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I'll have to put some thought into that, admittedly
I was trying to copy down the lyrics to "Steven's Last Night in Town" by Ben Folds Five, and I found out the scatting in between the second chorus and "We were talkin' 'bout something/ Seems like was funny..." stanza is not "Kick that shit-sack/ Kick that shit-stain/ Kick that shit-sack out!" and is, in fact, merely scatting.
YOU'LL PAY FOR THE WHOLE SEAT, BUT YOU'LL ONLY NEED THE EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEDGE!!!When I was a kid, I thought the line "Girl, you're giving me a cardiac arrest" in Lee Roy Parnell's "Heart's Desire" was "…Pontiac caress".
Country music is full of metaphors and slang that were previously unfamiliar to me (another good example being Garth Brooks' use of "ivory tower" in "Friends in Low Places"), so I frequently made mondegreens or way-off-base interpretations out of what I heard.
...dammit, you're right.
Y'know, I was thinking that something didn't seem right about what I was saying about whose song it was, but I was too tired to look it up and put what I was misremembering it as instead.
Well, there goes my pop music cred. *shaaaaaaaaame*
Insert witty and clever quip here. My page, as the database hates my handle.Thought of this because it happened to come on the radio at work: In Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance" I always hear "I don't wanna be friends" as "I don't wanna be French". Which is ironic because the part that comes right after that is Gratuitous French.
I feel like either you've said that before or I heard someone else say that before. Still funny though
Yeah, I always like to think of the French part as a Jekyll/Hyde-esque transformation.
From the same song, I always hear "Want you in my rear window, baby it's sick" as "Want you tomorrow when your baby is sick".
Peace is the only battle worth waging.I remembered a couple I had for different Rancid songs:
In "Ruby Soho": "embraces with a warm gesture" —> "Ann Bridges with her war chest truck".
In "Roots Radicals": "with the music execution and the talk of revolution" —> "with the music execution and the taco revolution"
The Taco Revolution could be A Good Name for a Rock Band. And I have no idea who Ann Bridges is or why she would have a war chest truck, whatever that is.
Oh, and speaking of taco related mondegreens, there's a recurring chanted backing vocal in "As I Lay Me Down To Sleep" by Sophie B. Hawkins that sounds like "Who wants tacos?" - apparently it's really "ooh la kah koh", which is just vaguely exotic-sounding gibberish. When that song was at it's most popular, it was sort of an in-joke for my high school friends to sing "who wants tacos?" at each other.
edited 12th May '13 7:11:58 PM by MikeK
In Train's "50 Ways to Say Goodbye", I invariably hear "cement mixer filled with quicksand" as "semen mixer filled with quicksand", which initially left me wondering "What the hell is a semen mixer?".
Also, in Classified's "Inner Ninja", I often hear the Title Drop as "iron DJ". Maybe the fact that I've heard the song so darn much has something to do with it.
edited 13th May '13 4:20:41 AM by Spinosegnosaurus77
Peace is the only battle worth waging.When I was little, here is what I thought some of the lyrics to the chorus to R Kelly's "Ignition (Remix)" were (italicized lyrics are misheard):
...while they say "Are you ready?"
It's the remix to ignition
Hot and fresh out the kitchen
Imma rollin' dead bodies
Got every man in here wishin'
Sippin' on coke and rum (rum)
I'm like so what, I'm dumb
I must've been a morbid child.
edited 10th Jun '13 2:01:19 PM by 0dd1
Insert witty and clever quip here. My page, as the database hates my handle.I read someone else's mondegreen of "The World's A Mess; It's In My Kiss" by X, and now I keep hearing the song that way: "There are no angels, there are devils and men in wings" (it's actually "there are devils in many ways"). Specifically, the other person was bringing it up because they thought their mondegreen was cooler than the real lyric, and I kind of agree.
There's this jingle for the New Hampshire amusement park Water Country that, if you're in New England, is kind of an iconic earworm... Unfortunately I can't really show you the actual jingle because it's apparently been DCMA'd off the youtubes. Anyway, there's a line that kind of goes by too fast to be intelligible - my joking interpretation was "there's no better place to feel up Neil Young", which as it turns out is actually somewhat close: Turns out it's "there's no better place to feel or be young", with kind of a misplaced emphasis on "feel".
edited 10th Jun '13 8:36:18 PM by MikeK
For the longest time, I heard "until the other kiddies knock him down" in "Winter Wonderland" as "until the alligators knock him down."
Peace is the only battle worth waging."Cobrastyle" by The Teddybears:
I thought it was the one line I did understand. Yeah, turns out I had no idea what the actual lyrics were.
"Ballroom Blitz" by Sweet
"Patio Lanterns" by Kim Mitchell
edited 11th Jun '13 1:13:54 PM by resetlocksley
Fear is a superpower."Volcano Girls" by Veruca Salt:
I still kind of like the latter as a bit of surreal imagery. And the song even includes a Shout-Out to "Glass Onion" by The Beatles, so it sort of would have made sense to include some Word Salad Lyrics like that.
edited 22nd Jul '13 4:46:45 PM by MikeK
Well, presumably drinking a lot of malt liquor
would make you urinate pretty often.
Oh, and I was at a karaoke night yesterday and their karaoke version of "Bad Romance" had a mondegreen in it (I could tell because they had the lyrics on a screen facing the audience as well as the one facing the singer, and because said singer followed along with the incorrect lines): That Alfred Hitchcock-shout-out couplet turned into something like "I want your psycho, you're burnin' your stick / want you in my room while the baby is sick".
edited 28th Jun '13 11:13:39 AM by MikeK
Hey, don't knock sick-baby-sex 'til you've tried it.
A classic from "Regulators" by Warren G and Nate Dogg - "I can't believe they takin' Lawrence Welk". As it turns out, Warren G was being a Third-Person Person and lamenting the theft of "Warren's wealth". But the mental image of him being robbed on the street for big band records is hilarious.
edited 29th Jun '13 6:21:32 PM by MikeK
I was kind of recalling how unintelligible I found much of Nevermind The Bollocks without looking at a lyric sheet first. Some highlights I can remember:
From "Seventeen":
"We don't care about Longair / Oh, down with lawyers!" instead of "we don't care about long hair / I don't wear flares". I thought maybe Longair was the last name of some famous lawyer they were giving a gratuitous Take That! to.
Also from "Seventeen":
"I'm so lazy / I can't even make butter!" instead of "I'm so lazy / I can't even be bothered"
From "Anarchy In The UK":
"I wanna destroy, possibly" instead of "I wanna destroy the passerby". If you're going to start out a song by declaring yourself the anti-christ, you should be more certain about wanting to cause destruction than that.
edited 22nd Jul '13 5:16:12 PM by MikeK

Oh, and re: Del Amitri - I'm only familiar with "Roll To Me", but have sort of a funny mondegreen for that: The first time I heard the song, I was hearing the chorus as "the right time for raw meat". I realized that had to be wrong, so I then settled on "the right time, the wrong me". I never would have worked out "the right time to roll to me" if I didn't know the title, and when that song gets in my head, it's still as a jingle for uncooked meat.