mondegreen day
The title of the last post is a mondegreen -- a misunderstanding of a song’s lyrics that produces an entirely new meaning. The word was invented by a woman who as a girl was entranced by what she thought was a romantic ballad of two aristocratic lovers, whose death was described in the lines: “they have slain the Earl O’Murray/ And Lady Mondegreen. She later discovered that Lady Mondegreen existed only in her imagination and that the actual lines were: “They have slain the Earl O’Murray/And laid him on the green."
Mondegreens abound. Despite the song's title, one of my friends thought the repeated phrase at the end of King of Pain by the Police was "I'm always thinking of pain" rather than "I'll always be king of pain." I didn't understand why the Go-Gos were singing about “otters and seals,” until it finally dawned on me that what they really meant was "our lips are sealed" A union organizing song urged "solidarity forever," but to me it promised "soda guaranteed forever." And it would be so much more intriguing if the Rolling Stones were saying, as I believed, “I see a Renoir and I want to paint it black” instead of the correct, but pedestrian “I see a red door and I want to paint it black.”
Some mondegreens are probably apocryphal. Like the little boy at his first baseball game who was pleased that everyone was making sure that he had a good view, when they began the Star Spangled Banner by asking “José, can you see?" Or the little girl who named her teddy bear “Gladly,” after hearing a hymn featuring “Gladly, the cross-eyed bear,” or, more accurately, stating, “gladly, the cross I’d bear.”
I admit my curiosity was aroused by the lyrics to It’s Friday I’m in Love by the Cure, which I thought were: "It’s such a gorgeous sight/To see you eating the pillow tonight." My wild imaginings as to what that might mean were cut short upon learning that the real words were “It’s such a gorgeous sight/To see you eat in the middle of the night.” However, I was relieved to learn that Blinded by the Light, a song covered by Manfred Mann, which includes the lines “Revved up like a deuce/another runner in the night” was not about a feminine hygiene product
More mondegreens welcome.
28 comments:
There's a line in the song Amazing from Aerosmith that my husband thought was "Scratching the Staff of Life".
Of course, it's "Scratching to stay alive."
My hubs told me that his brother used to think that Jimi Hendrix's "'scuse me while I kiss the sky" was "'scuse me while I kiss this guy."
Needless to say, his brother thought Hendrix was gay, based entirely on that mondegreen.
I always thought that "Hit me with your best shot" was "Hit me with affection". One most embarrassing moments ever was when my first boyfriend pointed out my error in a not-so-kind way in front of his friends.
The best one I have heard was from my college friend. He always thought that KISS wanted to "Rock and Roll all night, and part of every day", which made excellent sense to him. You really do have to take a break from all the partying and rock'n'rolling for necessary evils like eating and sleeping.
When I was a little girl, and my mother would listen to Neil Diamond, I thought the song "Forever in Blue Jeans" was about a guy named, "Reverend Blue Jeans." I thought maybe he was just a super-casual, hip minister.
"Hold me closer, Tony Danza" instead of Tiny Dancer. OK, I'm an idiot.
My youngest daughter sings "Rock the cash box" instead of "Rock the casbah." My oldest son thought it was the same...ah, feminine product.
Like Lori, I also thought that "Forever in Blue Jeans" was "Reverend Blue Jeans." And, no lie, this is the first I have learned about the true lyrics of "Blinded by the Light." My sister always sang the lyrics so convincingly about the feminine hygiene product:)
And your misunderstanding of the lyrics of "It's Friday I'm in Love" made me laugh out loud.
I had a friend in middle school who thought the song "Rock Me Amadeus" was actually "Rock Me Hot Potatoes." If she weren't so sincere about it I wouldn't have believed her.
It's not a song, but the common table prayer that my family has always said was misunderstood by my sister. The acutal prayer is, "Come lord Jesus, be our guest. Let these gifts to us be blessed." But my sister thought the second line was, "Lefty's gifts to us be blessed." One day she unwittingly revealed this to us by asking "Who is Lefty?"
Oliva Newton-John's song, Let Me Be has in it the lyrics she sang, "Standing by to catch you when you fall." Up until a year ago, I thought she meant, "Standing by the cashew when you fall"....silly me!
"Secret Asian Man" for "Secret Agent Man." I've always known the true lyrics, but this is how I like to sing it. Makes me think of ninjas.
i like the Cure one better in your version, too. i think they would too...you send them a note.
my favourite came from a university roommate...are you familiar with Boney M's irrepressibly perky Christmas song "Feliz Navidad?" a drunken gaggle of us were singing it once, around holiday season, when her version sorta made the rest of us stop and say "what are you singing?" she, having never heard Spanish before out here in the back of beyond, thought the song was called "At Least No One Died." it's quite catchy that way...
