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

My friend's little brother thought it was "think about right bird"!

 

In the days of tiny 'corner shops' here, if they didn't see the need to buy a cash register, the assistant would jot down your purchases and add them up as you/they went along... writing on a paper bag very often (why waste a fresh sheet of writing paper lol.) I'm sure that would have been worldwide and so your friend's little sister might have seen that.

I may have mentioned this in the thread much earlier (even if it's rather O/T, doubly sorry in that case) but this reminds me my grandma once told me she did quite like their song "Ticket To Rag."

 

She was ahead of her time. Don’t suppose she was related to Thom Yorke ??

 

From McCartney's “Jet”,

“I thought that the Major wasn’t a lady suffering yet...”
Well it makes as much sense as the actual lyrics
Great song either way

 

in Norwegian Wood, I thought "biding my time" was "biting my tie"

 

I wondered why you had to go steady for a full year just to drink some beer.

Billy Joel, All You Wanna Do Is Dance

And you never messed around
With dangerous drugs
You were all getting sick on beer
And you didn't get any
Unless you went steady
And made out for a year

 

Jimmy Buffett, “Margaritaville”

“I blew out my flip flop
Stepped on a pop tart...”

Actual lyric, “stepped on a pop top...”

 

Anyone who wasn't around in those days wonder exactly how a pop top could cut your heel. Let's just say it makes Lego's look tame, of course if you don't have kids you don't know that joy either.

 

I used to think the chorus was “It’s alright, I’m a rock n roll fantasy”

 

You know how when you hear a song but don't know what the singer looks like, you get an image in your head of what you imagine they look like?

When I was a kid, I remember hearing "Cracklin' Rosie" on the radio, and not knowing anything about Neil Diamond at the time, I imagined the singer having a round face, short black hair, a dark moustache, and wearing a blue shirt... sort of like a real-life version of this guy...



The weird thing is that, at the time, South Park was still a decade or more away from existing...

 

Can’t remember if I posted it already but thought Another Brick in the Wall was saying “no Dukes of Hazard in the classroom”

 

First time I heard Van Halen's Panama, I thought he was saying "Ah-choo, burning down the avenue".

 

I thought "Pan-na-ma!" was "An-i-mal!"

Anyway, maybe the animal had a slight head cold...

 

For years I thought Jim Morrison was singing: Another flashing chance at bliss, and listen, never kiss another kid in The Crystal Ship.

 

That ‘House of the Rising Sun’ was about a haunted house.

 

Shaggy’s “Angel” (based on “Angel of the Morning”).

Instead of,
“Girl, you're my angel
You're my darling angel”

…I heard it as,
“Girl, you're my angel
You're my dog named Angel”

After all, his name was Shaggy! How could it not have been about a dog?

 

Another one: Santana’s “The Game of Love”, featuring Michelle Branch. I assumed the guitar was looped or fake in some way like so many other pop songs, so I always thought to myself, “what a jerk that Santana is! He sings like one word and calls it his own song.“

 

Until quite recently, I thought a Hurdy Gurdy Man was a fellow playing one of these:



However, that is an organ grinder.

This is a hurdy gurdy man:

 

I thought Nick Lowe's song, Cruel To Be Kind was about about sadomasochism.

 

So did I. And the first several times I heard "The Ballad of John and Yoko" I had no idea who it was!

 

It wasn't played much by the late 80's but whenever I heard it thought it was "Cool To Be Kind" did not knwo it was "Cruel" wasn't until I first saw it in writing.

The Letter's to Cleo cover is my favorite of the track.

 

"Livin' Thing" by ELO came out in 1976 while the Patty Hearst trial was all over the news (we always had Walter Cronkite on with dinner in our house), and for some reason 9-year-old me thought the song was about her.

 

Spinning Wheel, when David-Clayton Thomas sings "You got no money, you got no home", because of his Canadian slur, I thought he was saying "You got no money, you got no whore".

 

When I was a kid I thought the Monotones song was "I Wonder Who Let the Moo Cow Out". The first time I heard "Centerfield" I thought Fogerty said "Centipede", the Charlie Rich song was "Every Time You Touch Me I Get Hives".
I thought "Smoke On the Water" was "Slow Running Water" and "Lay Down Sally" was "Way Down South"!

 

At 4 years old singing The Monkees songs and already getting this feeling of heartache in my stomach about almost all of them. But then the TV show set me straight (-: