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Misheard lyrics
Have you ever come to the realisation that you have been mishearing lyrics for years? Not such an issue now but it was in the days before the internet and google made it much easier to check. I can think of a at least a couple of beauties I’ve been guilty of. The Go Go’s ‘Our Lips Are Sealed’, I, and plenty of others heard this as ‘Alex The Seal’. Would you believe that I also heard one word in the Hollies’ ‘Bus Stop’ incorrectly for over fifty years before the penny dropped after hearing the MonaLisa Twins’ cover and thought that Lisa’s pronunciation of ‘wet day’ seemed a little strange. Beautiful and cute with her lovely German accent, but not quite right. I googled the lyrics and for the first time since 1966 realised that Graham Gouldman’s lyrics were NOT ‘Bus Stop waiting’. I kid you not!
Do you have any such faux pas to confess? Following are several interesting ones to get you thinking.
Johnny Nash – ‘I Can See Clearly Now The Rain Has Gone’ misheard as ‘I can See Clearly Now Lorraine Has Gone’.
“The girl with colitis goes by”
The correct lyric from The Beatles’ ‘Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds’: “The girl with kaleidoscope eyes”“What a nice surprise when your rabbi dies”
Correct lyric from The Eagles’ ‘Hotel California’: “What a nice surprise bring your alibis”, and,‘Relax’ said the bite man, ‘we are programmed to deceive’
Original Lyrics:
‘Relax’, said the nightman. ‘We are programmed to receive.’The Monkees – I’m A Believer
Well I have a nice image for this one when I can work out how to transfer it. Maybe in my next post!
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19 Replies
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The Monkees – I’m A Believer
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I’ve come to the realization of misleading lyrics quite often, but too many to be able to cite any specifics. It is usually the melody that catches me onto a song first. Perhaps it’s the classical music part of me as most of it is instrumental, but feelings and imagery I get from it is amazing considering not a word is spoken like in Beethovens Moonlight Sonata or Bachs Goldberg Variations. That is the power of music, it takes you into the state of mind or heart of the composer. In Rock/Pop music when I focus in on the lyrics it is often a revelation enhancing the experience even more. But sometimes it has had the opposite effect. Like reading a novel and your imagination creates a spectacular narrative and image in your mind, but when you see the movie you are disappointed because the scenes don’t quite live up to what you imagined. So lyrics can be powerful when it is poetic I think. That is why the Beatles and MLT music is so special. Lyrics are poetic.
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Jung, I loved you eloquent response. But Howard I gotta tell you I can’t stop laughing at your post! Especially the line from Lucy in the sky with diamonds; “the girl with colitis walks by…” The tears are still running down my face…
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Whoops… Yes… Guilty on this… Also having hearing loss somewhat doesn’t help either… Lol… That’s why I’m happy MLT provides lyrics to their songs because… Ahem… Yes… A few times I was singing along on some of their songs until I got reading the lyrics… Yep… Now reading the proper lyrics .. The songs sound and make more sense… Though it was fun singing the misheard versions.????????????????????.. I used to and sometimes still now once in awhile.. Take a song and create my own lyrics…. With my imagination and Poetical mind going…. I’ll just leave it there…
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Oh! Great post Howard. So many! Of course we didn’t have the lyrics, it was what we’d hear on the LP’s. Off the top of my head, for the longest time I couldn’t figure out the the line in “A Hard Day’s Night” So why on earth should I moan… I thought it was So when I cry and get home.
There is another funny side to this when you add a language change… sometimes innocent words in English come out very raunchy in Spanish, and those are the parts sung the loudest when you’re a teenager.
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I can recall three instances of my mishearing lyrics from 60’s songs back when I had only heard them on AM radio. All happened to involve the lyrics of the title, and frankly I was disappointed when I found out that the actual words were less interesting than what I had imagined.
1) “Dirty Water” by The Standells. I was sure that they were saying “curly water”, and I constantly tried to imagine in what physical or abstract sense water could be described as curly.
2) “Ventura Highway” by America. I wasn’t familiar with the town or the road, so I heard it as “venture a highway”, and wondered how you could sensibly pair that verb with that noun.
3) “Lodi” by CCR. Again due to my ignorance of California geography, I heard “stuck in Lodi again” as “stuck in a low dive again”. I thought that was a brilliant line, because the meaning was ambiguous. Did “low dive” mean a seedy bar where he was drinking despondently, or was it a metaphorical description of his life trajectory as being like that of an airplane which would crash if it couldn’t pull up in time?
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“Lodi” is a favourite CCR song of mine, David. And a good call. I too didn’t really get what he was actually singing about for many, many years. The following puts what you were hearing in brilliant perspective:
“The song describes the plight of a down-and-out musician whose career has landed him playing gigs in the town of Lodi (pronounced “low-die”), a small agricultural city in California’s Central Valley about 70 miles (110 km) from Fogerty’s hometown of Berkeley. After playing in local bars, the narrator finds himself stranded and unable to raise bus or train fare to leave. Fogerty later said he had never actually visited Lodi before writing this song, and simply picked it for the song because it had “the coolest sounding name.” However, the song unquestionably references the town’s reputation as an uninteresting farm settlement, though the narrator does not make any specific complaints. The song’s chorus, “Oh Lord, stuck in Lodi again,” has been the theme of several city events in Lodi.”
Probably not a typical MLT number (with their wide range of styles and genres, not sure what typical is for them anymore), of course I’d love to hear Mona and Lisa do this with one of those great live bands of theirs. For all the guitar nuts out their in MLT Clubland, can you advise this guitar hillbilly what guitars John is using. Looks like a Rickenbacker that changes to a Gretsch about the 1.47 mark. There is at least two live concerts used with the studio recording in this video. Actually, just remembered the Twins covered “Proud Mary” in their first live concert in 2007! Duh!
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Yes, Howard, I also would love it if MLT tried covering something by CCR. You tend to think that it just wouldn’t sound right without John Fogerty’s unique voice, but you know that Mona and Lisa would somehow find a way to rework the song into their own idiom while maintaining the integrity of the original sound.
Back to misheard lyrics, I once saw a comedian comment on another CCR song, “Bad Moon Rising”. He said he heard “there’s a bad moon on the rise” as “there’s a bathroom on the right”.
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In the “Lodi” video, John’s brother Tom is still part of the band on rhythm guitar. He left after a couple of years, stating he realised it was his brother’s band.
As for the MLT, how good is this from the Baby MonaLisa Twins with the awesome Papa Rudi on bass and the lovely Michaela on organ!
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Actually, I’m a little impatient and relied on google for the following:
“At the far end of the room sits the Rickenbacker he played at Woodstock (“I started with ‘Born on the Bayou’”), and beside him rests a highly coveted Les Paul Custom “Black Beauty” that was used to record “Bad Moon Rising” and “Lodi” in 1969 (“I don’t tour with that one; it’s iconic to me”). With time the wood has dried, the glue has hardened, and the value has increased substantially: the Les Paul that retailed for $545 is now likely worth an estimated $10,000. “I still take them out because they sound better with age”, says Fogerty who owns upwards of 300 guitars.
“Through the years I’ve kept the directive that when a song is crying for a certain guitar, get that guitar”.
This helps a little!
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Published Feb 19, 2017 by Dan Orkin
News and Reviews“John Fogerty has been reunited with the Rickenbacker 325 he played at Woodstock and on the Ed Sullivan Show. According to a report by Rolling Stone, Fogerty’s wife gave him the recovered guitar as a Christmas gift this past year.
“I started playing the solo in ‘Green River’ and the hairs stood up on the back of my neck,” he told Rolling Stone. “It was exactly that sound, 100 percent. I dare say I haven’t heard that sound since those days when I had the guitar.”
Fogerty bought the guitar new in 1969 at a Rickenbacker showroom, opting for a custom Bigsby tremolo and Gibson humbucker install. With these modifications in place, Fogerty painted the word ACME on the truss rod cover.
According to Fogerty, the guitar was given away around 1973 following the dissolution of Creedence Clearwater Revival. It was around this time Fogerty learned of his now infamously bad publishing deal with Fantasy Records, spelling the end of a musical and personal era.
Years later, Fogerty was shown with the guitar at Norman’s Rare Guitars in Tarzana, CA, but was uninterested in paying the $40,000 it was then commanding. Eventually, the guitar landed in the hands of Gary Dick of Gary’s Classic Guitars, who sold it to Fogerty’s wife, Julie, last year.”
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Another song for years I had misheard lyrics upon were from Paul Simon’s Koda chrome?! song, but given my slight ear deafness, it’s understandable for me to mishear lyrics… It’s usually both the tune /instrumentation and lyrics of a song that catches my attention for, as being a visual learner/person, if I can easily imagine what’s being sung in my mind’s eye, then I know it’s a good song…
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That one’s understandable, Jacki. Even with a great sound system and perfect hearing, you just don’t expect words like “Kodachrome” and “Nikon” to figure prominently in a song. Back in the day I provisionally decided, without listening too carefully, that he was saying “goin’ home”.
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There’s actually a word for this, Howard. It’s called a “mondegreen”. Look it up in Wikipedia.
All my adult life I thought the line in “Two of Us” was “around the bend the road that stretches out ahead”. Then I heard MonaLisa sing it and finally I heard “longer than”.
Genesis actually deliberately put words in the song “It” that they knew would be misunderstood “It’s only knock and know all but I like it.”
And then there’s this (its got some crude language, so beware):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7my5baoCVv8
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Lynn, that performance reminded me of the YouTube “bad lip reading” videos, where you watch clips from movies or speeches and hear the people say nonsensical things that match up perfectly with their mouth movements. This is my favorite:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uE5xZKszXMQ
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Hey Howard how about the Stones Satisfaction.
I always thought the words Mick was singing
Wrong
And I’m tryin’ to make some girl, pregnant
Baby, better come back maybe next weekCorrect
And I’m tryin’ to make some girl, who tells me
Baby, better come back maybe next week -
If I may resuscitate another ancient thread, I just remembered this masterpiece that I first heard several years ago:
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