Oh Lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood
Our sense of hearing is, to say the least, imperfect. Depending on how closely we’re listening, how clearly the speaker or singer is enunciating, and whether there’s extraneous music or other sounds, we fairly often mishear what’s being said or sung, and we conclude incorrectly what we think we heard.
The official term for this is a mondegreen, coined by American writer Sylvia Wright in 1954. As a young girl, she enjoyed listening to her mother read aloud from a book of 17th Century Scottish poems, one of which included the line, “They had slain the Earl of Moray and laid him on the green.” Wright incorrectly heard this as, “They had slain the Earl of Moray and Lady Mondegreen.” Even after she learned of her error, she decided she preferred her version, and chose to call this phenomenon a mondegreen.
Probably the most famous example of misunderstood rock music lyrics is in Jimi Hendrix’s hit “Purple Haze.” The correct words are: “‘Scuse me while I kiss the sky,” but many people insist they hear “‘Scuse me while I kiss this guy.” A guy named Gavin Edwards even published a book of misunderstood lyrics in 1995 that uses the Hendrix mondegreen as its title.
Another amusing mondegreen that’s mentioned now and then is in Creedence Clearwater Revival’s 1969 song “Bad Moon Rising,” where “There’s a bad moon on the rise” is hilariously misinterpreted as “There’s a bathroom on the right.”
There are many more examples of misheard rock lyrics from not only the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s, but from the ’90s and up to the present day. Some of these seem far-fetched; I doubt anyone really hears “She moves in mysterious ways” and thinks it’s “Shamu, the mysterious whale.” Ditto Billy Joel’s “You may be right, I may be crazy” being somehow interpreted as “You made the rice, I made the gravy…”
There are also purveyors of parodies — artists like Weird Al Yankovic and Bob Rivers who have come up with a whole song’s worth of whimsical lyrics to go with an original song’s melody. (Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust” becomes “Another One Rides the Bus”). If some of these seem a bit forced or contrived, well, perhaps that’s the point. It’s all in good fun.
Some mondegreens, of course, are lyrics that have been intentionally misread for comedic effect. Charles Grosvenor Jr. published a book in 2007 with the catchy title, “Hold Me Closer, Tony Danza,” a deliberate misreading of the 1971 Elton John-Bernie Taupin lyric, “Hold me closer, tiny dancer.”
I’ve seen dish towels and sweatshirts bearing clever words designed to satirize well-known songs. Here’s an example: The Eurythmics’ 1983 hit “Sweet Dreams Are Made of This” offers these lyrics: “Sweet dreams are made of this, who am I to disagree, I travel the world and the seven seas, everybody’s looking for something…“ But the dish towel reads: “Sweet dreams are made of cheese, who am I to dis a Brie, I cheddar the world, and a feta cheese, everybody’s looking for Stilton…”
Let’s get back to mondegreens. It has happened to everybody at one time or another — you think you know the words that are being sung, and then find out later (sometimes many many years later) that you have been mistaken. For nearly four decades, I swear I thought the words to The Monkees’ smash hit “I’m a Believer” included the line, “When I needed sunshine on my brain.” Turns out Micky Dolenz was singing, “When I needed sunshine, I got rain.” Who knew? Not me.
When Don Henley sings The Eagles’ classic ballad, “Desperado,” the first verse includes the line, “you’ve been out riding fences for so long now…” But some listeners claim they thought the line was, “You’ve been outright offensive for so long now…”
It’s pretty damn obvious that the opening line of the theme song to the 1984 film “Ghostbusters” is “If there’s something strange in your neighborhood, who you gonna call? Ghostbusters!” Still, some wise guys prefer to think he’s singing, “Who you gonna call? Those bastards!”
