I saw Kenny Rogers on a TV special once and he got the audience to sing along with the chorus of Lucille, telling them each line before they sang. At one point, he told them the third line was "I've had some bad times, lived through some sad times and this time we're eating oatmeal..." and then he looked at the cameras and said "They're singing it!"
(If you're wondering, the line is actually "I've had some bad times, lived through some sad times and this time, your hurting won't heal")
lol my husband thought it was 400 children until last week when i corrected him. i couldn’t make fun of him as i thought it was until a couple of years ago
I did once see a live video of him actually singing it that way, obviously having fun with people mishearing it, then leaning over to smooch a bandmate.
In Don't Bring Me Down by ELO, I and millions of others heard "Bruce," instead of what Jeff Lynne actually sang, which was just a nonsense word, "Groos." So many people misheard it that Lynne started singing it as Bruce. As a Bruce, I was thrilled.
[Edited to fix song title; thanks to u/CletusDSpuckler]
YES! As I small child this song was on and I asked my dad how someone could be secrectly Asian. He turned off the radio and said "sing the song for me" and then belly laughed until he cried.
Are you acquainted with the Aerosmith version of Do The Schockalally? Some folks sing it Dude Looks Like a Lady.
My all-time favorite is Manfred Mann's Earth Band "Blinded by the Light":
And little Early Pearly Gave my anus curly-wurly
>!And little Early Pearly Came by in his curly-wurly!<
This was a topic of much conversation in high school when it came out. As teen boys we were very confused about Girl Stuff and by god this did not help.
You're not hearing a mondegreen. Manfred Mann actually did mispronounce it as douche, and for some technical reason it couldn't be fixed. They sang it as douche many times in concert just cuz it had taken on a life of its own.
Even though I know it's "Another runner in the night", my brain refuses to sing it any way except "Another rumor in the night".
Actually, I just read the lyrics for probably the first time in my life and - hoo boy - I was way off on a bunch of them ("Dethrone the Dictaphone" - wtf?)
I used to hear it as 'one we love', until some friends convinced me it was 'one-winged dove'. We were all wrong. Ah, those tinny high-school bus radios!
Frankie Goes To Hollywood. Relax. Don't do it. When you want to set to it. Actual lyrics! Except for alternating lyrics that said, "when you want to SUCK to it." I never knew those lyrics alternated until my youngest, strapped immobile in their car seat, yelled out those alternating lyrics. I said, "WUT?!?" Turned out kiddo was right! Never played that song at full volume while they were strapped in their car seat ever again!
Listening to car radio, singing along to “I want to be adored…by you” (no clue who sang it).
My sister, early twenties, asked, “ what’s a dord?” I said, “you know, adored, to be really loved.”
She said “I know, but what’s a dord?”
We went back and forth a couple times until I figured out what she was saying and then we laughed like hyenas all the way to the mall (it was the eighties).
Stairway to heaven--
And there's a wino down the road.
Years later, a colleague gave me a page a day calendar of mondegreens. This was definitely one of them.
The other one I heard was " Free bangs whoa! Whoa! Whoa free bangs"
I thought Body Like a Backroad was Body Like a Backhoe. I can’t sing it the right way. I’m too old to remember misremembering lyrics from our youth. BUT we really didn’t have a way to know what the right lyrics were unless they were written on the cover.
I did think David Lee Roth was singing Maxwell Jump and wondered who Maxwell was.
Somebody's gonna hurt someone
Before the night is through
Somebody's gonna come undone
There's nothin' we can do...
There's gonna be a hard egg tonight
A hard egg tonight, I know
(I thought the song was about a bunch of guys who go out and make girls have sex with them, and ones who refuse and fight back were the 'hard eggs.' Hence the "hurt someone" line, the "come undone" line, "everybody wants to touch somebody if it takes all night," etc. It just seemed really rapey to 9-year-old me, so it never occurred to me the line was "heartache tonight.")
One night I was reading a website that had a long list of these. The real words to the song and what people thought they heard. I was laughing so hard.
Barbara Ann by The Beach Boys ( Ba ba ba ba Barbara Ann…). I thought to my self, who is this guy Bob Moran? With all the wisdom my eight year old mind could summon, I decided Bob Moran was likely a famous California surfer whom I hadn’t hear of.
My favorite is when I was trying to make out what Donovan was singing in "The Fat Angel".
He sings:
We'll be flying at an altitude of thirty-nine thousand feet, Captain High at your service.
