Misheard Song Lyrics

R.E.M. - Automatic for the People - "The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite"

Misheard lyric: "Tony ja baker!"

Original lyric: "Call me once you wake her up!"

Edited by TheWhistleTropes on Jul 23rd 2019 at 7:31:29 AM

I've been listening to Meg and Dia's "Monster" for a decade and only now just noticed I've been hearing the lyrics wrong.

Actual lyrics: "Turn the sheets down. Murder ears with pillow lace. There's bathtubs full of glow flies. Bathe in kerosene, their words tattooed in his veins".

My ears: "Pull the sheets down. Let her hear (??? ??? ??). There's bad times (???) of bovines. They cannot see/Bathe in kerosene. Their ??? in his ????"

The real lyrics make even less sense then my faulty interpretation. It's only the last few sentences in the song that are hard to understand, probably because they're more artsy than the others.

"Mirror Mirror" from RWBY officially contains the lyrics "Fear of what's inside me/Can a heart be turned to stone?".

I've seen people discuss this and I've listened to the song myself... There is no "f" sound at all. It's "Mirror, what's inside me?"

I thought it was "Call me a Jamaican"

"Juice" by Lizzo: "I like shoutin' naked better over time" instead of "I'm like chardonnay, get better over time". Meanwhile I thought "blame it on the goose" had to be a mondegreen, but that's really in the song- she's talking about Grey Goose vodka, not an actual waterfowl like I imagined

Edited by MikeK on Nov 6th 2019 at 7:59:30 AM

Moneytalks by AC/DC, I thought the chorus went "Marry for the money", not "Love me for the money" for the longest time.

Weirdly enough I have two recent ones loosely related to bears:

1) "In Undertow" by Alvvays: the lines "no turning, there's no turning, there's no turning back" kinda blend into "no teddy bears, no teddy bears, no teddy bears".

2) I was on a twitch stream for a DJ and joked that one of the songs sounded like it was advertising "ice beer". It was "Eisbär" by Grauzone - "Eisbär" is German for "polar bear", or literally an "ice bear".

Edited by MikeK on Jun 20th 2020 at 4:06:09 AM

"Reflections" by Diana Ross And The Supremes

"In you I put", for years sounded like "In the UFO" to me.

Fantasy by Aldo Nova

Actual Lyrics: Sure is cool

Misheard Lyrics: Shoot a school

Two spring to mind from Stranger In Moscow by Micheal Jackson

First

Actual Lyrics: How does it feel? (How does it feel?)

Misheard lyrics: I copped a feel (How does it feel?)

Second

Actual Lyrics: When you're alone And you're cold inside?

Misheard Lyrics: When you're alone in the golden sun/sigh?

Edited by Zarius on Aug 14th 2020 at 4:54:18 AM

With a Little Help from my Friends

Actual Lyric: What would you do if I sang out of tune?

Thought I heard: What would you do if I sang out a tune?

Smells Like Teen Spirit

Actual Lyric: “A mosquito, my labido”

What I heard: “I’m a skater, not a beater”

Bruno Mars' "Grenade"

Actual lyric (paraphrased): "I'd throw my hand on a blade for you. But you won't do the same for me."

Myself, and others thought he was saying "I'd put my head on a plate for you. But, you won't do the same for me."

I would always think, "Why do you want your girlfriend's head on a plate? You weirdo..."

Edited by Brandon on Sep 30th 2020 at 6:49:36 AM

I always heard it that way too. The actual lyric doesn't really make sense to me either - is he saying that if someone tried to stab his girlfriend, he'd jump up in front of her and put his hand in the way so they'd stab his hand instead?

How about when techincally you hear all the words right, but your mental punctuation of a lyric totally changes the meaning? "Helpless" by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young has the line "big birds flying across the sky", but the first time I heard the song I parsed it as "Big Bird's flying acrosss the sky": So instead of picturing a bunch of large birds in the sky as Neil Young intended, I pictured one big yellow muppet in the sky (even though I think he was canonically flightless).

In the song "Sexy and I know it," I used to hear "Girls can have a body." instead of "Girl, look at that body."

There was a post on a Nine Inch Nails facebook group I'm in that reminded me of one I had for "The Perfect Drug": "My butt wants to say hello to you!" (instead of "my blood"). And I never personally heard it that way, but apparently the Title Drop has been mistaken for "you are the perfect rug" before, leading to memes about The Big Lebowski and the like.

Along similar lines, Blue Suede's cover of "Hooked on a Feeling", the lyric "I got a bug from you, girl", always sounded to me like "I got a butt from you, girl"...

Keeping in mind, in the original version by B.J. Thomas, the lyric is "I got it bad for you, girl..."

Not mine, but from my uncle from a long time ago:

Beast of Burden by The Rolling Stones. The original lyrics: I'll never be your beast of burden

What my uncle heard when he first heard the song: I'll never be your pizza burning

Africa: "I bless the rains down in Africa"

Me: I spent my Christmas down in Africa?

I must also mention the popular misheard lyrics to Wishmaster by Nightwish:

Original: Master! Apprentice! Heartborn! Seventh Seeker!

Misheard: Hamster! A dentist! Hard p*rn! Steven Seagal!

Edited by V-Alighieri on Jan 25th 2021 at 2:15:24 PM

Cherub Rock

Misheard Lyrics: Tell me all of your secrets/Slaught Into yourself Honey. Who wants my behind, Yee!

Actual Lyrics: Who wants that honey?/As long as there's some money/Who wants that honey?

"Copy" by Plastics - up until I looked at the song name, I kept hearing the title drop as "coffee! coffee!". It's a jumpy enough new wave song that I could see it being an ode to caffeine, maybe I'll have to go write parody lyrics.

I always hear the part "I bless the rains down in Africa" as "I guess it rains down in Africa". Don't know why.

"She Caught the Katy", the opening musical number of The Blues Brothers, when Elwood and Jake drive in their new Bluesmobile. I always hear the titular part of the song as "she complicated".

Edited by IvanovTroping97 on Feb 24th 2021 at 8:48:28 PM

Social Distortion - Story of My Life

Misheard Lyric: “Life was better as a fatass”

Actual lyric: “Life goes by so fast”

@Mike K: How about when techincally you hear all the words right, but your mental punctuation of a lyric totally changes the meaning?

An example I can think of is Ava Max's "Kings & Queens" has this lyric:

"No damsel in distress, don't need to save me..."

So, she's saying she's not a damsel in distress and doesn't need saving, but the way I heard it was she was saying no damsel in distress needed to save her...

Which made me think "How can a damsel in distress save you, though?"

Up until very recently, I wasn't sure "Ars Moriendi" by Mr. Bungle had proper lyrics - The lyrics are English with the occasional Gratuitous Latin, but Mike Patton is mainly singing in this odd, pseudo-Eastern European accent and purposely putting AcCENT upon the Wrong SylLABle, so it's pretty hard to understand. The few lines I thought might be real words were also mondegreens - what I heard as "dancing on my brain!" was "dancing on my grave!", and "he who steals girls from me" is really "He who steals pearls from the ashes" ^note  again, AcCENT upon the Wrong SylLABle - it's sung something like "he who steals pearls from THEE asHES

Edited by MikeK on Feb 28th 2021 at 2:09:45 AM