I may be the only person in the world who misheard this one, but as a kid I always thought Mariah Carey made up some weird word in "Dreamlover." 'Won't you please come around Cause I wanna shevareva with you baby'
As a kid, I would hear in I Want To Hold You Hand...I get hives, I get hives instead of I can't hide, I can't hide. I always that he was getting the cooties or something. Nowadays when I hear, I keep thinking Lennon would sing that just to put the piss in the song.
Oh jeez. I ALWAYS thought that lyric was "I GET HIGH, I GET HIGH". Had no idea it was "I can't hide". Wow.
Last Dance by Donna Summer was playing one morning on the radio while taking my teen daughter to school. She asked me if she was Lap Dance. Lol
Until very recently I heard the following in Penny Lane. "He likes to keep his fire engine clean, it's as clean as she". She refers to the Queen of whom he has a portrait in his pocket in the preceding lyric. Still like that better than, "it's a clean machine".
I always thought in Nick Lowe's Heart Of The City, the line: "Checkin' on neat in the heart of the city" Was "Checkin' the meat in the heart of the city" I was dead certain of that till a few months ago.
Pretty sure those really are the words, and the online sites just get it wrong. "Checkin' on neat" isn't an expression I've ever heard.
There's the long-told - and potentially apocryphal - story that Dylan thought the Beatles were stoners because he thought they sang "I get high"!
John Cougar Mellencamp, "Jack & Diane": "Oh yeah, life goes on, don't have to be 'fraid of a 'leven-inch dong.'
After listening to some Dio today and being reminded of this thread, here is one that I have always misheard (and still do) even though I know what the actual lyric is. Actual Dio's "We Rock" first 2 verses: You watch their faces You'll see the traces Of the things they want to be But only we can see They come for killing They leave and still it seems The cloud that's left behind Oh, can penetrate your mind What I hear on the first line of the 2nd verse: They come for cutie
Many of the misheard lyrics I'm seeing here are not remotely better than the actual lyrics, and my contributions (from my youth) will be no exception... From 'Sometime in the Morning' by The Monkees: 'And you'll need no underwear but the sky' (should be 'And you need no longer wear a disguise'). From 'It's so Easy' by The Crickets: 'So here I go coming out of the loos' (should be 'So here I go breaking all the rules').
David Bowie - Breaking Glass Don’t look at the carpet I drew something awful on it for years I thought the lyric was Don’t look at the carpet I threw something awful on it
Not misheard, but the other day I was jokingly singing Sex Shooter by Appolonia and accidentally sang “shooting love in All directions”.
Girl, I want to be with you all of the time, I'll pay a dollar a night! I'll pay a dollar a night! --Kinks, "All Day and All of the Night." (That's what I thought they were singing when I was 12.)
I've struggled to think of a misheard lyric that may be better than the one intended (rather than being just silly), but I think I've finally remembered one... From 'Closer to Fine' by the Indigo Girls: 'The less I seek my source for some definitive / The closer I am defined' (it should be 'The closer I am to fine'). Needless to say, I didn't hold this misapprehension for long, given that the clue is in the title.
There's one line in Dylan's Wedding Song (Planet Waves) that I've always heard as: Ever since you walked right in, the circus man complained which sounds remarkably like an unused line from I Want You or thereabouts. (For those with equally bizarre hearing, it should be: Ever since you walked right in, the circle’s been complete.)
Warden threw a party in the county jail Lizard Man was there, he began to wail (I have actually heard this sung!)
