Lay them on the green.

[hannah]

Gang.

Folks.

My dudes.

Fellow participants of this given social network.

I'll get to it: I need Mondegreens. When I started the fic I'm currently working on, I decided it should take its chapter titles from misheard lyrics. I figured it'd add to the atmosphere and create a slanted commentary on the subject matter, and I'd finally get to do something I'd wanted to try out for a while in something approaching a reasonable context.

Today I realized I needed some help in the matter. That, and it'd be better asking around for specific examples than scrolling through compilations of the more common ones. I'm not looking for "hold me closer, Tony Danza" - I'm looking for "it's all part of the palimpsest." (Trouble, by Voxtrot, and yes, that's going in there.)

If anyone's got something, I'd love to hear it.

Comments

[fennui]

The only one I can think of right now is, "and a happy blue ear" which is what my youngest always used to sing (happy new year).

[hannah]

That is pretty adorable.

[gramarye1971]

My personal fave:

"Someday you will find me / carpeting the landslide / In a champagne supernova in the sky" - Oasis, Champagne Supernova

[hannah]

Your favorite - so you have more, then? Yes? Please?

[gramarye1971]

Some others I enjoy:

"How am I gonna be an octopus about this?" - Bastille, Pompei

"Gonna be a man in motion / All I need is a pair of wings" - John Parr, Man in Motion (St. Elmo's Fire)

"Won't you stop and remember me / At an inconvenient time?" - Simon and Garfunkel, Hazy Shade of Winter

"So take the photographs and still frames in your mind
Hang it on a shelf in good health and good time
Take tears and memories and ask it, on trial --
For what it's worth, it was worth all the while" - Green Day, Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)

[hannah]

Oh man, that Green Day is perfect! Thank you!

[pwcorgigirl]

My very personal fave is hearing the Jayhawks song Omaha Nights as "am I growing old in the arms of Leon Russell?" instead of "in the arms of the wrong lover?"

[hannah]

I don't know that song or that artist, and I'll go give them a listen. You got any more?

[pwcorgigirl]

When my husband was a little boy, he used to sing "lead on, oh kinky turtle" instead of "lead on, O King Eternal" in church, because that is how he heard it.

[hannah]

The "children mishear phonemes in common prayers" is an untapped comedy vein, seriously.

[nightdog_barks]

Sadly, the only one that I always remember is a really common one -- "There's a bathroom on the right," instead of "There's a bad moon on the rise," from Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Bad Moon Rising."

[hannah]

A classic of the genre.

[nightdog_barks]

Finally remembered another one -- in Stevie Nicks' "Edge of Seventeen," I always heard "Just like a white-winged dove" as "Just like a one-winged dove," which only made sense in the context that a dove with only one wing would certainly be sighing about it ("Ooh, baby, ooh, ooh").

[oldtoadwoman]

That's the first one that occurred to me too.

I also remember reading an essay by someone who thought "daunserly" was a word when they were a kid (convinced it meant something like "really beautiful") and how they tried using it in a sentence and got called out: "What does that even meant?" "Daunserly! You know, like in the national anthem. 'Daunserly light'."

From personal experience, most of my misheard lyrics are just *mumble*mumble* where I just can't figure out what they're saying at all. Rake up like a douche you know da roner in the night? I stubbornly maintain that that is not a misheard lyric; it's a miss-sung lyric.

I do recall having an argument with my sister about "The heart of rock and roll is the beat" versus "The heart of rock and roll is still beating". (Huey Lewis, "The Heart of Rock & Roll") But that doesn't seem funny enough to make a good Mondegreen.

There was an old Whoopi Goldberg movie called Jumpin' Jack Flash and it was like a spy movie or something where she was told the song was the key to decoding something (and this is before you could just look lyrics up online) so she's listening to the cassette over and over. "'I was raised by two lesbians?' ... Mick, Mick, Mick, speak English!" (I was raised by a toothless, bearded hag, which arguably makes even less sense.)

[nightdog_barks]

Heh. See, I always heard it as "Wrapped up like a douche, you know the rumor in the night," and even after I knew it was supposed to be deuce, I still heard the rest of it the same way. I didn't know until I looked it up tonight that the actual lyric is "Revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night," which just ... makes no sense to me at all.

I also discovered a week or so ago that I had misheard the names of the friends in Santana's "Evil Ways." All my life I had thought it was Tina and Joan (as in, "Tina, Joan, and who knows who ... "), but Google says it is Jean and Joan, which was oddly disappointing to me.

So ... yes, this is me rambling about song lyrics. *g*

[cathexys]

I had a huge fight with my BF in the 80s over "Black Coffee in Bed" versus "She caught me in bed".... (No idea whether that's common or not?)

[hannah]

Commonality isn't important right now. Just getting enough together to find enough to be of use. Got any more?

[cathexys]

Well you were pretty explicit that you didn't want ones that are "Tony Danza" ones...

So...I used to think it was "Money for Nothing and chips for free" and Song of Silence"...

And I'll be checking your comments!!!

[hannah]

Sometimes you've just got to dig into a big plate of nachos, you know?

