It's likely everyone has listened to a song they liked and misheard the lyrics. That's not unusual.
However, have you ever thought your misheard lyrics were better or more interesting than those of the actual song? That replacing the actual lyric with your version might make it more thought provoking or meaningful?
I'll give you a couple of examples for myself, one obscure, one famous:
There was a band from Boston called Human Sexual Response from the 80s. They had a song called Marone Offering that I really liked, but I never had a lyric sheet. The song starts out mid tempo, then changes to a much more uptempo beat about ⅔ of the way. During that uptempo portion, there's a lyric they repeat over and over. Before the advent of the internet, I thought that lyric was:
"It's justified when you walk away"
Which I personally thought was really interesting. Of course, years later and I find out it was:
"It's just a five minute walk away"
Kind of a letdown in my opinion.
Another instance was the very well known Don't Fear the Reaper. For years, I'd thought the third verse began:
"Love of two is one
Please put down that gun"
Obviously a somewhat more sinister implication.
Of course, the actual lyric is:
"Love of two is one
Here but now they're gone"
Nothing wrong with it, but part of me prefers my version.
Now, it's highly likely I think about song lyrics more than most people, but I'm curious, and I wonder if anyone else has misheard lyrics they prefer to the actual ones.
Replies
The (off-color) joke my friends and I always had was Dirty Deeds(Done With Sheep).
Captain Comics said:
Rick Springfield's friend.
JohnD said:
Again, this is not a misheard lyric I prefer to the original, but I was just listening to Bruce Springsteen's "Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)" for possible nomination to Randy's "Epic Rock Songs" thread when I realized that the lyric I heard (and just didn't think too much about all these years) as "She'll be there in the Chevrolet wrestler upstairs" is actually "She'll be there in the chair when we wrestle her upstairs."
[Reposted to correct typo]
Then there's the Italian gibberish song, "Prisencolinensinainciusol" by Adriano Celentano. He deliberately wrote it as gibberish but wanted it to sound like American English to an Italian ear. Aside from the words "all right," there's no English there, but that hasn't stopped several people from posting YouTube videos supposedly showing the lyrics in English. Even though the lyrics are nonsense, it's pretty catchy.
Here's a performance from Italian TV, I think.
Story on the song
I search for misheard lyrics quite a bit on the internet. I needed help to figure out this misheard line from REO Speedwagon's "Music Man."
I heard: "I tried working in school and but they're just not my brand"
Actual lyric: "I tried workin' an' schoolin' but they're just not my plan"
I forget what rabbit hole I fell into that explained where the term "Mondegreen" -- meaning a misheard song lyric -- came from, but it was apparently coined by a writer who misheard a lyric in a Scottish ballad her mother sang to her as a child. The last line of a stanza about a killed nobleman was "layd him on the green," which she misheard as "Lady Mondegreen." She said nobody else had come up with a word for misheard lyrics, so she offered Mondegreen and it stuck.
The Wiki on Mondegreen offered some cool ones, as well as links to other cool stuff.
One I hadn't heard before, but now will hear no other way: "the girl with kaleidoscope eyes" in "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" misheard as "the girl with colitis goes by." (I had heard some people say "calliope eyes" before.)
The full explanation for "wrapped up like a douche" is included; Jeff is right that the original ine is "revved up like a Douce (Coupe)." But the misheard lyric arose mostly from the Manfred Mann Earth Band cover version. Bruce Springsteen, who wrote and performed the original, is quoted as crediting Manfred Mann with making the song popular by turning it into a song about "a feminine hygiene product."
Evidently Mondegreens became a lot more common with the advent of mass communication, where people all over the world would hear the exact same version of a song instead of local performances.The Wiki led me to a commercial for Volkswagen Passat making fun of all the Mondegreens from Elton John's "Rocket Man." I had seen it before and forgotten it, but it's worth a watch:
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