Discussion Main / Mondegreen

Since this was never posted, this TRS thread made Mondegreen a Definition-Only Page. The objective trope Mondegreen Gag has been split to cover mondegreens that are Played for Laughs, while JustForFun.I Heard That As covers actual mondegreens.

Further cleanup per here.

Linking to a past Trope Repair Shop thread that dealt with this page: Make in universe only, started by shimaspawn on Feb 15th 2011 at 9:06:32 PM

Linking to a past Trope Repair Shop thread that dealt with this page: Misused, started by shimaspawn on Apr 23rd 2012 at 7:24:57 PM

The theme song for "Big Bang Theory" is always a source of trouble for me, and prevents me from watching the show much past the cold open.

Logically, I *know* that the song starts with "Then nearly fourteen billion years ago expansion started." But the Barenaked Ladies cannot enunciate worth a tuppence, so what I always *hear* is "... fourteen million years ago ...", which is a whole order of magnitude of wrong, wrong, wrong.

The great thing is that everyone else I've talked to about this is oblivious to the problem - until I point it out. Then they can't stop noticing.

So, you're welcome.

I'm pretty sure a lot of the examples in the "music" section don't belong because they're not In-Universe or referenced in other works, but I don't feel confident enough to cut them myself.

Is there an instrumental equivalent to this? One which is about people thinking a tune goes with a set of lyrics when it's a completely different work?

How about the line "No man asks for" misheard as "You're and asshole" in the song "Under Pressure" by queen and david bowie?

In the Black Eyed Peas song "Let's Get It Started", a breakdown has "Bob your head like me APL de, up inside your club or in your Bentley." It's easy to mishear "Bentley" (car) as "belly", but I can't fully understand why...

I don't think that the Ben 10 example is a mondegreen- should we get rid of it?

I want to add the part from the House Of Mouse episode where Goofy is taught to be un-goofy.

"I will teach you poise and grace."

"Poison Grace? I don't even know Grace!"

I was going to add an example from the film "I Give It a Year", but the page is locked. In the romantic-comedy, the main couple Nat and Josh argue over misheard song lyrics. Nat thinks the lyrics from "Sweet Dreams Are Made of This" go "I travelled the world in generic jeans" instead of "I travelled the world and the seven seas", much to Josh's chagrin. She also thinks the line from "We Built This City" goes "we built this city on the wrong damn road". Josh brings up the lyrics from "Tiny Dancer", which Nat thinks goes "hold me close and tie me down sir". I would appreciate it if someone could add this example to the page.

Oh come on, nothing about "There's a bathroom on the right" (correct lyric, "There's a bad moon on the rise," from Creedence Clearwater Revival's song "Bad Moon Rising")?

Since this trope is also about dialogue, I think this exchange from Metal Gear Solid 2 fits.

Colonel: There’s a terminal in front of the elevator, a node. Raiden: Did you just say "nerd"? Colonel: Not "nerd". "Node". Raiden: Oh.

this is the entire song O Fortuna, in illustrated Mondegreen form. I was going to put it in the examples, but the page is locked.

A majority of the Bad FOTR Captions seem to be based on misheard dialogue from the original Fellowship of the Ring movie. Here's an example:

Original line: Do you know how the Orcs first came to be? They were Elves once...
Misheard line: Do you know how the ox first came to be? They were hell once...

The They Might Be Giants song "New York City" is a cover. The original version, by cub, had some parts that were unintelligible, so when transcribing it, "Breakfast at Tiffany's" got changed to "Katz's and Tiffany's," and "The Empire State where King Kong lives" became "The Empire State where Dylan lived."

Example in The Chemical Brothers' song "Hey Boy Hey Girl": The characteristic and repeated line "Hey girls, hey boys, superstar D Js, here we go!" is actually "Hey girls, b-boys, superstar D Js, here we go!"

Example in movie Jumpin Jack Flash. Whoopie Goldberg is trying to figure out the lyrics to the Rolling Stones song. "I was raised by two blind lesbians? Speak English Mick!"

The Kings Of Leon entry: At the end, could someone change it from "made it the album title track" to "made it the title of the track"? Kings Of Leon don't have an album called "Sex On Fire"; that song's on their "Only By The Night" album.

I wanted to try and change the link to Buffalax's Tunak Tunak Tun video, since he got banned. Can someone with admin privileges add this instead? [1]

Back to the origin of the term Mondegreen, which does not seem to have been explained here: It originates in the mishearing of a line in the folk song The Earl of Murray, in which the line 'they have slain the Earl of Murray and laid him on the green; mis-heard as 'they have slain the Earl of Murray and Lady Mondegreen'. so the assertion that a Lady Mondregreen is something quite different, is incorrect.

Nevermind.

Could someone perhaps explain what in the hell is going in the picture?

This page needs a re-sort; some examples are erroneously sorted by song title, or by first name, instead of by surname. I've just moved two examples (Stevie Nicks from S to N, and someone else from N to I), but there are still many more.

Adding into the Cingular commercial of misunderstood lyrics to "Rock the Casaba" is a comedy video called "Rock the Catbox" with kittens.

Clash Kittens Rock Da Catbox! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnLUfb4bqS4

@Lord Aaronus: You mean make Buffalax its own trope?