Back in the days before you could just plug an iPod into your car stereo, we used to listen to CDs. On one family road trip (with dogs riding INSIDE the vehicle), I was playing DJ, and my daughter, who was about four years old at the time, asked to hear the “Hungry Mom Song.” We had no idea what song she meant, but after getting her to sing a few bars of it, we realized she meant Bob Marley’s classic, “Them Belly Full.”
Them belly full but we hungry.
A hungry mob is a angry mob.
The poor kid mistook “mob” for “mom.” We laughed our asses off. There are entire sites devoted to misheard song lyrics, of course, but I never tire of the topic. What’s the funniest one you’ve ever heard? Open thread.
KD
We All Live in a Yellow Soup-tureen.
Emily
When I was ~6 years old I totally misunderstood “Silent Night” “Holy infant so tender and mild.” Not knowing that an infant was a baby, I thought it was something to eat–roast beef maybe. And then there was the line about the “heavenly peas.”
Wag
I’m your P*nis
I’m your client of joy and desire
Venus
Shocking Blue
cmorenc
The all-time classic mis-heard lyric is from CCR’s “Bad Moon Rising”…the line “there’s a bad moon on the night” is (deliberately) mis-heard as “there’s a bathroom on the right”.
donnah
This one’s pretty common, but a childhood friend of mine misheard Creedance lyrics, “There’s a bad moon on the rise” as “There’s a bathroom on the right.”
Wag
There is a party
everyone is there
Everyone but me
had exactly the same time
Heaven
Talking Heads
Riilism
Wrapped up like a douche, another roller in the night…
WereBear
‘Scuse me, while I kiss this guy. Jimi Hendrix, Purple Haze
For those who delight in this, it’s a large part of the book, Dave Barry’s Book of Bad Songs. Ya’ll been warned.
FridayNext
CD’s? Luxury, luxury, luxury. On our family trips we listened to music on magnetic tape. Many had not one, not two, not five, but EIGHT tracks!! Before we were that rich we listened to music on this thing called a radio which included people called deejays who would just not shut the f*ck up in between songs and then there were these things called commercials. Kids, you won’t believe what commercials were. They were how companies tried to get us to buy their crap before someone invented Google Adsense. We had to listen to people try to sell us their crap even when we had never listened to their commercials before, been in their store, or read these things called catalogues. They literally had no reason to believe we actually wanted to hear their commercials. No one traced our buying or catalogue viewing habits at all.
Scary, huh?
Oh, and we were thankful for that!
(I second Riilism’s douche)
Edit: and when I first heard the Ramone’s song on a college version of this thing we called radio, I thought they were singing “I want to be a Comedian.”
Wonkie
Corsby, Stills and Nash’s version of Woodstock is hard to decipher. I thought the “we are stardust, we are golden” line ws “we are starving, we are freezing”
SiubhanDuinne
@Emily:
Heh. I also misunderstood a line from Silent Night: “Round young version.”
Montysano
Our son, when small, used to love “Jelly Belly Butt Boy” (Botticelli black boy, from Joni’s “The Only Joy in Town).
WereBear
@FridayNext: To this day, when I hear certain songs, my brain still expects the “chuk chuk” of the track change.
Elizabelle
Who’s the cat who won’t come out, when there’s danger all about?
What the hell good is Shaft?
Cheryl from Maryland
The Ants are my friends.
jeffreyw
@WereBear: Damn, there’s another! I always heard it as “ker-chunck”.
Persia
I thought for a long time it was ‘a hungry mon (man) is an angry mon.’
cathyx
We talked about this topic a few months ago. The term for misheard song lyrics is called a mondegreen.
FridayNext
@WereBear:
Even today when listen to a download of a song I haven’t listen to since I had the album or 45 I am still a little surprised when it doesn’t skip in the right place.
c u n d gulag
I was with a friend and his friends once, years and years ago, and the Police classic, “How My Poor Heart Aches” came on the jukebox, and one of my friend’s buddies started singing, “I’m a pool hall ace…”
On top of spilling my beer, I damn near wet myself!
cathyx
@FridayNext: I had that problem when I hear a certain Linda Ronstadt song. The 8 track skipped on a song that I would hear on the radio and expect that skip to be there. I’m really glad 8 tracks have been technologically replaced.
rreay
carry a lazer
Down the road that I must travel
carry a laser
Through the darkness of the night
lapinga
I’ve been lurking since before John’s conversion, but you got me on this one. One day I heard my (then) 8 year old daughter sing “and the man in the suit has just bought a new car from the profit he’s made on your beans.”
neil
When my niece was little she thought that the McCoys hit was “Hang on Snoopy”.
cathyx
@neil: Are you saying it’s not? I thought that’s what they sing too.