When Dylan first met The Beatles and offered some marijuana to share, they were wary because they’d never tried it. Dylan replied, “But what about the line in your song — ‘I get high, I get high, I get high…’?” They explained that the proper lyric from “I Want to Hold Your Hand” was “I can’t hide, I can’t hide, I can’t hide…”
Here’s a bizarre interpretation of the lyrics to the chorus of Michael Jackson’s iconic 1983 hit “Beat It,” which go: “Beat it, beat it, no wants to be defeated…” Perhaps this will raise an eyebrow, but some claim they have always sung along this way: “Heated, heated, no wants a beef fajita…”
The Stevie Nicks song “Dreams” from Fleetwood Mac’s “Rumours” LP includes the line, “Thunder only happens when it’s raining,” but some say it sounds like “Thunder’s only half as wet as rain is.”
From the legendary “Stairway to Heaven,” when Robert Plant belts out the couplet “And as we wind on down the road, our shadows taller than our souls,” some listeners sing along incorrectly, “And there’s a wino down the road, I should have stolen what I sold…”
In 1963, Bob Dylan sang, “The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind”… or was it “The ants are my friend”?
When Crystal Gayle sang, in 1978, “Don’t it make my brown eyes blue,” some fans say they thought the words were “Donuts make my brown eyes blue.”
In The Beach Boys #1 hit “Good Vibrations,” the line is “She’s giving me excitations,” not “She’s given me eight citations.”
From The Eagles’ “Hotel California,” the lyric begins, “On a dark desert highway, cool wind in my hair,” NOT “Cool Whip in my hair.”
Smokey Robinson and The Miracles had a big single whose title was “I Second That Emotion,” and yet, someone thought she heard “I suck at that emotion.”
The Police’s early hit “Message in a Bottle” opens with the line, “A year has passed since I wrote my note”… or is it “A year has passed since I broke my nose”?
We all assume The Rolling Stones sang, “I’ll never be your beast of burden,” but maybe it was “I’ll never leave your pizza burnin’…”
We can safely conclude that Madonna was no virgin when she sang, “Like a virgin, touched for the very first time,” but I doubt she was saying, “touched for the 31st time.”
In Nirvana’s megahit “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” is Kurt Cobain singing “Here we are now, entertain us” or “Here we are now, in containers”?
Elvis Presley’s 1969 classic, “Suspicious Minds” begins, “We’re caught in a trap, I can’t walk out”… or is it “We call it a tramp, I can’t walk out”?
In the popular Phil Collins tune “In the Air Tonight,” a few people thought “I’ve been waiting for this moment for all my life” was instead “I’ve been waiting for this snowman for all my life.”
Dobie Gray’s 1973 song “Drift Away” says, “Give me the beat, boy, and free my soul,” not “Give me The Beach Boys, and free my soul…”
Does ’70s rocker Eddie Money have “two tickets to paradise” or “two chickens to paralyse”?
How about R.E.M.’s 1991 song “Losing My Religion”? Are the words “That’s me in the corner, that’s me in the spotlight” or “Let’s pee in the corner, let’s pee in the spotlight”?
In Bon Jovi’s classic “Livin’ On a Prayer,” does he sing “It doesn’t make a difference if we make it or not” or does he sing, “It doesn’t make a difference if we’re naked or not”?
The early Bruce Springsteen tune “Blinded by the Light” includes the line “revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night,” but Manfred Mann’s remake sounds like they’re singing, “Wrapped up like a douche, another loner in the night…”
In “Groovin’,” the Young Rascals song, are they singing about “you and me endlessly” or is it “you and me and Leslie”?
When Toto sings about blessing the rains in “Africa,” are they singing “There’s nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do” OR “There’s nothing that a hundred men on Mars could ever do”?
Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall” sings about “no dark sarcasm in the classroom,” but perhaps it’s “no docks or chasms in the classroom…”
How about Abba’s big disco hit from 1977? “See that girl, watch that scene, diggin’ the dancing queen” or “See that girl, watch her scream, kicking the dancing queen…”
Finally, here’s a mondegreen that just might make more sense than the actual lyric. In 1968, Iron Butterfly was recording a song called “In the Garden of Eden” after having polished off a gallon of cheap red wine, and vocalist Doug Ingle slurred as he sang, “In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida, baby.” Some listeners prefer their own interpretation: “In a glob of Velveeta, baby…”
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There’s even a game out now where teams compete to be the first to identify the correct lyrics for each misunderstood lyric on the playing cards. Lots of fun!
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