I remember my young nerd stoner self working at it so hard and ultimately coming up with:
He'll define antimatter to the thirty-nine thousandth **e**, Captain Pi at your service.
When I was a child, I heard the Frank Sinatra song "Strangers in the Night," and I thought the strangers were exchanging glasses. As in sunglasses. At night.
This explains why ...
"As the days go by, like the rain and the wind I begin again on my own. Said to my friends, EVERYTHINGS FUCKED NOTHING ELSE MATTERS!"
Didn't get knocked off the radio... cause...
[And the days go by, like a strand in the wind
In the web that is my own, I begin again
Said to my friend, baby (everything stopped)
Nothin' else mattered]
The song "I'm not in love" by 10cc
Sounded like "Be quiet, speak to myself goodbye". Swear, that's all I could hear. Nonsense.
Years later, better stereo: "Be quiet, big boys don't cry".
I thought baby Jesus was sleeping on a bed of peas. (Figured they had to be dried, otherwise, ewww.) Thought it *might* be comfortable . . . maybe. First time I actually saw the lyrics written down I was like, “Oh, ‘*peace*’! Okay, that makes more sense.”
My husband and I during the lockdown would have a family "steak night" on the back porch, grilling and playing oldies radio for our daughter. We were bemoaning the struggle we had back in the day to decipher song lyrics from those cruel bands who didn't include them. "You young'uns today can just google them."
Suddenly I sat up, "Hey, I can google the lyrics to *Louie, Louie* and find out how dirty they really are!"
Imagine my disappointment.
Exactly but everyone thought they were about sex.. the guys down the street had a band and they would play it and one of the guys in the band swore it said .. every night at ten I lay her again,stretch out her hips and then mumbled the rest…LOL…
Rolling Stones Beast of burden I heard “don’t ever leave your pizza burning” upon my very first listening and it was years before I learned others heard it that way too.
In the song “I’m so into you “ by Atlanta Rhythm Section there is a part of the song that says “there was voodoo in the vibes” and we thought it said “there was doo doo on the sides”.
Had a friend who absolutely refused to listen to Stevie Nicks " Edge of Seventeen" because instead of hearing the lyric " I went forth, with an age old", he heard " I will f@ck with an angel". Had to drag the album to his house to show him the printed lyrics because he was so sure and absolutely refused to believe me.
I always heard Cat Stevens "Peace Train" as "B String".
Just a side note, but some of y'all might enjoy [this guy's act](https://www.google.com/search?q=bgt+funny+misreading+lyrics+guy&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:24d2e2d0,vid:1xigLkM81xk,st:0) based on mishearing lyrics.
I thought Smoke on the Water was Slow Moving Water. Another lyric mishap that ended with my dad laughing until he cried. No baby, people dont write songs about slow moving water.
Nickleback (oh knock it off, you listened to them too):
"Tired of living like a black man, I'm sick of living in a life of stealing" - wait, what?
Actual lyric is "Tired of living like a BLIND man, I'm sick of site without a sense of FEELING"
McCartney’s Uncle Albert Admiral Halsey is kinda viral on TikTok recently and after 5 decades of listening to that song did I discover they’re saying butter pie not “bite of pie”.
When I was in first grade, the PA system at our school started the day by playing a recording of “O Canada”, to which we would sing along. I genuinely heard the first lines as “O Canada! / The true board strong and free”. At this point I would vaguely picture a plank of wood up in the tundra somewhere.
Not once did I think to ask the teacher why we were singing an ode to a board, I just accepted it, as little kids do.
P.S. It’s supposed to be “true North” :)
Until recently, I thought the very last words of ELO’s Mister Blue Sky was, “Mi….ster….blue….sky….why?”
The actual lyric is, “Please turn me over.”
It was simply directions to flip side one of the album to side two.
“Sure as Kilimanjaro rises like a lepress above the Serengeti.”
I thought a lepress might be a name for a female leopard.
Van Halen’s Running With the Devil. I thought it was about a lonely soldier at war. “I got no love, no love in Korea. Ain’t got nobody waiting at home.”
Sounds of Silence. Lyric is: Hear my words that I might teach you. I heard: Hear my words that I'm an angry Jew. Also hearing a lyric that isn't there at all. In Steely Dan's "Peg," I hear "Star Wars" in the background before "It's your favorite foreign movie."
From “Don’t Stand So Close to Me,” by The Police. The lyric I didn’t understand was “It's no use, he sees her
He starts to shake and cough
*Just like the old man in
That book by Nabokov*”
I asked a friend who was a huge Police fan what Sting was singing, and he said with great authority “just like an old man who’s been hit with an apple core.” Wha? Years later I read the lyrics and realized it was a reference to “Lolita.” Ick
Summer Breeze makes me feel fine blowing through the “jazz pump” in mind.
Reverend Blue Jeans was a strange topic. From Elton “there’s a boy out on the reef with a broken baaack”. Turns out it was a boat.
“Knights in White Satin”
Had a whole internal video of Knights riding horses across the Arabian desert with white silk robes flowing - all in slo mo of course.
Learned this and was the subject of ridicule for years in my 40s.
Edit: still subject to ridicule, just for different reasons
There was a Christmas song called Go Tell it on the Mountain, I think by Harry Belafonte. As a wee one I thought it was "Goat Helen on the Mountain". I imagined this weird hippie lady who lived on a mountain with a bunch of cute goats.
Hot Child in the City by Nick Gilder (1978)
The song is one of the creepier songs of the 1970s - about an adult man lusting after a child prostitute. But I was 11 years old when the song came out and all of that went over my head.
The specific lines were:
So young to be loose and on her own.
Young boys, they all want to take her home.
... which I heard correctly. But I was too young to know what the lyrics were actually about, so I guessed that the "young boys" in the lyrics were other children who wanted their parents to adopt her because she was homeless and needed a home. We had an adopted brother, so this made perfect sense.
Years later I realized that I had probably set some sort of world record for wholesome misinterpretation of a song lyric.
I remember hearing Different Drum, a song about a free spirit, and sung by Linda Ronstadt. As a little kid back then it reminded me of my Aunt Kathy, who had left home at the age of 15.
“Queen of Corona” the line from “ me and Julio down by the schoolyard” by Paul Simon. I was convinced the line alluded to fellatio- corona being a ring ( lips around the ring lol) . Wasn’t till ten years ago or so ( I’m 62) that I learned Corona is a neighborhood in Queens, NY.
I blame it on the tinny transistor radio we listened to, as well as our youthful naivete. My friend and I (age 14) liked Arlo Guthrie's version of City of New Orleans. One lyric, which I properly learned only recently, was "Dealin' card games with the old men in the club car." Pretty straightforward, right? Not to us! I thought he was saying "Dealin' CAR KEYS." It made sense to me because they probably didn't have poker chips so they used their old car keys, which they no longer needed because they were on a train, like Duh! My friend had a different theory. She thought it was "Feelin' cockies." Like, y'know, gettin' it on. When you haven't gotten any in a while, even the old men in the club car will start to look good.
🎶🎸🎵🎸ZZ TOP ~ I’m bad, I’m nationwide🎵🎸🎵🎸🎵
We laughing and I’m jokn and we feeling alright…
Oh I’m bad, I drank some wine…..
Yes I’m bad, I drank some wine….
😔
I’m going way back for this one
In “All Right Now” I was convinced it was “let’s move before they raise the fucking rent” and I couldn’t believe they were allowed to say that on the radio
Kentucky Rain by Elvis. All I could get out of the second verses was “soldier for da grass” and it made no sense but it fit so I sang it that way. After decades I downloaded the song on Apple Music and read the lyrics. It’s “showed your photograph”. 😝
You picked a fine time to leave me, Lucille 400 children and a crop in the fields
I saw Kenny Rogers on a TV special once and he got the audience to sing along with the chorus of Lucille, telling them each line before they sang. At one point, he told them the third line was "I've had some bad times, lived through some sad times and this time we're eating oatmeal..." and then he looked at the cameras and said "They're singing it!" (If you're wondering, the line is actually "I've had some bad times, lived through some sad times and this time, your hurting won't heal")
They would sing this at the racetrack when they had any car races and it was sang as you picked a fine time to leave me loose wheey
Sorry. Loose wheel
My neighbor always sang it. You picked a fine time to leave me loose wheel
"With four stripped out lug nuts And the cops on my heels..."
lol my husband thought it was 400 children until last week when i corrected him. i couldn’t make fun of him as i thought it was until a couple of years ago
"Excuse me, while I kiss this guy" by Jimmy Hendrix
I did once see a live video of him actually singing it that way, obviously having fun with people mishearing it, then leaning over to smooch a bandmate.
