When you were a kid and listened to a song, what did you get totally wrong about it?

Another one I recalled from ELP:

Performing on a stool we've a sight to make you drool
Seven virgins and a mule
Keep it cool. Keep it cool.

I always thought that it went:

Performing on a stool we've a sight to make you drool
Seven virgins out of fuel
Keep it cool. Keep it cool.

It never made sense to me - but the actual version doesn't make sense either!

 

Get your mind in the gutter!

 

Hollies - "Look through Any Window (what do you see?)"

Loved this song as a kid (still do) but always imagined it from the perspective of looking in through the windows of various strangers houses, rather than looking out through the windows of my own. Obviously, the song brought out the voyeur in me...

 

When my kids were quite young one of them asked me if we could play the 'Junction Song' on the car tape player. I was baffled by this until by asking several questions I found out that he meant 'Invisible Touch' by Phil Collins.

He had misheard this lyric "She seems to have an invisible touch yeah" as "She seems to have an invisible junc-tion". Still makes me chuckle now when I think about it.......

 

"Doughnut" is Australian slang for a not-very-bright person. So I could see a kid from down under thinking Rod Stewart was insulting someone for not being able to see the meaning in a photograph: "Every picture tells a story, doughnut!"


When I was about 14, I was listening to an oldies show where the deejay said after the commercial break, he was going to play "a song that was banned on many radio stations". The first song he played after the commercial was "Help!", and after thinking long and hard about why that would have been banned, I concluded that some American stations would have a problem with a British group singing about one's independence seeming to vanish in the haze. (The song he was really talking about was "Eve of Destruction," which he played after "Help".)

 

When I was a very small kid and "Open the Door, Richard" came on the radio I`d run to the door, I am a bit daft!

 

I want to rock and roll all night
And part of every day

Having never heard "party" used as a verb, I was proud of my favorite band's sensible approach to life, rocking and rolling all night but only part of every day. Reserving some portion of the day for sleeping or whatever it is that musicians do to re energize themselves just seemed smart.

 

...think she's a spaz, she's got Bette Davis eyes

 

So, my wife and I are howling along to Love Removal Machine by The Cult one evening, and in the chorus I shout--with total "I'm rocking!" facial expresion, eyes closed, totally committed--"SALT SHAKER!". She dies laughing. I tried to defend myself, but it was pointless.
"Seriously? You can't understand the first word of the phrase , but the second word is Shaker and you come up with...Salt? Soul never occurred to you?"
I felt shame. I thought he was talking about a salt shaker full of cocaine!

 

Come on Eileen, oh I swear I won't sing...

 

This reminds me of a chestnut from a roommate of mine that I don't believe I've mentioned before in this thread.

She came to me once when we were first acquainted and hanging out with some regularity and said how perplexed she was that Freddie Mercury was shouting "I'm adopted!" during "Another One Bites the Dust." I couldn't keep from laughing when I explained he was really exclaiming, "Bite the dust, yeah!"

Still, I think she had the last laugh because I can't hear that song without that line running unbidden to the forefront of my mind. I'll never be able to take it seriously again... Then again, with the horned baseball hat Freddie is wearing in the video, that might have been a doomed proposition anyway.

 

Deck the halls with Boston Charlie . . . 'tis the season oh by golly
(or so my father told me)

 

The Who "Boris The Spider"

What I heard for the chorus: "Lord it is a spider"

 

Elton John - Bennie and the Jets

The line 'She's got electric boots' i thought was actually 'She's got electric boobs'

 

I can't think of one song, as there are many, but I do remember when I was about 4 years old I thought that the artist came directly to the radio station to play their song. So like if I heard "Band On The Run" on the radio I assumed Paul McCartney and his band had showed up at the radio station and played the song, and when the next song played I assumed it was the next artist in this massive line outside the station waiting to play their song.

I remember the first time I heard a song on two separate stations I asked my parents how this was possible, and was told how radio stations worked. I never claimed to be a smart kid.

 

Me too! I wasn't a kid at the time, but still...

 

Actually, I still here it that way.

 

In my naïve youth I thought that the last lines of Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit" were "beat your head, beat your head." Considering the lyrics of the rest of the song and never having read "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" it kinda made sense to me. But when my sister told me it was "feed your head, feed your head"- I was thinking "what the heck is that supposed to mean?"

 

Herman's Hermits song "She's A Must To Avoid", I thought he was singing "she's a muscular boy".

 

HA! So did I!

My wife is often lyrically challenged. She used to believe that when the Beach Boys sang "But it still gets me where I want to go" about their Little Deuce Coupe, they were saying, "The bus still gets me where I want to go." I guess she figured that the Little Deuce Couple was in such bad shape they had to take the bus to go surfing.

And on the Beatles' cover of "Everybody's Trying to Be My Baby," instead of "Before I got home I had nineteen dates," she heard "Before I got home I had an ice cream cake." I think she could relate better to that one.

 

Oops! Wait, I guess that's in "Surf City." I guess I'm also lyrically challenged.

 

It's actually "he's a muscular boy"

 

That one's actually true.

 

When I heard "Band On the Run" as a kid I thought "pint" referred to a pint of urine. Why I thought that I don't know.

 

"Drag City" by Jan and Dean...when they sing "Gonna get my chick and make it out to Drag City," I thought it was "Gonna get the chicken and go out to Drag City," meaning they were going to pick up some chicken at the store for dinner and then go to Drag City.