A Lyric You Misheard ( Not The Usual Suspects , Please )

I think what I hear is more common:

"Soooo, o-pen the door, I'm a loser baby..."

 

I always though he was saying that, before i checked the actual lyrics. Lol

 

Well...there's certainly more poop than pearls in the sea.

 

Steely Dan, "Show Biz Kids"

I always heard
"after closing time
At the Ganja fair"

Actual lyric,
"At the Guernsey Fair"

 

"There has to be an invisible sun / get the teacher, everyone" (because my new theory will upend what we have learned about the solar system)

 

A girlfriend I had in the 90s thought that the lyric from the NIN song Wish that goes:

No new tale to tell; twenty-six years, on my way to hell

was:

No new tale to tell; twenty-six shooters, on my way to hell

I thought it was hilarious, and remember saying that yeah, most people would feel like they were going to hell (in terms of the hangover the next morning) if they drank 26 shooters.

 

Ha! Yes — I would imagine that's a much more common (and lyrically plausible) interpretation of the lyrics! In fact, a while after "sodium pentathol" got stuck in my head, I thought those might be the lyrics too, but my strange, Velvet Underground inspired take on the words has been a running joke for so long now, that I still sing it out-loud even though I can clearly hear "Soy un perdedor"

 

Another silly one :

A-HA "Take on Me"
Original Lyric:
"So needless to say, I'm odds and ends, But I'll be stumbling away"

Misheard Lyric:
"So needless to say, I'm also else, Pa-ra-peee...stumbling away"

 

I think I was about 10 when Mr. Roboto was first on the radio. Not knowing any Japanese at that age, I heard "Double what he got to Mr. Roboto," as in, "Whatever that gentleman is drinking, Mr. Roboto will have a double."

Not that I knew anything about drinking at that age either... I suppose I figured that since the singer was thanking him, it made since for him to be buying him a drink, too.

 

Businessmen they drink my wine,
Ploughman dig my herb.

 

I wondered when I was little why Bob Dylan kept saying the ants were his friends.

"The ants are my friends . . ."

 

Every time I hear "Civilized Man" by Joe Cocker, I think he's singing

A poison arrow right from Russia

When I know that, due to the rhyme with "heart", it has to be:

A poison arrow right from the start

 

Foo Fighters, "Learn to Fly"

I heard: Looking to the sky and shaving
They said: Looking to the sky to save me

All the same, RIP Taylor

 

I haven't heard "Live With Me" by the Stones that often, but I somehow had it in my head that Mick sings

"I got nasty habits, I drink TNT"

Instead, he actually sings

"I take tea at three"

I obviously thought he was paraphrasing Muddy Waters' "I'm Ready" (written by Willie Dixon), where Muddy sings "I'm drinkin' TNT 'n' smokin' dynamite".

 

Genesis, 'The Knife', the lines:

Promise me all of your violent dreams
Light up your body with anger​

I looked up the lyrics today because I wanted to check the differences between the Trespass version and Genesis Live. So, while I thought the lyric was an odd bit of Gabriel humour, I always did think he sang:

Promise me all of your violent dreams
Light up your potty with anger
​

...which infantile image of fury I thought was a great piece of satire given to the persona of a tyrannical warmonger.

 

I could never make out one line in the final verse of The Beatles' She Loves You. "Driving her to do" just didn't make sense. After about 50 years I saw a clip of them doing the song "live," with subtitles, and discovered it's actually "Pride can hurt you too."

One which confuses a lot of people comes from California Dreamin' - is it "The preacher likes to call" or "The preacher likes the cold?" In fact it's neither - in an interview with Record Collector John Phillips explained it's "The preacher lights the coals."

 

Okay, I admit this isn't a lyric I personally misheard but I read this on a Misheard Lyrics website and it cracked me up so I have to share it here.

The song: "You Oughta Know" by Alanis Morissette

The actual lyric:

It's not fair, to deny me
Of the cross I bear that you gave to me

The misheard lyric:

It's not fair, to deny me
Of the cross-eyed bear that you gave to me

I mean really, if someone gave me a cross-eyed Teddy Bear as a gift I'd be pretty upset too, so I guess she'd have a right to be angry.

 

Another Led Zeppelin lyric misheard: on the lovely and gentle "Battle of Evermore" Plant sings sweetly about the Queen of Light and the Prince of Peace, horses thunder and the Angels of Avalon. All is sweetness and light until he destroys the mood completely with "A paid off wh@re cannot exceed the woe of aftermath". Wait, what?!? YEARS later when I heard the remaster, the penny dropped. Its "The pain of war..." Ah...

 

Same song, the part I misunderstood was
"I'll be gone..init a teeeeeeeeeeeee....."

 

Not sure if it's been mentioned or is a common one, but I used to love the profound lyrics of The Band's - The Weight

Pulled into Nazareth, was feelin' about half past ten

I knew exactly how he felt, sometimes I felt half past ten too.

 

Because of me mishearing Elton John's "burning out his fuse up here alone" as "burning down the streets of Avalon", I just checked this site. They have several other hilarious mishearings of the same song:

Misheard Lyrics, performed by Rocket Man

How about

Burnin' all the shoes off everyone

or

Burnin' off the pubes up here alone

or

Burnin' on the fumes of pheromone

or my favourite:

Bernie Taupin sleeps with everyone

 

I thought Fagen was singing, "Did you realize that you were Italian in their eyes" on Kid Charlemagne. I realized years ago he's singing "Champion."

 

George Harrison, "Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth)"

I always heard
"Give me light
Give me life
Keep me free as a bird..."

Actual lyric,

"Give me light
Give me life
Keep me free from birth..."

 

I thought it was "keep me free from burden".

 

I always thought that "free from birth" would fly over most people's heads. Clearly that's an expression of George's Eastern spirituality and not the kind of thing you'd normally hear on the radio.