkel). Other variants: "... that war zone ...", "... the boys on ...", and "... the wolves on ...".
- Also, "Seeking out the poor reporters," instead of "poorer quarters."
- "The way that Gamera follows us in slo-mo." ("The way the camera follows us in slo-mo", Paul Simon's "Boy in the Bubble.)
- "Captain Picard's on the New Jersey turnpike." ("Counting the cars on...", America by Simon & Garfunkel)
- This Troper used to hear "Counting the cars on the New Jersey turn, like they've all come..." (I hadn't heard the word turnpike back then.)
- "I am the Lord of the Dance Settee" ("I am the Lord of the Dance, said he" from Lord of the Dance, by Sydney Carter)
- "My first real sex dream" ("My first real six-string", from Summer of '69)
- Summer of '69 is just criminally easy to make into one long, musical sex-joke.
- "You go to Lost Wages..." ("You go to Las Vegas...", Steely Dan, Showbiz Kids) Either makes sense, but fans debate to no end what the actual lyrics are. The lyrics official Dan site skip the opening lines sung by the backup, and starts with "When the poor people sleeping..."
- "Everyone says you're lazy" ("Everyone says you're amazing", Amazing by Seal)
- "Here I am, raunchy like a hurricane" ("Here I am, rock you like a hurricane", The Scorpions' Rock You Like a Hurricane)
- Spice And Wolf's ending theme (The Wolf Whistling Song) is in complete Engrish, rendering the already peculiar lyrics even more bizarre.
- "I danced with the peanuts for the fly" ("... peanut butterflies")
- "I'm a little oof inside a car" ("... wolf inside a girl")
- "'Till someone had told me, to say hello for every goodbye" ("Till time went and told me to say hello but wave goodbye")
- "Now what would you say / if they were calling you a radical" ("Now watch what you say / or they'll be calling you a radical", The Logical Song by Supertramp)
- The Similou's All This Love inspired a mini fad on YTMND about the famous communist hero, Rainbow Stalin.
- "In my desert home in my dreams" ("Seems like there's a hole in my dreams", The Stone Roses, Elephant Stone)
- 'You've been betrayed' ("You've paid in trade", Live and Learn from Sonic Adventure 2)
- The "phone me, phone me, phone me" line in The Smiths song A Rush And A Push And The Land Is Ours sounds an awful lot like "fuck me, fuck me, fuck me." Knowing Morrissey, this was most likely intentional.
- "But Dean's picking music. I'm stupid but smiling" ("But the end has come easily. I'm sad, but I'm smiling", You Say Goodbye, Japanese indie rock band Specialthanks). Their songs make these very easy to find due to the vocalist singing everything in English while having a very thick accent.
- "See the chainsaw on my cat." ("She sees the change in him but can't.", Sonata Arctica's Full Moon)
- "It's a shitfull of fun" instead of "shipfull of fun" from Sea Escape gambling cruise commercials in south Florida.
- The Star-Spangled Banner:
- Instead of Search for things/that you can see, this Troper heard Search for pigs/that you can see, from Stone Temple Pilot's "Vasoline".
- One of Beverly Cleary's Ramona Quimby books had the titular protagonist thinking that the lyrics began "Oh say can you see, by the dawnzer's lee light" and becoming convinced that "dawnzer" must be another word for "lamp."
- "Jose, can you see" instead of "Oh, say can you see"
- This Troper recalls a Bloom County strip that had Opus the penguin mangling it when he finds himself unable to remember the lyrics ("Oh say can you see, by the dawn's early light / what so proudly we snailed, at, um, the starlight's last cleaning...").
- John T. Sladek's novel The Müller-Fokker Effect (really!) has the following:
Ofay can you pee
By the dong's surly blight
What you probably inhaled
At the toilet's last cleaning.
- There was an article in a 1980s Readers' Digest (this troper's mother used to collect them) in which the author recounted how, as a child, she thought that the first line went, "O say can you see, by the daunserly light" and kept "daunserly" as her secret, magical word. She was eventually corrected on this by her family when she decided that it couldn't hurt to share that magical word with her sister who, of course, initially had no idea what she was referring to.
- "oh we're so pretty/ we're so pretty/ Pretty Vay- CUNT!" ("... vacant", from Pretty Vacant by The Sex Pistols)
- That one is said to have been deliberate, as a way of slipping a song containing "cunt" past the radio censors.
- In Cat Stevens' cover of Eleanor Farjeon's Morning Has Broken, he mispronounces the hyphenated word "re-creation" (the start of which is supposed to sound like "real") as if it were the single word "recreation" (with a start sounding like "wreck"). On the 2008 Deluxe Edition of Teaser and the Firecat, which has both the original and a demo version, the same error can be heard on both.
- And in the live version of Peace Train on the same extended reissue, more than once Stevens makes it sound like "Piss Train". This troper suspects that Stevens may have been taking the peace.
