SiteExcuse me while I kiss this guy (Wednesday fun contest)
Earlier this week, I was shopping when Earth, Wind & Fire’s “That’s the Way of the World” started playing over the store’s music system. I love this song. Hey, I’m a child of the 70s, so go ahead, laugh at me … I don’t care. It brings me back to a happy time of banana seats, Bomb-Pops, and long, hazy summer days spent reading Judy Blume.
Anyway, back to my grocery store groovin’. There’s a line in this song that I always hear as, “Hearts of fire, teenage love desire,” and it hit me. I’ve been listening to this song for 30something years and that line surely can’t be right. I went home, looked it up and darn, what a fool I’ve been. Thank God this wasn’t one of those songs where I’d get drunk and belt it out karaoke-style. It’s “Heart of fire creates love desire,” but you probably knew that. Me, I need decades to pick up on stuff like this.
Occasionally we run a silly contest on Wednesdays where we hand out a prize. So this week, I’m looking for the funniest mis-heard song lyric. For another example: the title of this blog post has one of the more famous ones from Jimi Hendrix’s song “Purple Haze” (the line is really, “Excuse me while I kiss the sky”). Add your entry/entries to the comments section below by Wednesday 11:59 p.m. Hawaii time. May your amusing lyrical interpretation tickle our judges’ funny bones. [db]
*ETA: Linda has advised me there’s a name for these misheard lyrics. They’re called mondegreens. Who knew?
20 Responses to “Excuse me while I kiss this guy (Wednesday fun contest)”
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Treo
Said this on April 23rd, 2008 at 3:37am:How about Abba’s Chiquitita. There’s a line “Chiquitita, tell me what’s wrong” which I always heard as “Take your teeth out, show me your gums”
katie
Said this on April 23rd, 2008 at 6:41am:My friend Mellie thought the words to “Praise You” by Fatboy Slim (i.e Id like to praise you like I SHOULD), were actually “I’d like to praise you like a SHOE”. Seriously, I have been known to go gaga for a new Converse All Star, but I’ve never gone QUITE that far. Another friend was aghast at the lyrics to the Robbie Williams song “Rock DJ”. Now, that song does have some risque lines, but none as bad as what she thought. There is a line that goes “I got the gift, gonna stick it in the goal, but my mate thought it was (language alert) “I got the d**k, gonna stick it in the girl”. Gorgeous, hey?
Lia
Said this on April 23rd, 2008 at 8:26am:When I was a kid, Juice Newton had a hit called “Angel of the Morning.” I always belted out the chorus as:
Just call me angel of the morning, angel,
Just brush my teeth before you leave me, baby
For years, I thought brushing each other’s teeth must be some grown-up romantic gesture. I must’ve been in middle school or so before I learned that the lyric was actually, “Just touch my cheek before you leave me …”
Fast-forward to college, when I was training to be a bartender at a local burger joint. The woman training me was about my age and that song came on the jukebox. We were re-stocking beer and absentmindedly singing along with the music. As the chorus came up we both sang, “Just brush my teeth” and then looked at each other, astonished. We couldn’t believe we had both gotten that line so hilariously wrong as children!
lori
Said this on April 23rd, 2008 at 8:38am:I’m not sure too many people will know this one, but….
I’m a big Richard Thompson fan and my daughter and I used to listen to his CDs all the time in the car. He sings with a Britishy-Scottishy accent, and my daughter once asked why, in the song “I Misunderstood,” he was “missing the stew,” when as the song title indicates, he simply “misunderstood” (and *was* misunderstood, too, turns out!).
I blogged about it — as well as my daughter’s question to Richard and his reply — here.
Robert
Said this on April 23rd, 2008 at 9:53am:Well, there’s the all-time classic: “There’s a bathroom on the right” from CCR’s Bad Moon Rising.
So misheard that John Fogerty even throws it in when playing solo shows.
Angela
Said this on April 23rd, 2008 at 10:20am:In 7th grade, when me and my tablemates in Occupational Ed class first heard The Police’s “We are Spirits in the Material World,” we all thought it said something about “There is spit…in my cereal bowl…cereal bowl.”
JustinS
Said this on April 23rd, 2008 at 10:35am:Only specific one I can think of off the top of my head is the Manfred Mann “Blinded by the Light” mistake I think just about everyone makes:
Real (or so they claim…): “Revved up like a Deuce, another runner in the night”
Not so real: “Wrapped up like a deuche…”
But the funniest quasi-related story I can think of didn’t involve a messed up line, but rather a messed up gender.
Few years back, a one-hit-wonder called Wheatus released a song called “Teenage Dirtbag” that enjoyed heavy rotation on the alt-rock stations. Song’s all about the teenage boy with a crush on a girl he doesn’t think knows he exists, etc.
Towards the end of the song, the “girl” sings her response (Ooohhh…. she digs Iron Maiden, too… how sweet). A good friend of mine was obsessed with the girl singing those few lines. “God, she sounds hot!” and so on. Went on for weeks, every time that song was played.
Then he found out it was actually a guy singing. Not sure how his fantasies changed after that.
Katy
Said this on April 23rd, 2008 at 10:45am:I was riding in the car with a friend and her mother once in high school and Sheryl Crow’s “All I Wanna Do” came on the radio. We were all singing along, but when we hit the chorus my friend belted out “The sun came up and she sat him on a cup full of lard”. Her mother and I just turned to her completely amazed, not really sure what to say. Of course the real lyrics are “Until the sun comes up over Santa Monica Boulevard”, but to this day I can’t hear that song without laughing, imagining some guy sitting in a cup full of lard, watching the sun rise.
Kristen
Said this on April 23rd, 2008 at 11:57am:When The Beach Boys hit it big with “Kokomo,” my little sister must have been three or four years old. She would have a ball in our living room dancing and singing (read: hollerin’) this song.
Instead of “Bermuda, Bahama, come on pretty mama” she would belt out……….are you ready for it…..
“Bermuda, Bahama, come on be my mama.”
—-
Another ‘mama’ reference. The band, Widespread Panic does a song called “Climb to Safety” and the refrain repeats the song’s title.
A college friend, however, initially sang it as “Mama save me, yeeeeaahh, Mama save me.”
Ginny
Said this on April 23rd, 2008 at 11:57am:My two misunderstood lyrics are youngster related. The first was my own mistake when I was about 4, when I was quite convinced that at the end of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” you sang “life is down the drain,” which fit quite well with my glass-half-full outlook on life.
The other is my daughter’s misunderstanding - and you have to have seen “High School Musical 2″ to get it (and consider yourself fortunate if you haven’t seen that particular movie). One of the characters in the movie sings a song with the line “hand me my Jimmy Choo flip flops, where is my pink Prada tote”. My daughter heard this last bit, and sings it quite loudly and quite often, as “where is my pink Prada toad.”
Terri
Said this on April 23rd, 2008 at 12:31pm:This is not quite as funny as “spit in the cereal bowl,” but a friend’s parents thought the Gap Band’s “You Dropped a Bomb on Me” was “You bought the farm from me”
wordwych
Said this on April 23rd, 2008 at 3:11pm:In order to participate in this, I must stand up as a long-time Barry Manilow fan. Before you boo to loudly, I’m also a long-time Alice Cooper fan (have met him and even been invited to call him by his real name!) so don’t write me off as a total geek. After all, Alice is the daddy of metal rock.
Annnnyway, when my niece and nephew were young and impressionable, I made it my duty to indoctrinate them into certain practices (Barry Manilow music, watching Star Trek, eating cookie dough raw, seeking fabulously tacky Halloween stuff, etc.) They were completely fascinated by my stereo and headphones, and loved to listen to music with the headphones on. One evening, I was involved in the kitchen with the neph and we heard his 3-year-old sister in the living room singing “Looks Like We Made It” in her own special way:
“…And will that love be stwong
When old feelings park and steer
LOOKS LIKE TOMATOOOOOOOOOOOOES!
Left each other all the way
To a lavaaaaaaaa
LOOKS LIKE TOMATOOOOOOOOOOOOES!
Or I thought so til today
Until you were there wiva chair
And all I could taste was gloves…”
The actual lyrics are:
…And will that love be strong
When old feelings start to stir
Looks like we made it
Left each other on the way,
To another love
Looks like we made it
Or I thought so, till today
Until you were there everywhere
And all I could taste was love…
All this happened at over a decade ago, and I still crack up when I hear Barry singing “Looks Like We Made It” … each and every time!
DianaBurrell
Said this on April 23rd, 2008 at 4:22pm:Katie, I’m pretty sure I used to think “the funk soul brother” line in Rockafeller Skank was something else until a friend of mine straightened me out — now I can’t remember how I used to think it went.
DianaBurrell
Said this on April 23rd, 2008 at 4:24pm:These are cracking me up — keep ‘em coming!
JustinS
Said this on April 23rd, 2008 at 6:06pm:I can’t believe I misspelled “douche”. I don’t go a day without calling someone a douchebag. Granted, that’s usually either from the safety of my car or in that under-the-breath, passive-aggressive sort of way.
Aoife
Said this on April 23rd, 2008 at 9:42pm:Wordwych - that is hilarious!!!
Okay, here’s mine - when I was little all my dad listened to was big band (and this was the 70s, people!). When the crooners came on he would sing along and especially liked the Glenn Miller classic, Chattanooga Choo Choo. “Piranha me, boy. Is that the Chattanooga Choo Choo…” he’d sing.
I was 9 or 10 when I learned what a piranha was. I was never the same after that….
(the lyrics are “Pardon me, boy….”)
wordwych
Said this on April 23rd, 2008 at 9:43pm:Justin, I had to laugh when I ready your “douche” correction. That’s the mildest of terms I use when I’m driving. Don’t feel badly about the misspelling. I dropped an O off the “too” in my post, but naturally didn’t see it until it was already on the site.
LacubriousOne
Said this on April 24th, 2008 at 2:12pm:A long time ago (high school) Stevie Nicks had a song out called “Stand Back”. There’s a background lyric that a friend of mine used to sing as “I need a little SYMPHONY…Well, I need a little SYMPHONY” when the actual line is “I need a little SYMPATHY”. The song has never been the same for me.
Kim Kankiewicz
Said this on April 24th, 2008 at 3:28pm:I’m chiming in late since I didn’t get the RSS feed until today, but this is too fun to pass up. Here are my mondegreens:
My brother and I once had to sit in the corner for dancing around my grandma’s living room singing “Come on in, baby take your clothes off.” The original lyric, “Come on in, baby take your coat off,” is from an Oak Ridge Boys song my parents used to listen to.
Speaking of my parents’ sappy taste in music, when they played the Melissa Manchester song “Don’t Cry Out Loud,” I thought the title line was “For cryin’ out loud.”
But what I really want to share is a reverse mondegreen, an example of someone mispronouncing song lyrics based on the written text. My brother once attended an open audition for his college’s musical theater department and heard a girl singing, “I say to-may-to and you say to-may-to. I say po-tay-to and you say po-tay-to. To-may-to, to-may-to. Po-tay-to, po-tay-to. Let’s call the whole thing off.” He had to fake a coughing fit in order to prevent himself from going into hysterics.
piper
Said this on April 24th, 2008 at 6:43pm:I am laughing so hard there are tears in my eyes!
here’s a small contribution:
“Give me the Beach Boys and free my soul”
(omg, Katy’s “cup full of lard”…snort/guffaw!)