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OT: songs you misunderstood in your youth


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I heard Tiny Tims Tiptoe Thru The Tulips in the early 2000s as

The tick tocked through the two slips.

Boy was I wrong when I found out what he was saying,

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[font:Comic Sans MS]There's a line in "She Blinded Me With Science" that I always heard as "she's tied me up and I can't find anything."

 

It was maybe 3 or 4 years ago that I found out it was "she's tidied up and I can't find anything."

 

I liked my version better.[/font]

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From the department of nobody cares but me- There's a word for confusion-generated alternate versions of misheard lyrics and verse- mondegreens. Here's the Harper's 1954 essay from whence it sprang-

 

http://www.drapersguild.com/uploads/1/2/8/5/12854632/harpersmagazine-1954-11-0006768.pdf

Thanks for sharing that very fun read. I had read the term "mondegreen" in the book of collected misheard lyrics "When a Man Loves a Walnut," but I had never read the essay from which the term sprang.

Samuel B. Lupowitz

Musician. Songwriter. Food Enthusiast. Bad Pun Aficionado.

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  • 1 month later...

"Two thousand zero zero party ovaries out of time..."

 

- Prince, "1999"

 

 

"All the guests are playful work/

Mother has to do all this shit/

Then she sends the kids to school"

 

 

- Madness, "Our House" (I wondered how that got past the censors)

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I had a hard time with parts of American Pie -- like...

 

"Oh, and while the king was looking down

The jestice stole his corny crown

The courtroom a germ

No, heard it was returned

 

And while Lenin read a book on Marx

The court that practiced in the park

And we sang 'judge is in the dark'

The day the music died

And its Fall on the grass

The players tried for a forward pass

..."

 

I couldn't figure out what he was singing about (granted, my radio back then wasn't too great). Funny thing, though, after I learned all the correct lyrics, I still didn't know what he was singing about -- until much later when someone wrote a piece that explained it all.

 

You know, there's so many verses to "American Pie," that it doesn't really matter.

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  • 1 year later...

I thought I might resurrect this topic because possibly I have misheard the lyrics to almost every song ever released. Before I get into why that it is (and it's not a mondegreen situation, although I have plenty of those too), there have a been a lot of songs that I simply didn't understand what I did properly hear and misinterpreted it. Of the many that come to mind, the one that always makes me laugh is from Billy Joel's "Piano Man." When he sings, "And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar" I pictured people stuffing actual bread in a jar. I didn't know that he meant money, because I was about four or five years old when I first heard the song. I couldn't fathom why anyone would put bread in a jar. What would that do? LOL.

 

OK, as for mishearing things, some of us have what's called Auditory Processing Disorder (APD). You can look it up, but basically, it means that I struggle to hear spoken words, especially in noisy places or if there is something going on in the background. There's more to it than only this. Suffice to say that I hear things phonetically, but that often leads to misinterpretation if I lack context. For example, my mother used to wake me up with, "Up and at 'em!" For my entire childhood, I thought she was saying, "Up and Adam." Why do I gotta be Adam? I could never understand what the hell that meant -- not until I read that phrase in a book at some point in my 20s. Then! And only then! Then I understood it. Like a light bulb turning on.

 

If someone doesn't speak or sing with good enunciation (I'm looking at you, Eddie Vedder, with Yellow Ledbetter, particularly), then it's hopeless. This is why song lyrics that came with albums were so vital to me in the pre-internet era. And if an album didn't have written lyrics, I would go to a store that sold sheet music for rock/pop songs and hope to find it. The problem with APD is that it becomes a mental distraction when people are talking to me in real life. My brain is trying to work through all the possibilities of what I think I misheard, and that causes me to lose focus on what it is still being said to me. It's a massive struggle sometimes, depending on how tired I am, too. To overcome it, I may repeat back what I think I heard, or ask someone to say something again. I know that can be annoying, and it's embarrassing for me too, so sometimes I say nothing at all. Anyway, I will always watch films with subtitles on, just to be certain I've understood what I've heard. If only real life had subtitles!

 

I can hear musical notes and intervals just fine. I play "by ear" pretty well most of the time. But certain tones, depending on their volume levels relative to the vocal, might obscure lyrics in the song. Heavy reverb on a voice also does this. But anyway... I read through all of the posts here and laughed because I misheard almost all of those, too. Indeed, you pick any song, and I guarantee that I've misheard a lyric in it. Take Young Americans from David Bowie, and besides mishearing most of the song, substitute the word "hung" for young... and that's what I thought Bowie was singing at times until I finally read the lyrics. :)

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Stevie Nicks' "Edge of Seventeen" I always thought she was singing one-winged dove instead of white-winged dove.

 

Okay... I was Today Years Old when I learned it wasn"t 'One Winged'. And I"m upset too, because 'White Winged Dove' is so much less interesting!

 

Stevie Nicks makes one-winged doves cry.

Puck Funk! :)

 

Equipment: Laptop running lots of nerdy software, some keyboards, noise makersâ¦yada yada yadaâ¦maybe a cat?

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I think I posted early in this thread about thinking the Doobie Brothers tune "Feelin Down Further" they singing Peanut Butter, peanut butter now.

 

One of my favorites of someone not understanding a song. Was the kid started posting a guitar forum I was a regular on and he was posting about how he had worked hard and was finally getting to perform a song in church service. Everyone was posting encouragement and ignoring the fact he mentioned he was going to do House of the Rising Sun. I let it go at first thinking someone will say something, he must go to a really open church, but he sounded so innocent. I finally PM do you know what the song House of the Rising Sun's lyrics are about? Take a listen to the words it's about a bordello. The kid probably had to Google bordello but his next post was the decided to do different song. If I could of gone to the church service I might not of said anything to see the reaction of the congregation.

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...

One of my favorites of someone not understanding a song. Was the kid started posting a guitar forum I was a regular on and he was posting about how he had worked hard and was finally getting to perform a song in church service. Everyone was posting encouragement and ignoring the fact he mentioned he was going to do House of the Rising Sun. I let it go at first thinking someone will say something, he must go to a really open church, but he sounded so innocent. I finally PM do you know what the song House of the Rising Sun's lyrics are about? Take a listen to the words it's about a bordello. The kid probably had to Google bordello but his next post was the decided to do different song. If I could of gone to the church service I might not of said anything to see the reaction of the congregation.

 

I knew a guy who actually did perform that at church. But what he did was change the entire song's lyrics. Now I know why lol (I never looked the song up). He was a killer guitar player.

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The opening sentence from Tipper Gore's 'Raising PG Kids in an X-Rated Society':

 

"Like many parents of my generation, I grew up listening to rock music and loving it, watching television and being entertained by it. I still enjoy both. But something has happened since the days of 'Twist and Shout' and 'I Love Lucy.'"

 

:poke:

"The Angels of Libra are in the European vanguard of the [retro soul] movement" (Bill Buckley, Soul and Jazz and Funk)

The Drawbars | off jazz organ trio

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Stevie Nicks' "Edge of Seventeen" I always thought she was singing one-winged dove instead of white-winged dove.

 

Okay... I was Today Years Old when I learned it wasn"t 'One Winged'. And I"m upset too, because 'White Winged Dove' is so much less interesting!

 

Stevie Nicks makes one-winged doves cry.

Famously, that's a Stevie Nicks mondegreen. She heard someone say "Age of Seventeen" and interpolated it into the song title.

 

Cheers, Mike.

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The opening sentence from Tipper Gore's 'Raising PG Kids in an X-Rated Society':

 

"Like many parents of my generation, I grew up listening to rock music and loving it, watching television and being entertained by it. I still enjoy both. But something has happened since the days of 'Twist and Shout' and 'I Love Lucy.'"

 

:poke:

Ah, sanctimony. Still one of America"s greatest exports.

Samuel B. Lupowitz

Musician. Songwriter. Food Enthusiast. Bad Pun Aficionado.

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The opening sentence from Tipper Gore's 'Raising PG Kids in an X-Rated Society':

 

"Like many parents of my generation, I grew up listening to rock music and loving it, watching television and being entertained by it. I still enjoy both. But something has happened since the days of 'Twist and Shout' and 'I Love Lucy.'"

 

:poke:

Ah, sanctimony. Still one of America"s greatest exports.

And I even missed the reference to "rock" music, as if the term "rock & roll" itself weren't a euphemism. Oh man.

"The Angels of Libra are in the European vanguard of the [retro soul] movement" (Bill Buckley, Soul and Jazz and Funk)

The Drawbars | off jazz organ trio

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Okay... I was Today Years Old when I learned it wasn"t 'One Winged'. And I"m upset too, because 'White Winged Dove' is so much less interesting!

 

Stevie Nicks makes one-winged doves cry.

You must have had a better stereo than I had. I thought it was "Just like the one we love"

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.

-Mark Twain

 

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Okay... I was Today Years Old when I learned it wasn"t 'One Winged'. And I"m upset too, because 'White Winged Dove' is so much less interesting!

 

Stevie Nicks makes one-winged doves cry.

You must have had a better stereo than I had. I thought it was "Just like the one we love"

I thought it was "one-winged girl" for awhile, which is, in retrospect, a horrifying image. Didn't Miley Cyrus do a video like that? :wink:

Samuel B. Lupowitz

Musician. Songwriter. Food Enthusiast. Bad Pun Aficionado.

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Funny & entertaining posting...

My identical twin used to sing "Sugar Beets make me feel fine..." instead of Summer Breeze!

 

And "Green-jenn-oh" instead of a multi-syllable "Free-ee-dom" (intro to a song by Bread)

 

What can I say... He's a drummer!!!

 

Old No7

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Towards the end of "Desperado" by the Eagles, the lyrics go... "Come down from your fences, open the gate". For years, I thought it was "Come down from your fences, oh renegade". Until eventually I found the sheet music and learned the song on the piano and found out otherwise! But come to think of it, my version probably would have worked too.
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