- "Snap my picture!" (Smack my bitch up, by Prodigy)
- In Due Time by Outkast and Cee-Lo (of recent Gnarls Barkely fame) was edited when released on the Soul Food soundtrack (the song's only official release), causing one line to have the opposite meaning. When Andre3000 says "Fuck a pledge allegiance," it sounds like "I pledge allegience"
- The english bit of the lyrics to Shadowy Dream, the second ending theme to Dancougar, are subtitled on several commercially released videos: "Yes, love is late / yabou ni kaketai otoko ni wa...." Turns out the actual lyrics are "It's no betraying." It's hard to blame Software Sculptors for hearing English that made sense.
- Shinedown's Second Chance (also known as the Haley's Comet song). As one Radio DJ put it: "Okay, I'm looking at the lyrics sheet, and the lyric is 'she waved', not 'shooting,' stop calling us and asking." The lyric in question is from the bridge - "I just saw Haley's comet, she waved"
- Steve Miller Band's The Joker has been mondegreened many times, mainly because the actual line, "'cuz I speak of the pompatus of love" uses the Perfectly Cromulent Word "pompatus", which no one who didn't know the song that's the reason people call Miller "Maurice" could parse.
- In Brazil, nobody could understand what the hell Street Fighter 's characters were saying, so mondegreens of their moves became Fanon, and even people who speak English/Japanese prefer to call the moves by the mondegreenized name. Or names, 'cause there are many variations. Ryu and Ken have Aduguen(Hadouken) and Hollywood(Shoryuken). Guile has Alex Full(Sonic Boom), Chun Li has Mini Taxi(Spinning Bird Kick, yes really!). But the posterboy of this meme is Sagat, with his powerful TIGER ROBOCOP!!
- "We're lesbian together!" ("Well, let's be in it together," from The Sweet's "AC/DC." Possibly intentional.)
- "In the triple aardvark" ("In the temple of love" from The Sisters of Mercy's "Temple of Love")
T
- "I was taken to the subway through my nose" ("I was taking sips of it through my nose," from Semi-Charmed Life by Third Eye Blind)
- "ROW! ROW! White power!" from "RAW! RAW! Fight The Power!" (Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann soundtrack).
- "the part that makes you paint some food." ("The part that makes your face implode" from Experimental Film by They Might Be Giants) - to be fair, the singer pronounces it "im-PLOOD".
- "Want Joe Biden, need Joe Biden" ("Want your body, need your body", Whatever You Like by T.I.)
- "But I'm an actor/Maybe you're Lisa/Or is it same?" ("But I'm a riot/Mary-Jo-Lisa/Always the same", The chorus of The Ting Tings, That's Not My Name)
- The Tragically Hip have a song all about this. It's called I'll Believe in You Tonight (Or I'll Be Leaving You Tonight).
- One person on Youtube subtitled the Indian song Tunak Tunak Tun with English words that sounded like the original Punjabi lyrics. The results are hysterical. "In your yard I am teh Ferengi man, very odd and chunky!"
- "Here come Daleks!" ("Hier kommt Alex!" ("Here comes Alex!"), Hier Kommt Alex by German band Die Toten Hosen). Most Anglophones who hear the song think it has something to do with Doctor Who. It's actually a German retelling of A Clockwork Orange.
- In The Santa Clause, when Scott was reading Twas the Night Before Christmas to his son, his son mistakes "arose such a clatter" for "a Rose Suchak ladder". This turns out to be justified.
- "Now Say Begonia" for the repeated lyric of t.A.T.u's "Nas Ne Dogonyat" ("They're Not Gonna Get Us")
U
- U2's Mysterious Ways is absolutely full of these. "Eating from a cat" instead of "eating from a can"; "Shamu the mysterious whale" / "she moos in mysterious waves" for "she moves in mysterious ways"...
- In the comic strip Wild Life, Carson the Muskrat thinks the lyrics to his favorite U2 song are "I still haven't found Walter's cookie jar" (I still haven't found what I'm looking for)
V
- VNV Nation's song Darkangel has a line, "I only came here seeking peace" that has often been mistaken for the line "I only came here seeking peas". This caused an infamous incident where Ronan Harris, the lead singer, stormed off stage during a concert after being pelted with frozen peas.
- "I did your mother" ("Word to your mother", Ice Ice Baby by Vanilla Ice).
- In an example that actually manages to make exactly as much sense in context as the original line, this troper hears "While there's puppies left to kick" in Voltaire's "When You're Evil" (the actual line being "While there's pockets left to pick").
- From the same song, in another example that makes exactly as much sense in context (which might be part of why it's so difficult to tell them apart), we have "I'm the demon in your bed" when the line is techinically "I'm the pea beneath your bed" (as a Shout Out to The Princess and the Pea).
- This Troper still can't hear it as anything other than the "demon" line.
- An additional example in Voltaire's song "Happy birthday," and one that also makes sense is mishearing "bucket kicker" in the first line for "fucking kicker."
W
- "I LIKE SHREDDED WHEAT!!!", the most famous line from the most famous song of the So Bad Its Horrible deathcore band Waking the Cadaver... naturally, they didn't come up with it, and its inclusion here should give you a sign that the line isn't even in the song. The actual line has a fair bit of Squick involved, so it won't be replicated here. The "shredded wheat" mondegreen has even become a minor meme, possibly stemming from this video.
- Weird Al got the idea for Like a Surgeon from Madonna Mondegreening her own song Like a Virgin while talking to a friend.
- "You've got your big cheese/I've got my asswipe" ("You’ve got your big G's/I’ve got my hash pipe", Hash Pipe by Weezer). To be fair, that was the last line in the chorus (Hash pipe came up at the end).
- "You got your big Jeep/I've got my hatchback"
- "Play that fucking music right boy" ("Play that funky music, white boy", Play that Funky Music by Wild Cherry)
- In the TV show Wings one episode's subplot revolved around Antonio becoming a busker in the airport, singing a song he learned back in Italy (his introduction to English): "My Goat Knows the Bowling Score, Hallelujah." After everyone gets sick of him singing the same line over and over they suggest he go on to the next verse, which he does: "Sid's new hair is in the mail, Hallelujah."
- (That is, "Michael, row the boat ashore" and "Sister, help to trim the sail", respectively.)
- "I can't forget the semen on your face as you were leaving" ("I can't forget this evening, or your face as you were leaving", Mariah Carey's cover of Badfinger's Without You). Unusually, it's only in her version that the line can be mistaken in this way.
- According to a radio DJ I once heard interviewed, Mull of Kintyre by Wings was the song title he most heard mangled by people phoning in to request. "Mulligan's Tyre" was the most common but there were other variants.
X
- XTC have a few:
- "Please don't pull me out, I'm relaxing in the undertow" from Summer's Cauldron. The lyric's actually "I'm relax in the undertow", and Partridge admitted when asked that he was forced to mangle the grammar to fit in the song's metre.
- "Show me/Shall we do the things we used to do on grass" from ''Grass'. Some lyrics site says it's actually "Shocked me too the things we used to do on grass". Also from the same song, the apparently-straightforward "The way you suck my face just fills me with desire" is actually "The way you slap my face...".
Y
Z
Non-Musical Examples
- My loony bun is fine Benny Lava.
- Have you been high today? I see the nuns are gay!
- Who put the goat in there? The yellow goat I ate!
- And that's all a matter of interpretation. Just past the two-minute mark, the Gag Sub says "We're looking in a pill", and this troper hears "We lock you in a pill".
- And in the same vein :"GIRLY MAAAAAAAAAAN!"...
- The same subber as the above: Moskau! Moskau! Moskau! Billy is a handyman! Porcelain is the surest plan. Hohohohoho...hey! Moskau! Moskau! Dinah Steeler is too loose. Castro it's the time to lose. Hohohohoho!
- Andrew Mathas purposely mondegreens songs to make humorous videos.
- And then there's this little gem...
- One Perplex City card is based on identifying these.
- Youtube Poop videos frequently make fun of how, at the beginning of Hotel Mario, it sounds as though Mario is calling his brother "Gay Luigi" (he really says "Nice of the Princess to invite us over for a picnic, eh Luigi?").
- Another one in Youtube Poop is Dr. Robotnik's "Snooping as usual, I see?" from Sonic The Hedgehog, with emphasis on the "ping as" part, which is interpreted as penis.
-
"And you gotta help us!" "And you go to Hell!"
- In the live-action segment of the first episode of The Super Mario Bros Super Show, Luigi points out to Mario that there's a piece of spaghetti on his overalls. Mario replies, "Oh, thank you, Luigi!", but the canned audience laughter occurring right at that point distorts his line and makes it sound like he is saying the F-word.
- The animated segments had one too. In Brooklyn Bound, Mario, having second thoughts about returning to Brooklyn, says to Luigi that "maybe we should stay and help the Princess." The idea that it sounds like "hump the Princess" is further enforced by Peach saying "No way, Mario!" in response.
- Additionally, the Christmas Episode of Super Mario World had Oogtar saying that he "promise to be good caveboy for rest of life". The way he says the word "caveboy" in there inspired this You Tube Poop.
- The Emil Wakin Chau/Chow song Peng You (Chinese for Friends) has some parts that sound like "Kani/Kamina Hoo-doo suck cock". Pay attention to the part after the first use of the chorus.
- Often comes up in relation to computer speech recognition software. Some Apple programmers had T-shirts saying "I helped Apple wreck a nice beach" (Recognize speech).
- The Australian TV show {{Comedy Inc.}} has fun with this trope in their stop-motion vignette series Ernest the Engine and Others where the character Stevie the Steam Train tends to "stutter badly at the most inappropriate of times", such as when he sings the song "Country Roads".
- A fun thing to do to songs in different languages, as demonsrated by the opening for D.gray Man the Abridged Series
- Yourthemannowdog.com made many an Internet Meme by creating lyrics for various songs sung in other languages. Nazi Duck Tails in particular...
- Search for "Numa numa misheard lyrics" on You Tube. You know you want to.
- What, no one's mentioned "O Fortuna"? One section can be heard as "Saw some wookiees/ Great big wookiees/ They came to maul Darth Vader. Once you hear it you can never hear the Latin lyrics again.
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