In honor of ladymondegreen's impending birthday

[thatcrazycajun]

You know what a mondegreen is, right? Okay, on the off-chance someone not of my usual music-obsessed crowd is reading this: a mondegreen is a lyric in a song that sounds to you like something other than its actual text, courtesy of the marble-mouthed singers, clumsy engineers and wall-of-sound-loving producers who make the music we hear from the record labels—not to mention poor acoustics, noise interference and, in my case, being hard of hearing. (Wikipedia has some background here.) And with my particular variety of hearing loss (clarity rather than volume suffers for me), mondegreens crop up even more often than for most people.

Mondegreens can be silly, ironic or just plain whiskey-tango-foxtrot weird. A couple of old favorites of mine are in Sade's 1985 smooth-jazz-radio staple, "The Sweetest Taboo":

Misheard lyric: "Never croissant..."
Actual lyric: "There's a quiet storm..."

Misheard lyric: "You're giving me something Doctor Who..."
Actual lyric: "You're giving me something that's taboo..."

Lots of them can be found in Gavin Edwards' series of paperback book collections, starting with 'Scuse Me While I Kiss This Guy. Post your favorites here to help me wish one of my favorite Interfilk-auction wenches, a talented singer/songwriter and dear friend, ladymondegreen, a happy birthday this Saturday. (And to the Lady herself: hope that boyfriend of yours knows what a lucky bastich he is and treats you to a nice birthday dinner or something accordingly.)

Comments

"big ole' Chet left a light on..."

[junquegrrl.livejournal.com]

= "big ole' jet airliner" (Steve Miller and/or his band)

Re: "big ole' Chet left a light on..."

[gorgeousgary]

I'll confess I originally thought it was "big ol' jambalaya".

Which should warm the heart of our Louisiana-born host... 8-)

Who let the moo-cows out

[ladyqkat.livejournal.com]

Who wrote the book of love (this was one of my mother's favorites)

Who let the cows out? Moo! Moo, moo, moo, moo!

[thatcrazycajun.livejournal.com]

You do realize that now someone's going to use that as a basis for filking Baja Men's "Who Let the Dogs Out," don't you? (And no, it won't be me...probably.) :-)

Re: Who let the cows out? Moo! Moo, moo, moo, moo!

[ladyqkat.livejournal.com]

What? No one listens to classic 50's rock any more?

When the wires get crossed, the neurons get firing.

[netpositive.livejournal.com]

My brain has coming up with weird style collision concepts like that lately and I'm starting to wish I was talented enough to figure out how to pull them off. First I had some odd juxtaposition of JoCo's "Re: Your Brains" with Phantom of the Opera's "Primadonna" (I still think it's entirely doable, if only I could remember which way the zombies ran), and now I'm wondering what could be done with "Who Let The Dogs Out" + "Bob's Dog Obedience School" (which I have been recently misquoting as "Dog's Bob Obedience School", which then makes me think of the "Dog the Bounty Hunter" reality TV show...).

[poltr1]

Off the top of my head, here are two of mine from Genesis' "Broadway Melody of 1974":

misheard: "There's flowered twos in blue suede shoes"
actual: "There's Howard Hughes in blue suede shoes"

misheard: "Two o'clock span serves hot soul food"
actual: "Ku Klux Klan serves hot soul food"

I have four of Gavin Edwards' books. I'll have to think of some more later.

[mneme]

I'm so totally underqualified re misheard lyrics that I'm not even going to try.

But I will namecheck Gavin; who is also a great guy (even if the bastich did move out to Hollywood in the summer).

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

You're aware that "'Scuse me while I kiss this guy" is an actual lyric now (http://www.michelledockrey.com/music/lyrics/sixstring.html)?... *EG*

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Oh, right, who could forget CCR's "There's a bathroom on the right..."

[thatcrazycajun.livejournal.com]

>>Oh, right, who could forget CCR's "There's a bathroom on the right..."<<

Which John Mammoser turned into an actual filk of the original "Bad Moon Rising" a few years back, about finding a bathroom when you're drunk off your ass:

"I drank a fifth of cheap tequila
Washed it all down with shots of gin
I feel my stomach overflowing
I feel the room begin to spin
Now I know Budweiser
Doesn't mix with Jägermeister
There's a bathroom on the right..."

Demento has played it on occasion; don't know where you could find an MP3 or such. But the title actually is "Bathroom on the Right."

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[netpositive.livejournal.com]

Heh. I had reheard this one a couple of days back so it was fresh in my mind when you brought this up. I had a bad feeling about trying to track it down -- it was kinda hard to look up the actual lyrics because I was pretty sure I was mishearing THE TITLE. :)

Fortunately for me and Google, I knew it was an 80s era song (because I'm old enough to have heard it first in the 80s, plus frankly, the singing and arrangement and production values sound just like an archetypal 80s song as done by Talking Flock of Spandau Seagulls, Men Without Work, Bananawowowow, etc.) and I did have the key line "hush hush".

The killer part now is, it turns out that I misheard it TWO DIFFERENT WAYS. Both of which I think made as much sense as the original line (which is also an 80s song trademark, come to think of it).

misheard originally as: "Missus Carey"
actual (I thought): "This is scary"
actual lyrics: "Hush hush/Keep it down now/Voices carry" (by Til Tuesday)

[thatcrazycajun.livejournal.com]

You're lucky you didn't get it confused with "Too Shy" by Kajagoogoo, if "hush hush" is all you had to go on; that song also contains those two words in its chorus. But you're right about 80s arrangements in general; that still didn't stop me from enjoying the heck out of a lot of songs from back then, mind you.

[netpositive.livejournal.com]

You're lucky you didn't get it confused with "Too Shy" by Kajagoogoo, if "hush hush" is all you had to go on; that song also contains those two words in its chorus.

Yeah, that would have been really bad, because I do know the name of _that_ song. :)

But you're right about 80s arrangements in general; that still didn't stop me from enjoying the heck out of a lot of songs from back then, mind you.

Oh sure, but it often makes for a lot of low-key "la-la-la, la-la-la, la-la la-la la-la la-la" humalongs in the car. Not that 70s rock is necessarily that much better as far as identifying lyrics (and don't even get me started on grunge, where I basically don't want to understand what they're singing since it's all self-pitying whining anyway), but since the sonics often feel so much louder, you can lip-synch so much more grandiosely as well. :)

Hellfire, when did the sun come out here? It was pouring just a few hours ago...

[darrenzieger.livejournal.com]

When I was a teenager, my best friend, Marc and I listened to a lot of '60s psychedelic and progressive rock, and lyrical misapprehensions abounded -- particularly given the impressionistic nature of the material, which made some of our weirder errors seem plausible.

We listened to a lot of Moody Blues, and there's a couple of doozies from their first album, "Days of Future Passed." In the song "Peak Hour," which throws a lot of images at you anyway, there's a passage that goes "one hour a day/one hour at night/sees crowds of people/all meant for flight." We always heard the last line as "old men who fly" (which is a pretty cool image, actually).

Sillier still, on the same album, the song "Tuesday Afternoon" has the line "The trees are drawing me near/I've got to find out why," which we were somehow convinced began "The trees are drooling." What we thought the last two syllables of that line were, I can't recall).

---

On a related subject: sometimes a singer's enunciation is so off the wall (particularly when there's an accent and/or emphasis on the wrong syllables involved) that you're brain can't resolve it into anything as coherent as a mondegreen.

I;m looking at YOU, Elton John.

Elton is infamous for this king of thing. I had to buy the sheet music to "Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road" to fully parse the chorus (and several words and phrases in the verses) of this song.

It turned out, to my surprise, that when Reggie Dwight sang: "Back to the hollingole ott in the wood," he actually meant "Back to the howling owl out in the woods."

I'm having trouble coming up with other examples at the moment, but there are probably 20 or 30 songs I've been listening to for decades that contain lyrics that I can't even begin to guess at.

========

Here's one that's been driving me nuts for 15 years - despite hours of Internet research - and is obscure enough that chances are no one reading this will even be familiar with it, much less be able to help.

In the soundtrack of the movie, "Toys" (a 1992 Robin Williams vehicle whose greatness is almost equal to its suckiness) there is a song called "The Closing of the Year." A short version of it is performed (by Wendy and Lisa) as part of a Christmas celebration at the beginning of the movie. A longer version is performed at the end of the movie (the next Christmas) and extends into the closing credits.

This version features a bridge sung by a children's choir, not one syllable of which is intelligible, and verse sung by Seal that, refreshingly, is at leasr 10% comprehensible, possibly as much as 15%.

If anyone in the universe has any insight into what these people are singing (at this point, I'd accept the email address of someone who knows someone who might know someone who could possibly get in touch with soundtrack producer Trevor Horn, and ask him to dig out his copy of the score to refer to), I'd appreciate it. It's a really lovely song, and it drives me nuts to enjoy it so much and have no idea what half the lyrics are.

[beckyfeld.livejournal.com]

This is what I've been able to find so far...

Performed by The Musical Cast of Toys
Featuring Wendy & Lisa

If I cannot bring you comfort
then at least I bring you hope
for nothing is more precious
than the time we have and so
we all must learn from small misfortune
count the blessings that are real
let the bells ring out for christmas
at the closing of the year
let the bells ring out for christmas
at the closing of the year

If I cannot bring you comfort
then at least I bring you hope

at the closing of the year
at the closing of the year

at the closing of the year


(The following is added in the reprise, although i do not have it complete here)

Now all the winter bells are ringing
hear them echo through the snow
and the children's voices singing
on the streets so far below

This is a time to be together
and the truth is somewhere here
within our love for people
at the closing of the year

[darrenzieger.livejournal.com]

yeah -- that's the main body of the song. The incomprehensible children's choir comes in before those last two stanzas. Those are followed by the quite nearly sort of semi-legible Seal verse.

Thanks for looking though :)

[darrenzieger.livejournal.com]

...here's another one that's been driving me nuts.

WTF are they singing at the end of Barenaked Ladies' "One Week." The very last line? It's not included with the lyrics in the CD booklet.

Hell, I'm sure I can find this out online; I just never remember to try when I'm actually at the computer. HOold on...

Aha! I think I've actually heard this before and forgot:

"The last words of the song are "Birchmount Stadium, home of the Robbie." It refers to an annual soccer tournament held for charity at Birchmount Stadium in Scarborough, Ontario. Steven and Ed have said that these are are the hardest words to say in the song."

Well no wonder it's incomprehensible. They're pronouncing it "stay-DEE-um" and referring to some kind of local reference.

One down, 29 to go...

[darrenzieger.livejournal.com]

...and I buried the lead. The best sense I could ever make of that passage was: "Let's watch TV and blow Walter Raleigh."

Inaccurate, but sage advice nonetheless.

[thatcrazycajun.livejournal.com]

>>Elton is the king of this kind of thing.<<

TELL me about it! I had to go look up lyrics to half his back catalog before I could figure out what the hell that mealy-mouthed Brit bastich was singing. And sometimes, even when you DO know his lyrics, they make no sense ("Philadelphia Freedom" and "Crocodile Rock" being two prime examples).

Of course, to be fair, his lyrics are a model of clarity compared with those of Sheryl Crow... Listen to "A Change" sometime and tell me if you understand what on God's green Earth she is talking about.

[erinwrites.livejournal.com]

For years, I heard the line "dark, sacred night" from "What a Wonderful World" as "dogs say goodnight." Never mind that it made NO sense whatsoever. ;)

My favorite ever, though, is this:
Misheard lyric: "Got my first real sex dream"
Actual lyric: "Got my first real six string"
(Summer of '69, Bryan Adams)

The dogs say goodnight

[darrenzieger.livejournal.com]

Whew! Thank ghod I'm not the only one :)

Actually, I've always heard the last phrase in the first verse as "...I see them bloom only in you," but I recently saw it transcribed as "...for me and you."

The former is technically better songcraft ("for me and you" places the emphasis on the word "for," which is not a natural speech pattern; also, "only in you" is marginally better poetry, a more complex thought, if still a cliche), but "for me and you" fits the theme of the song better.

That song has taken on a new layer sentimental value for me lately; my son, Dorian (age 4) learned the song in day care last month, and hearing him sing it in his tiny little voice surely violates all state and local cuteness ordinances.

And, in the spirit of this thread, he sings the second verse "i see trees are green, clouds are white." Using "of" to link a noun to an adjective is outside his experience, but learning basic facts like those (trees are green, the sun is yellow, wearing Bob the Builder sneakers with lights in them after August is a fashion no-no) is is pretty much what he does all day.

[ladymondegreen.livejournal.com]

Thank you! This is a delightful birthday surprise. My icon approves. ;)

My favorite mondegreens include:

Friend heard it as: "On top of the world looking down on cremation"
Actual lyric: "On top of the world looking down on creation"

Friend's mother heard it as "And I held her hand in Hawaii"
Actual lyric: "And I held her hand in mine"

Several of my other favorites have already been mentioned below.

[gorgeousgary]

I'm thinking that the first mondegreen is what follows from this Boogie Knights song...

[robin-june.livejournal.com]

Two that I like, which are probably in the book:

Song: John Prine's "That's the Way That the World goes Round"
Correct lyric: "It's a half an inch of water (and you think you're going to drown.")
Misheard lyric: "It's a Happy Enchilada."

and another:

Correct song title: Barry Manilow's "Looks Like We Made it."
Misheard tag lyric: "Looks Like Tomatoes"

[baggette.livejournal.com]

What? No One else remembers the J Giles Band?

heard as "Lunch Stinks! Yeah Yeah"
Actual Lyrics "Love Stinks! Yeah Yeah"

or Queen's

heard as " * * * Another one rides the bus....and another gets on and another gets on....another one rides the bus...."
Actual Lyrics " * * * Another one Bites the Dust....and another one gone and another one gone...another one bites the dust..."

[robin-june.livejournal.com]

Weird Al heard the Queen song that way.
It's on one of his earliest albums.
Along with "Mr Frump in his Iron Lung," a song based upon the reedless Air Button on his accordion.

[thatcrazycajun.livejournal.com]

Of course I remember J. Geils Band! I grooved on just about their entire Freeze Frame album...and am still looking for a CD of it.

And as for "Another One"...where did you think Weird Al got the idea for his parody? :-)

[filkferengi]

My beloved spouse heard the Stones song "Beast Of Burden" as "Pizza Burnin'."

Food has always been a passion we share. ;)