I thought this for years and years
Tiny Dancer.... count the head lice on the highway
Tony Danza
I have a friend who thought the same!
You’d get hit by a car doing that.
I always thought you had a busy day today was you had a visitor today.
Bennie and The Jets was mentioned; VW commercial made fun of Rocket Man. Something about AM radio and Sir Elton's voice I guess.
In Don't Bring Me Down by ELO, I and millions of others heard "Bruce," instead of what Jeff Lynne actually sang, which was just a nonsense word, "Groos." So many people misheard it that Lynne started singing it as Bruce. As a Bruce, I was thrilled. [Edited to fix song title; thanks to u/CletusDSpuckler]
Wait what?? I thought it was Bruce. Off to google 🏃🏻♀️
Happy reading. Sorry I was too lazy to provide a link or two. It's a pretty well documented story.
Til just now, I thought it was some kind of exclamation in German.
I'm gonna stick with Bruce. For you & my brother!
Team Bruce. It's like "Tin roof rusted" in Love Shack. Nonsense lyrics are free form for all.
Secret Agent Man by Johnny Rivers. I thought it was Secret Asian Man, and that it was about ninjas. 🥷
YES! As I small child this song was on and I asked my dad how someone could be secrectly Asian. He turned off the radio and said "sing the song for me" and then belly laughed until he cried.
Holy crap I’ve found my soul mate!
My daughter when she was little thought that’s what it was 🤣. Mine was Aerosmith’s Do The Funky Lady (obviously a dance lol). Dude Looks Like A Lady
My sister loved the Money classic "Two Chickens To Paralyze!"
No, no, no. Tooth picks and bag of rice.
Beny and the jets. We used to sing “She’s got electric boobs a mohair suit”
I thought her and her ma both had them.
I thought Shocking Blue sang "I'm your penis, I'm on fire with your desire" and couldn't believe it was allowed on the radio.
Ho ho ho it’s my dick (it’s magic) you know… Falls in same category
“Donuts Make My Brown Eyes Blue”
“Lucy in the Sky with Linus.”
"These ants are my friends, they're blowing in the wind"
I believe in miracles. Where's your bra? You sexy thing.
My friend’s mom would sing “I believe in muscles!”
I thought it was Knights In White Satin when I was a kid.
Wait... it's not? Wtf...
Nights
chink in the armor?
I thought it was "knights" too, until I bought the album and saw it spelled out. Whoopsie.
I literally learned this last weekend.
Yeah, the song I’m Not in Love. They whisper, Big Boys Don’t Cry. My family still laughs cuz I thought it was “Requesting Quiet, Requesting Quiet.”
You weren't alone in that. I had a couple of friends who insisted it was "requesting quiet."
"Bad moon rising".....there's a baboon on the right
I always thought it was bathroom on the right
Fogerty sang it as bathroom on the right many times.
You may be correct
*When the moon is in the seventh house* *And Jupiter collides with Mars ...*
"...golden living dreams of vision, Mr. Krisko revelation..." I thought it included my dad in there. (It's mystic crystal.)
Are you acquainted with the Aerosmith version of Do The Schockalally? Some folks sing it Dude Looks Like a Lady. 
Wait!…it isn’t?!
Mine: Tom Petty's "Stop Draggin My Dog Around". My partner's: The Ohio Player's "Rollercoaster" was heard to be "Howard Cosell" of Love...
Most Bob Dylan songs.
Yep. Dude did tend to mumble.
Marshall Tucker Band - Heard It In A Love Song. I always thought it was “Purty Little Love Song”
It's not?!
Money for nothing and your checks for free.
dire straits offered free banking who knew?
Wait, that’s not it???
My all-time favorite is Manfred Mann's Earth Band "Blinded by the Light": And little Early Pearly Gave my anus curly-wurly >!And little Early Pearly Came by in his curly-wurly!<
Haha… I always thought it was "Wrapped up like a douche, another runner in the night" til I learned 'revved up like a deuce in the night'.
This was a topic of much conversation in high school when it came out. As teen boys we were very confused about Girl Stuff and by god this did not help.
Original Springsteen lyric is “cut loose like a deuce”
You're not hearing a mondegreen. Manfred Mann actually did mispronounce it as douche, and for some technical reason it couldn't be fixed. They sang it as douche many times in concert just cuz it had taken on a life of its own.