There's a great book by Gavin Edwards called "Scuse Me While I Kiss This Guy" that is all about mondegreens. I had one for Peter Gabriel's "Biko", but my husband laughed so hard when he heard it and corrected me, that the embarrassment has wiped it from my memory banks. At least that's what I tell myself.
Someone I know thought that a certain Springsteen lyric was "Ten devils in a freezer" (rather than "Tenth Avenue freeze out"
My husband really thought that Frampton's "Oooh baby I love your way" was actually "Oooh baby I love your weight."
Who DIDN'T think it was "wrapped up like a douche in the night?"
These are all hilarious. I especially like the "ten devils in a freezer" and "I wanna rock n roll all night and part of every day."
Jon Carroll, a columnist at the San Francisco Chronicle, is king of the mondegreen. I fear, though, that the internet is not good for mondegreens: where once we had to puzzle, and listen again, and maybe luck into a copy of the lyrics someday, now we just google.
Thanks, becca. I'll have to take a look at his columns.
"Jack and Diane:" I used to think the Papa Whale was gonna come and save their sou-oh-ouls.
I thought it must be some kind of obscure brand name.
From Deep Purple: "Smoke on the water, fire in the sky" turns into "Slow motion Walter, the fire engine guy" or CCR's "There's a bad moon on the rise" becomes "there's a bathroom on the right." There are so many of these, they are so funny!
As a child I thought the words to the Hymn "Bringing in the Sheaves" was, in fact, "We shall go rejoicing, bringing in the Cheese".
I was a big fan of cheese. I'm still not entirely sure what a "sheave" is.
Gretchen
mmmm...cheese. That certainly would be a better reason for rejoicing from my point of view too.
My husband was also under the impression until an embarrassingly late age that Elton John had an unrequited crush on Tony Danza. My sort-of-mondegreen was the Henny Wenny Woo song. At age 3, I asked my favorite aunt to sing it to me and couldn't understand why she didn't know what I was talking about, since she sang it with me all the time. She eventually figured out that I was asking for "Baa, Baa, Black Sheep" - as in "Have you any wool?" I suppose the phrasing was foreign to me at that age and it sounded more like another rhyme I liked involving Henny Penny.
I thought that Glen Campbell in Rhinestone Cowboy was getting 'cartons of lettuce' from people he didn't even know, rather than cards and letters.
And for years I thought the Go-Gos were saying 'Honest I See You.' And that Sting was a 'Pool-Hall Ace' in Every Breath You Take.
I'm really late to this game (thanks to Phantom Scribbler for the link here), but hey, better that than never, right?
my best one: "little Rhett, come back" is not what Prince was singing about regarding that Saturday night, alas.
-bekala
I'm even later than bekala, but my favorite is this: my sisters and I (all four of us!) listened to the flashdance soundtrack as kids. There's a song called "Seduce me tonight" that goes "se-seduce me tonight." as kids we thought it was "toot-tootsie tonight" as in tootsie rolls, i guess. needless to say, my mother didn't bother to correct us, as she didn't want to get in to what "seduce me" meant.
I'm latest of all (well, so far), but...
My stepson as a kid thought "Don't go chasing waterfalls" was "Don't go, Jason Waterfalls" -- not sure of the artist.
There's a song out now that says, "Open up to me, like you do your girlfriends" which I always hear as, "Open up to me, and I can do your girlfriends," a version that my DH would much prefer.
Oh, there must be others, but now they are escaping me...
I remember chancing upon a website devoted to mondegreens, long ago when the internet was still novel. There are so many, but the one that made me laugh until I was crying--years later, it STILL makes me laugh--was for Nine Inch Nails, "Down In It." Someone had misheard "I was up above it" for "POWERS OF A MUPPET." I love nothing more than blasting that song and singing the new and improved Muppet version.
When my sister was little she one day commented on what a strange name "Eanor" was. When no one knew what she was talking about, she explained with, "You know, 'myyyy Eanor!'" sung to the tune of Stevie Wonder's "My Cherie Amour." We still make fun of her to this day.
My favorite mondegreen is from "Kokomo" (Beach Boys):
To Martinique, that Monserrat mystique
misheard as
Vermont’s unique, Vermont’s a rotten state
I have a friend, Mandy Green, whose name is a mondegreen of "mondegreen.” She wrote a kids' book, "Gazoon High Twizzle," about a mondegreen of "gesundheit whistle," which means whistling after a sneeze. See it in animation at GazoonHighTwizzle.com.
Post a Comment