Misheard Lyrics

Almost everyone listens to music. Exactly what type of music can vary widely from person to person and decade to decade, but music is generally a constant with most of us. For the vast majority of us whose listening tastes go beyond classical, jazz, new age and ambient, lyrics are generally part of the music. And where there are lyrics, there exists the possibility of these lyrics being misheard or misunderstood. Between poor enunciation and overpowering guitars and percussion, that wide genre generally called rock provides ample possibility for lyrical confusion. This is so common that there are several websites dedicated to the phenomenon, most notably The Archive of Misheard Lyrics and Mondegreens Ripped My Flesh. This brings us to a Good/Bad/Ugly rating of Misheard Lyrics.

"Bad Moon Rising" by Creedence Clearwater Revival: This is one of the absolute classic misheard lyrics, well known enough that it inspired the graphic for this article. The actual lyrics are "Don't go out tonight, it's bound to take your life, there's a bad moon on the rise," but that last line has been misheard as "There's a bathroom on the right." Needless to say, this really doesn't make very much sense. Of course, so often misheard lyrics don't make any sense, and that's what makes them funny. But as well known as this one is, it's not really all that funny, just odd. Which is really too Bad.

"Purple Haze" by Jimmy Hendrix: The original line is "'Scuse me while I kiss the sky" but go ahead and say it now to yourself. 'Scuse me while I kiss this guy. It really, really sounds like that. Quite possibly the best known misheard lyric of all time (just check the url to the archive of misheard lyrics), Hendrix was known to intentionally mangle the line to make it all the more ambiguous. Once at a concert in Los Angeles he apparently sang the line as "'Scuse me while I kiss that policeman." When the artist is in on the joke, that's a Good thing.

"Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" by The Beatles: Are you familiar with the concept of drug songs? There are some songs that are semi-subtle about being drug songs, such as pretty much every song by Tom Petty. There are some songs that aren't drug songs, but might possibly be misconstrued as such — "Puff the Magic Dragon" comes to mind. And then there are other songs, such as "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds." Just take that L, S, and D, and put 'em together, and what do you know? But this isn't about the not-so-hidden messages in '60s music. This is about a girl with an illness. Because in this song, the line "A girl with kaleidescope eyes" sounds like "A girl with colitis goes by." I guess that goes in the category of things you can tell just by looking at her. What does this leave us with? A drug song with a misheard lyric about bowel disease. What a Bad combination.

"Blinded by the Light" by Manfred Mann's Earth Band: There really is only one thing to say about this misheard lyric: revved up like a what? The actual line is "Blinded by the light, revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night." And while that may be little more than rhyming nonsense, it's a lot better than the misheard line. If you aren't familiar with it, just read it out loud to yourself now.

There, are you confused yet? Wondering why Mannfred Mann wrote a song about a feminine hygiene product? Well, as it turns out, Bruce Springsteen wrote the song, but it wasn't a hit for him. Manfred Mann's lead singer's New Zealand accent mangled the word deuce (referring to a Ford Deuce Coupe) to douche and the result was a number one hit on the Billboard chart. So while the song is cool and the story is interesting, the misheard lyric is rather Ugly.

"Tiny Dancer" by Elton John: Another very famous misheard lyric, the line is originally "Hold me closer, tiny dancer," but sounds rather like "Hold me closer, Tony Danza." Of course this is ridiculous, and the song came out in 1971, and Danza didn't find fame until Taxi in 1978. But "Hold me closer, Tony Danza" is just too funny to dismiss. As an added bonus, this song has another commonly misheard lyric, "Lay me down in sheets of linen," which sounds like "Lay me down and she's a blender." This of course makes even less sense than the Tony Danza line, but it's also pretty funny. It should go without saying that a song with two distinct and funny misheard lyrics is a Good thing.

Looking for articles about music? You can find all the articles about music ever published on this site indexed here.