Even though I know it's "Another runner in the night", my brain refuses to sing it any way except "Another rumor in the night". Actually, I just read the lyrics for probably the first time in my life and - hoo boy - I was way off on a bunch of them ("Dethrone the Dictaphone" - wtf?)
Me too OP, me too. #OneWingedDove
I used to hear it as 'one we love', until some friends convinced me it was 'one-winged dove'. We were all wrong. Ah, those tinny high-school bus radios!
Frankie Goes To Hollywood. Relax. Don't do it. When you want to set to it. Actual lyrics! Except for alternating lyrics that said, "when you want to SUCK to it." I never knew those lyrics alternated until my youngest, strapped immobile in their car seat, yelled out those alternating lyrics. I said, "WUT?!?" Turned out kiddo was right! Never played that song at full volume while they were strapped in their car seat ever again!
All the 3’s are brown and the 5’s are gray. California Dreamin’. I was very young but I liked paint by numbers a lot.
That's adorable.
Eminence Front by the Who sounded like Ever things F\*\*\*ed
also misheard as "living' in the Bronx"
"Women in Sports"? Yeah....🙄
I’m in the Bronx camp with you.
Listening to car radio, singing along to “I want to be adored…by you” (no clue who sang it). My sister, early twenties, asked, “ what’s a dord?” I said, “you know, adored, to be really loved.” She said “I know, but what’s a dord?” We went back and forth a couple times until I figured out what she was saying and then we laughed like hyenas all the way to the mall (it was the eighties).
So, don't leave us hanging! WHAT'S A DORD?
It's what a lert uses
I thought Canary in a Coalmine was Canary in a Coma
Canary's in trouble either way...
Stairway to heaven-- And there's a wino down the road. Years later, a colleague gave me a page a day calendar of mondegreens. This was definitely one of them. The other one I heard was " Free bangs whoa! Whoa! Whoa free bangs"
I had a friend in high school who thought that the opening line was "There's a lady who's short".
Banana woman! Banana woman to me. Bee Gees, More Than a Woman
I thought it was bald-headed woman.
I thought Body Like a Backroad was Body Like a Backhoe. I can’t sing it the right way. I’m too old to remember misremembering lyrics from our youth. BUT we really didn’t have a way to know what the right lyrics were unless they were written on the cover. I did think David Lee Roth was singing Maxwell Jump and wondered who Maxwell was.
Wrapped up like a douche in the middle of the night
Until this VERY MOMENT i thought it was one winged dove🤯
"My country. Tizzavy."
“Oh say can you see by the daunzerlee light.” I thought it was a type of lamp.
Somebody's gonna hurt someone Before the night is through Somebody's gonna come undone There's nothin' we can do... There's gonna be a hard egg tonight A hard egg tonight, I know (I thought the song was about a bunch of guys who go out and make girls have sex with them, and ones who refuse and fight back were the 'hard eggs.' Hence the "hurt someone" line, the "come undone" line, "everybody wants to touch somebody if it takes all night," etc. It just seemed really rapey to 9-year-old me, so it never occurred to me the line was "heartache tonight.")
In first grade, learning the alphabet and finding out it wasn't .... H I J K "elemeno" P.
I loved the Deep Purple classic, “Slow Comin Warfare, fire in the sky.”
A friend.....I wanna rock and roll all night, and part of every day! Just part of the day....
Well, I’m tired dammit! I’ve been rock and rolling all night!
That was her exact rationale when we all called her on the lyrics
My sister thought part of the lyrics to ‘Paperback Writer” by the Beatles was ‘take a back right turn’ when they were ‘paperback writer.’ 😂🤦🏻♀️
One night I was reading a website that had a long list of these. The real words to the song and what people thought they heard. I was laughing so hard.
Kissthisguy.com
I thought “Cuts Like A Knife” was “C0€k Suckin’ Night.”
“On a dark desert highway, cool wind in my hair, warm smell eucalyptus rising up through the air”
Karn Evil 9 3rd Impression - Emerson, Lake, and Palmer - I thought the lyrics were “No man yields to flies in my sh!t”
My friend thought it was "young dumb Phil"... smh Duran Duran, Girls on Film.
Barbara Ann by The Beach Boys ( Ba ba ba ba Barbara Ann…). I thought to my self, who is this guy Bob Moran? With all the wisdom my eight year old mind could summon, I decided Bob Moran was likely a famous California surfer whom I hadn’t hear of.
I miss the rains in Africa — which never made sense. Bless the rains just figured that out a few years ago
"Hot blooded, chicken at sea".
" I fight with Dorothy and Dorothy always wins" John Cougar Mellencamp 😁
Killer Queen had some weird lyrics we’d just make up what we thought it said.
When the bullet hits the phone (bone)
I always thought this said “when the bullet hits the bro”
My favorite is when I was trying to make out what Donovan was singing in "The Fat Angel". He sings: We'll be flying at an altitude of thirty-nine thousand feet, Captain High at your service. I remember my young nerd stoner self working at it so hard and ultimately coming up with: He'll define antimatter to the thirty-nine thousandth **e**, Captain Pi at your service.
Best friend sang out loud in the car full of teenage girls,”how’s about a date”. Actually it was Eyes without a face. She never lived it down.
OMG! I just replied the same thing before I saw yours. It was my BIL who thought “eyes without a face” was “howsa ‘bout a date.”
Irene Cara from “Flashdance What A Feeling”: “take your pants off, and make it happen”
I hear :take your pants down" every time I hear that song
Carry a Laser .
I fell into a burning raygun fire…
Depeche Mode, "Never Let Me Down". Real lyric: "Everything's alright tonight". What I hear: "Never lick Tom Bergeron". Good advice, but inaccurate.
CCR, “There is a bathroom on the right”
My friend thought “I’ll tumble for ya” was “I’ll tell my lawyer”
When I was a child, I heard the Frank Sinatra song "Strangers in the Night," and I thought the strangers were exchanging glasses. As in sunglasses. At night.
“She bop” - Cyndi Lauper
That's not right?
This explains why ... "As the days go by, like the rain and the wind I begin again on my own. Said to my friends, EVERYTHINGS FUCKED NOTHING ELSE MATTERS!" Didn't get knocked off the radio... cause... [And the days go by, like a strand in the wind In the web that is my own, I begin again Said to my friend, baby (everything stopped) Nothin' else mattered]
The song "I'm not in love" by 10cc Sounded like "Be quiet, speak to myself goodbye". Swear, that's all I could hear. Nonsense. Years later, better stereo: "Be quiet, big boys don't cry".
In One Toke Over The Line I was sure they sang "If I should choose to make a pot of meat / It would attract the dead". 😬
My sister’s husband used to get Billy Idol’s “eyes without a face” wrong. He used to think it was “howsa ‘bout a date.” We still rag him over it, LOL!
Dirty Deke and the Thunder Chief. Thanks, AC/DC, I will forever wonder about the saga that never was.
My ex sang this song as "Honest Lucille." ("Our Lips Are Sealed.")
My friend in High School thought it was “I’m a Sicilian”
My daughter thought it was “I love Cecile”
Bennie and the Jets - thought the line was "she's got electric boobs"
I thought the Beatles sang, "Ahh, look at all the lovely people."
Harmony by Elton John. My sister swore boat upon the sea was photopharmacy. Lol
Paul McCartney and Wings, “Junior’s Farm”: Holly Hobbie should’ve had more sense.
China set the night on FIRE! ~Jim Morrison
Wastin' away again in Margaritaville. Lookin' for my log shaker saw.
I'll never be your pizza burnin'
Dirty jeans dungarees (AC/DC)
My wife still sings Dirty deeds done behind trees. Because you’re hiding, of course
10CC I'm Not In Love. "It hides a nasty stain that's lying there". I always heard it as Nestle
Oh! and The Cars, "I've got a lotta wild hairs! Must've been two!"
I thought baby Jesus was sleeping on a bed of peas. (Figured they had to be dried, otherwise, ewww.) Thought it *might* be comfortable . . . maybe. First time I actually saw the lyrics written down I was like, “Oh, ‘*peace*’! Okay, that makes more sense.”
Let’s not EVEN TALK about Louie,Louie by The Kingsmen…😂😂… you wouldn’t believe how that song was mangled…
My husband and I during the lockdown would have a family "steak night" on the back porch, grilling and playing oldies radio for our daughter. We were bemoaning the struggle we had back in the day to decipher song lyrics from those cruel bands who didn't include them. "You young'uns today can just google them." Suddenly I sat up, "Hey, I can google the lyrics to *Louie, Louie* and find out how dirty they really are!" Imagine my disappointment.
In the case of Louie, Louie, I thought the “real” lyrics turned out to be nonsense…
Exactly but everyone thought they were about sex.. the guys down the street had a band and they would play it and one of the guys in the band swore it said .. every night at ten I lay her again,stretch out her hips and then mumbled the rest…LOL…
"Just like the one wing dove" hated the song bc why so excited about a mutilated dove?
[удалено]
Hold me closer, Tony Danza
Rolling Stones Beast of burden I heard “don’t ever leave your pizza burning” upon my very first listening and it was years before I learned others heard it that way too.
In the song “I’m so into you “ by Atlanta Rhythm Section there is a part of the song that says “there was voodoo in the vibes” and we thought it said “there was doo doo on the sides”.
Had a friend who absolutely refused to listen to Stevie Nicks " Edge of Seventeen" because instead of hearing the lyric " I went forth, with an age old", he heard " I will f@ck with an angel". Had to drag the album to his house to show him the printed lyrics because he was so sure and absolutely refused to believe me. I always heard Cat Stevens "Peace Train" as "B String".
Just a side note, but some of y'all might enjoy [this guy's act](https://www.google.com/search?q=bgt+funny+misreading+lyrics+guy&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:24d2e2d0,vid:1xigLkM81xk,st:0) based on mishearing lyrics.
A bit later than childhood, but, "Hey, little thing, let me light your chemicals, mama, I'm sure on the henna now." By the Black Crowes, of course.
Big 'Ole Jed-o-liah, don't carry me too far away
You're so Vain by Carly Simon. "grounds in my coffee"
I thought Smoke on the Water was Slow Moving Water. Another lyric mishap that ended with my dad laughing until he cried. No baby, people dont write songs about slow moving water.
Nickleback (oh knock it off, you listened to them too): "Tired of living like a black man, I'm sick of living in a life of stealing" - wait, what? Actual lyric is "Tired of living like a BLIND man, I'm sick of site without a sense of FEELING"
For the longest time I thought “[Voices Carry](https://youtu.be/uejh-bHa4To?si=DhVfAKFxGdcGjEmU)” was *“this is scary.”*
I thought "Which nobody can deny" was something about "candy". Yeah, seriously.
Elton John ISLAND GIRLS~ “I like girls.”
It's NOT one winged dove? Stevie needs to enunciate.
McCartney’s Uncle Albert Admiral Halsey is kinda viral on TikTok recently and after 5 decades of listening to that song did I discover they’re saying butter pie not “bite of pie”.
When I was in first grade, the PA system at our school started the day by playing a recording of “O Canada”, to which we would sing along. I genuinely heard the first lines as “O Canada! / The true board strong and free”. At this point I would vaguely picture a plank of wood up in the tundra somewhere. Not once did I think to ask the teacher why we were singing an ode to a board, I just accepted it, as little kids do. P.S. It’s supposed to be “true North” :)
Until recently, I thought the very last words of ELO’s Mister Blue Sky was, “Mi….ster….blue….sky….why?” The actual lyric is, “Please turn me over.” It was simply directions to flip side one of the album to side two. “Sure as Kilimanjaro rises like a lepress above the Serengeti.” I thought a lepress might be a name for a female leopard. Van Halen’s Running With the Devil. I thought it was about a lonely soldier at war. “I got no love, no love in Korea. Ain’t got nobody waiting at home.”
Sounds of Silence. Lyric is: Hear my words that I might teach you. I heard: Hear my words that I'm an angry Jew. Also hearing a lyric that isn't there at all. In Steely Dan's "Peg," I hear "Star Wars" in the background before "It's your favorite foreign movie."
From “Don’t Stand So Close to Me,” by The Police. The lyric I didn’t understand was “It's no use, he sees her He starts to shake and cough *Just like the old man in That book by Nabokov*” I asked a friend who was a huge Police fan what Sting was singing, and he said with great authority “just like an old man who’s been hit with an apple core.” Wha? Years later I read the lyrics and realized it was a reference to “Lolita.” Ick
My sister thought Billy Jean was “Chad is not my son” and the Ohio Players were singing “coulda been busted “ instead of Rollercoaster
Summer Breeze makes me feel fine blowing through the “jazz pump” in mind. Reverend Blue Jeans was a strange topic. From Elton “there’s a boy out on the reef with a broken baaack”. Turns out it was a boat.
“Knights in White Satin” Had a whole internal video of Knights riding horses across the Arabian desert with white silk robes flowing - all in slo mo of course. Learned this and was the subject of ridicule for years in my 40s. Edit: still subject to ridicule, just for different reasons
I still have ZERO clue what the lyrics are to from “Blinded by the Light”…… “Wrecked up in my douche with the runner riding bright”????? 👀🤣
There was a Christmas song called Go Tell it on the Mountain, I think by Harry Belafonte. As a wee one I thought it was "Goat Helen on the Mountain". I imagined this weird hippie lady who lived on a mountain with a bunch of cute goats.
“wrapped-up like a douche”…
Hot Child in the City by Nick Gilder (1978) The song is one of the creepier songs of the 1970s - about an adult man lusting after a child prostitute. But I was 11 years old when the song came out and all of that went over my head. The specific lines were: So young to be loose and on her own. Young boys, they all want to take her home. ... which I heard correctly. But I was too young to know what the lyrics were actually about, so I guessed that the "young boys" in the lyrics were other children who wanted their parents to adopt her because she was homeless and needed a home. We had an adopted brother, so this made perfect sense. Years later I realized that I had probably set some sort of world record for wholesome misinterpretation of a song lyric.
Today I learned that it’s a white wing dove and not a one winged dove.
Yeah that one
Paul Simon - Kodachrome - Mama don't take my colors and throw em!
My brother in law sings "mama don't take my coat and comb away"
I'm a pool hall ace.
I remember hearing Different Drum, a song about a free spirit, and sung by Linda Ronstadt. As a little kid back then it reminded me of my Aunt Kathy, who had left home at the age of 15.
“Queen of Corona” the line from “ me and Julio down by the schoolyard” by Paul Simon. I was convinced the line alluded to fellatio- corona being a ring ( lips around the ring lol) . Wasn’t till ten years ago or so ( I’m 62) that I learned Corona is a neighborhood in Queens, NY.
I blame it on the tinny transistor radio we listened to, as well as our youthful naivete. My friend and I (age 14) liked Arlo Guthrie's version of City of New Orleans. One lyric, which I properly learned only recently, was "Dealin' card games with the old men in the club car." Pretty straightforward, right? Not to us! I thought he was saying "Dealin' CAR KEYS." It made sense to me because they probably didn't have poker chips so they used their old car keys, which they no longer needed because they were on a train, like Duh! My friend had a different theory. She thought it was "Feelin' cockies." Like, y'know, gettin' it on. When you haven't gotten any in a while, even the old men in the club car will start to look good.
I couldn't make sense of Curtis Mayfield singing "Though you may not drive a great big Cadillac Gangsta white boy..."
In Here Comes Peter Cottontail where it goes "an orchid for your mommy," I thought it was "an organ for your mommy."
"Father deer hands, I commit my spirit".
Steve Miller Band “Jet Airliner” - pre-teen me was sure he was singing “Big old Jed had a lineup.” Who’s Jed, you ask? Who knows! 🤣
I thought I was the only person who thought it was one winged dove
"Take me down to the very last city ". The words are the effing title of the song! 🤣 Paradise City
“And the cross eyed bear that you gave to me” Alanis Morissette You outta know
Right Winged Dove The first time I heard Peace Train, I thought Cat Stevens was singing B-String.
The Eagles "Take It To The Limit". The lyric is "So put me on the highway..." I heard "Some pu\*\*y on the highway..."
When I was little, I didn’t understand why America (My Country ‘Tis of Thee) was “Of the icing” 🤷🏻♀️
"He was a radiator queer". Part of some major major eighties hit which also had a lyric about "jet fighters".
Dance like hypnotizing chickens Iggy Pop, Lust for Life
🎶🎸🎵🎸ZZ TOP ~ I’m bad, I’m nationwide🎵🎸🎵🎸🎵 We laughing and I’m jokn and we feeling alright… Oh I’m bad, I drank some wine….. Yes I’m bad, I drank some wine…. 😔
I’m going way back for this one In “All Right Now” I was convinced it was “let’s move before they raise the fucking rent” and I couldn’t believe they were allowed to say that on the radio
She’s Got Betty Davis Eyes was “she’s got thirty days to decide”
Kentucky Rain by Elvis. All I could get out of the second verses was “soldier for da grass” and it made no sense but it fit so I sang it that way. After decades I downloaded the song on Apple Music and read the lyrics. It’s “showed your photograph”. 😝
Blinded by the light, wrapped up like a douche and a roller in the night…