[lilacsigil]

Paul Simon, The Boxer

"Just a-coming from the hordes on Seventh Avenue"

(Reminded by Cathexys above)
Dire Straits, "Money for nothing and the chips for free" and "I want my own TV"

Bruce Springsteen, Born to Run
"Cut loose like a goose, like a rumour in the night."

Cream, Cocaine
"She don't like, she don't like, she don't like...cocaine."

(I thought it was about a guy who did coke and his girlfriend didn't like it.)

David Bowie, Starman

"There's a star man, waiting in the sky, I know just how to love him and I know to kiss his eye."

[hannah]

I think my favorite ones are those that make just enough sense - like the Cocaine example - it never occurs to the listener to check and make sure.

[lilacsigil]

Me too! I didn't realise that "the hordes on Seventh Avenue" was wrong until I was an adult, because it makes sense with the next lines, "I do declare, there were times when I was so lonely, I took some comfort there." Poor guy, so lonely that even a horde of strangers is comforting!

[lizzie_omalley]

Well, I can't help you with a misheard lyric of my own though I am sure I have some in my mental archive somewhere but I had to know what a palimpsest was so I googled it and found this convo that perhaps would be useful: http://palimpsest.org.uk/forum/archive/index.php/t-161.html

(Still don't know what a palimsest is but I love the forum.)

Also, similar but different, when I was a kid and we were playing clue I called the Conservatory the Conversatory.

[hannah]

A palimpsest is a writing surface where the original work's been rubbed out or erased, and something new written over it. Sometimes the old words are visible, sometimes not. As one of the characters in the story's schizophrenic, it seemed an apt metaphor for her.

[lizzie_omalley]

Thank you! :D

[akamarykate]

I don't know if this is too common, but back when Taylor Swift's "Blank Space" first came out, there were a lot of people who thought "Got a long list of ex-lovers" was "Go tell my Starbucks lovers."

A friend of mine in high school used to mishear lyrics all the time. She thought "There's gonna be a heartache tonight," was "There's gonna be a party tonight," and she thought "Our love's in jeopardy, baby, ooooo," was a follow up to an even older song, "I shot the sheriff, but I did not shoot the deputy," because she heard it as, "I shot the deputy, baby, oooooo." As in, the singer repented and decided to confess that he had, in fact, shot the deputy as well as the sheriff.

[linaelyn]

When my daughters were of an age to squeeee over Ms. Swift, and buy themselves tickets to go see her, LIVE, at the Local Stadium Venue for Said Artist.. as I dropped them off, there was an ENTIRE GIRL SCOUT TROOP with white t-shirts that displayed the iconic green mermaid corporate logo, emblazoned with the words "STARBUCKS LOVERS" and "TROOP #1042"

I love fandom, in all its forms.

[hannah]

But "Starbucks lovers" makes sense in the cultural context Swift was engaging with! Man, now I'm disappointed she didn't go for that.

[rahirah]

There's always "Excuse me while I kiss this guy" for "Excuse me while I kiss the sky" from "Purple Haze."

[linaelyn]

Yes. This is the one that I came here to mention.

[hannah]

There's not quite enough hoyay for that one to apply - but didn't Hendrix actually kiss a guy on stage to that, or was that just another urban legend?

[lilacsigil]

He did! Someone told him the mondegreen, and he liked it, so he started actually singing that line and kissing a guy on stage.

[oldtoadwoman]

I thought of another one. This was from a songfic I read years ago. The worst part was the line in question was part of the chorus so it got repeated several times every few chapters in the story. The phallic imagery was especially amusing (and probably the only reason I remember it).

Sarah McLachlan's "Possession"
actual line: "kiss you so hard"
mondegreen: "kiss your sword"

[hannah]

That turns it from a good if straightforward love song into some sort of Medieval-type ballad involving knights and witches. Nice.

[deifire]

Manfred Mann’s Earth Band, "Blinded by the Light"
Actual lyric: "Revved up like a deuce"
Misheard lyric: "Wrapped up like a douche"
(That one's probably a classic, but one that got me.)

"Silent Night"
Actual lyric: "Round yon virgin mother and child"
Misheard lyric (by young me, for years): "Round, young version of mother and child"

I've been mishearing R.E.M. lyrics most of my life, but here are a couple:

"The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight"
Actual lyric: "Call me when you try to wake her up"
Misheard lyric: "Don't even try to wake her up"

"Losing My Religion"
Actual lyric: "What if all these fantasies/Come flailing around"
As misheard by me: "What if all these fantasies/Come flaming to the ground"
As misheard by a friend of mine: "What if all these Spanish seas/Come flailing around"

[hannah]

Those are some dead-on REM lyrics - I love it when a misheard lyric recasts a song in a way that makes just as much sense as the original.

[lizzie_omalley]

Ah, My mental archives released one: "I'm a pool hall ace." instead of "My heart aches."

[hannah]

Which song is that from?

[lizzie_omalley]

Sorry, meant to post the attribution but forgot. It is from Every Step You Take by the Police. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMOGaugKpzs