Misheard lyrics that are BETTER

[EricBarker]

We all have our Bathrooms on the Right and can Wait a Minute While We Kiss this Guy, but there are a few misheard lyrics that are universally a bit of a letdown when you read the real thing. Some are even the dominantly performed version. I can think of three instances:

 

Eurythmics - Sweet Dreams

"...are made of THESE" - There is NO WAY that Annie Lennox is singing "This". My wife is a linguist and a vocalist, we've performed this song hundreds of times, and she explained that in British dialects there is no way the vowel is shifting to turn "This" into "These". Annie is singing "These", full stop. And anyone who sings it as "This" is being silly. "These" makes a decent couplet with "Disagree", "This" is nothing. Both make equal amount of sense to the lyrics, one sounds better. Annie sings one, and writes the other. Very weird.

 

Toto - Africa

"I MISS the rains down in Africa" - makes more sense, adds a bit of mystery, less colonialist. Can someone please tell me what a white boi is doing performing spiritual rituals on indigenous land?

 

Stevie Nicks - Edge of Seventeen

"Just like a ONE Winged Dove" - more evocative, more interesting. "White Winged Dove" is just boring and redundant (since a dove is basically what everyone thinks is a white pigeon). In reading the lyrics, it's obviously the character is struggling, so 'One winged dove' has far more imagery. This is definitely a song tailored for the female voice, but if I could ever sing it, the dove would always have only three appendages.

 

Any others that were big letdowns and you think should be different? Does anyone here perform some songs they purposefully "improve"?

[Biggles]

Watch Peter Kay"s take on lyrics.

 

[MathOfInsects]

We all have our Bathrooms on the Right and can Wait a Minute 'Scuse Me (or Us in your context) While We Kiss this Guy

[EricBarker]

Wooops, I kinda blazed through that intro and threw it away, good catch.

[drawback]

I've never understood "When there's a rose in a fisted glove" leading to Love The One You're With. I always thought it was "When there's the road, and a distant love."

[KuruPrionz]

 

 

You win the interwebzzz!

[MathOfInsects]

I've never understood "When there's a rose in a fisted glove" leading to Love The One You're With. I always thought it was "When there's the road, and a distant love."

 

You just broke my brain.

[allan_evett]

I used to think Eric Clapton was singing 'Four Level Man' instead of 'Forever Man'. Guess I thought it was some kind of mystical reference. I discovered the misheard lyric while in a band rehearsal several years back. The surprise came when the lead singer thought it'd be fun to have us sing 'Four Level man' for the background vocals. It was hard not to laugh when he joined in with the misheard lyric on the song's final chorus. Very few audience members caught the joke (for obvious reasons), but the few that did were amused.

[lightbg]

I'm pretty sure I've posted this before, but I always sang YMCA with this verse:

 

Young man, pick yourself off the ground, I said,

Young man , there;s no need to feel down, I said,

Young man, is your underwear brown, there's no need to feel unhappy......

 

 

Jake

[Baldwin Funster]

I mentioned in another thread;

Shes got electric boobs, a mohair suit, I read it in a magazieeeen, benny and the jets...

 

Every lyric by joe cocker is a misheard lyric...

Lots of misheard lyrics in blinded by the light. Yeah you know what I'm referring to.

[RudyS]

Toto - Africa

"I MISS the rains down in Africa" - makes more sense, adds a bit of mystery, less colonialist. Can someone please tell me what a white boi is doing performing spiritual rituals on indigenous land?

 

Until now, I really thought those were the lyrics! Interesting topic:)

[EscapeRocks]

We all have our Bathrooms on the Right and can Wait a Minute While We Kiss this Guy, but there are a few misheard lyrics that are universally a bit of a letdown when you read the real thing. Some are even the dominantly performed version. I can think of three instances:

 

Eurythmics - Sweet Dreams

"...are made of THESE" - There is NO WAY that Annie Lennox is singing "This". My wife is a linguist and a vocalist, we've performed this song hundreds of times, and she explained that in British dialects there is no way the vowel is shifting to turn "This" into "These". Annie is singing "These", full stop. And anyone who sings it as "This" is being silly. "These" makes a decent couplet with "Disagree", "This" is nothing. Both make equal amount of sense to the lyrics, one sounds better. Annie sings one, and writes the other. Very weird.

 

Linguistics aside, the singular, "this," is grammatically correct. With respect to your wife; if you slow it down, Annie takes some artistic license and subtly sings "thee-isss" to match the rest. She clearly enunciates disagREE, and Seven SEAS.

 

Toto - Africa

"I MISS the rains down in Africa" - makes more sense, adds a bit of mystery, less colonialist. Can someone please tell me what a white boi is doing performing spiritual rituals on indigenous land?

 

I've always heard it as "bless". Go research David Paich's meaning behind the song and how it came about. Absolutely nothing to do with colonialism or a "white boi" (who the fuck says boi these days if you're older than 16 or a wanna be hoodrat). So no virtue signalling needed on this song.

 

Stevie Nicks - Edge of Seventeen

"Just like a ONE Winged Dove" - more evocative, more interesting. "White Winged Dove" is just boring and redundant (since a dove is basically what everyone thinks is a white pigeon). In reading the lyrics, it's obviously the character is struggling, so 'One winged dove' has far more imagery. This is definitely a song tailored for the female voice, but if I could ever sing it, the dove would always have only three appendages.

 

Maybe you should check your hearing. It's ALWAYS been white winged dove from the first time I heard it as a new release back in the day.

Ornithology is one of my old geekery things Pigeon and Dover are interchangeable names of the Columbidae species/family. Doves don't have to be white.

 

That being said, there's plenty of literary examples dating do ancient times, where redundant adjective and adverbs are used for rhythm effect of the passage.

[Baldwin Funster]

The thing that I always found confusing about that song is I never heard a dove with one or 2 white wings ever sing a song that sounds like "said baby ooh ooh ooh"

[stoken6]

The thing that I always found confusing about that song is I never heard a dove with one or 2 white wings ever sing a song that sounds like "said baby ooh ooh ooh"

If it goes "said baby", then what you've got there...is a parrot.

 

Cheers, Mike.

[mate stubb]

A Norwegian Blue..

[FXM]

On Pink Floyd"s The Happiest Days Of Our Lives, the lyric at the end is 'their fat psychopathic wives would thrash them within inches of their lives', but I heard 'with the emptiness of their lives'. I always liked that more than the correct lyric.

 

Neil

[MathOfInsects]

You swear in kicking Vegas that you're not a gambling man

Then you find you're back in Vegas with a handle in your hand.

 

Except it's: You swear and kick and beg us, that you're...

 

Which doesn't even make grammatical sense, let alone contextual. "...in kicking Vegas" is much better lyric, which is why it is absolutely what he says.

[CowboyNQ]

On Pink Floyd"s The Happiest Days Of Our Lives, the lyric at the end is 'their fat psychopathic wives would thrash them within inches of their lives', but I heard 'with the emptiness of their lives'. I always liked that more than the correct lyric.

 

Neil

 

'Fat AND psycopathic' is correct.

 

The original lyric is far better IMO.

 

Without an understanding of the post-war culture of corporal punishment in British and Colonial schools I can see how it might not be relatable. However Waters is a lyrical genius and his juxtaposition of the school master"s approach with his imagined home life is brilliant here.

[CowboyNQ]

Eurythmics - Sweet Dreams

"...are made of THESE" - There is NO WAY that Annie Lennox is singing "This". My wife is a linguist and a vocalist, we've performed this song hundreds of times, and she explained that in British dialects there is no way the vowel is shifting to turn "This" into "These". Annie is singing "These", full stop. And anyone who sings it as "This" is being silly. "These" makes a decent couplet with "Disagree", "This" is nothing. Both make equal amount of sense to the lyrics, one sounds better. Annie sings one, and writes the other. Very weird.

 

Never heard that one before mate. 'These' what exactly?

 

No disrespect to the misso but reckon she"s hearing something that"s not there. That song was huge in my young days and that was never considered amongst the many misheard lyrics back in those wild and exciting pre-internet times.

[Threadslayer]

A Norwegian Blue..

I always thought it was Norwegian Wood.

[Steve in VA]

From "Bette Davis Eyes":

"She's ferocious. And she knows just what it takes to make a crow blush". Much more impressive than making a "pro" blush.

 

And this:

"All I want to do when I wake up in the morning is see your ass. Rosanna, Rosanna..."

[CEB]

[Jwave]

Four-letter woman, four-letter woman to me.

[Threadslayer]

Had a guy at a frat party gig come up and request "You're the only woman" (Boogie On Reggae Woman), which we happened to know so we did it for him with his lyrics.

[Cliffk]

Eurythmics - Sweet Dreams

"...are made of THESE" - There is NO WAY that Annie Lennox is singing "This". My wife is a linguist and a vocalist, we've performed this song hundreds of times, and she explained that in British dialects there is no way the vowel is shifting to turn "This" into "These". Annie is singing "These", full stop. And anyone who sings it as "This" is being silly. "These" makes a decent couplet with "Disagree", "This" is nothing. Both make equal amount of sense to the lyrics, one sounds better. Annie sings one, and writes the other. Very weird.

Okay, this is way overthought and another example of an artist's idiosyncratic expression trumping external analysis (with due respect to your wife ). The lyric is this, not these - this is just how Annie wants to sing it. To use your words though, there's no way you can meaningfully conflate singing and speaking articulation differences, even when analysing dialects. The vocal 'exaggeration' that happens in singing can and does go anywhere the artist wants it to. But don't take my word for it: a like-for-like example should illustrate this more handily. Listen to the last word of each of the first two lines of this track:

[video:youtube]

[mate stubb]

This is an ugly sounding and hard to sing word when sung at the end of a phrase.

[Threadslayer]

Back in the 80's my band used to play the Pretenders Brass In Pocket.

Forum mini challenge: Fill in the blank _____

 

Gonna use my arms

Gonna use my legs

Gonna use my style

Gonna use my _______

Gonna use my fingers

Gonna use my, my, my imagination