Constance
Bringing in the sheep, bringing in the sheep
We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheep.
I was in my 30s, visiting some church for some reason and following along in the hymn book when I discovered I’d been singing the wrong words my whole life.
Bringing in the the sheaves…
WereBear
@FridayNext: And even though I’ve listened to CDs and MP3s for years, certain classic albums still levitate my butt off the couch halfway through.
c u n d gulag
I didn’t see anyone mention the classic misunderstanding of Jimi Hendrix – “‘Scuse me, while I kiss this guy!”
That predates The Stonewall Riot.
MikeJ
Two years ago today Alex Chilton died. He’d had chest pains earlier in the week, but didn’t have insurance, so he didn’t get it checked.
Sorry, no Big Star mondegreen to share.
WereBear
@Constance: Gladly, the cross-eyed bear.
c u n d gulag
@Constance:
I think the way you thought it was, is a more accurate assessment.
Jennifer
Silent Night:
Round John Virgin, mother and child
Mont D. Law
drinking chicken boo for breakfast.
Which, since chicken boo is a real thing you might drink for breakfast, is a better lyric. Sorry, Mick and Joe.
Amir Khalid
Is it the Swede, Magnus, or Miss Gloria Sadler
That brings mead to my niece?
I made up that mondegreen for a couple of lines from Sarah McLachlan’s Angel, and now it’s the only way I hear those lines.
Persia
@FridayNext: Sometimes I’ll remember what the DJ said over the end of the song I taped off the radio.
Dylan
My wife and her sisters used to think the line was:
“Take your pants off, and make it happen.”
in Flashdance.
Real line:
“Take your passion and make it happen.”
I still hear version A every time the song comes on the radio.
WyldPirate
@c u n d gulag:
The title to that Police song is “Every Breath You Take” and it’s a creepy stalker song.
MikeJ
I love the fact that in a thread about mondegreens the pie filter presented: She was a pie-making machine, she kept her roller clean, she made the best damn mincemeat that I’ve ever eaten.
Betty Cracker
@Dylan: Hahaha! A friend of a friend somehow heard the title lyric to the BeeGee’s “More than a Woman” as “Bald-Headed Woman.” At first, I couldn’t see how anyone could make that mistake, but the next time I heard the song, damn if it didn’t sound that way.
c u n d gulag
@WyldPirate:
Thanks, I stand corrected.
And, yeah, it is a creepy stalker song.
But, it’s not about a pool hall ace. :-)
Cat Lady
@MikeJ:
Whatever became of cleek? He’s not been here in a long time.
Karounie
One of my college roommates told me that when he was a kid he thought the line in the Beatles “Paperback Writer” was “and I want-ta-me to pay for that Chrysler. Pay for that Chrysler!” It was a song about earning more money, after all.
Whatever he had was catching. Once we went out to a dance club together and heard a song playing with the lyrics “super nature” (sounded of course more like “supah naytcha.”) We both said “Oooh, they’re singing about Zubin Mehta. How upscale!”
Tom Levenson
“Who’s going to shave me?”
Midnight Oil, Blue Sky Mine.
scav
Was the small girl not so much entirely mishearing as being en investigator and empiricist? I’d certainly be looking out for any and all clues about what made mom mad.
Speaking of noises, what about the big whirr-kerchunk-unk-whirr between records when they dropped down?
merrinc
Emanating from my daughter’s carseat when she was around 4: Three red rocks, three red rocks, three red rocks…Instead of “Cleveland rocks.”
From a drunken friend at a Bob Seger concert many, many years ago: “Everyone wants to put the whore on the bottom” instead of “everyone wants to do the horizontal bop.”
Schlemizel
@cmorenc:
Stuck in old Lodi again
Came across as nonsense
Suckin an ol diaper pin
Fogerty mumbled a lot!
WyldPirate
@c u n d gulag:
The “pool hall ace” bit was funny, but it couldn’t quite override my post-hangover, pre-coffee pedantry.
Nicole
As I mentioned in Doug’s post on ear worms, my worst one was “I Want to Kiss You All Over.”. It was on every one of my father’s 8-track mix tapes. However, I thought it went, “I want to kiss you on the road.”. And, as I heard the song over and over on trips to my grandparents when I was little, I would imagine a couple making out on the shoulder of Route 11/15 and get concerned that an oncoming car wouldn’t see them in time.
Schlemizel
@FridayNext:
What gets me is when a song ends and in my mind I start the next song on the LP! SHuffle will end that curse for future generations 8-{D
A Ghost To Most
Not a song, but as a filthy heathen, when I hear the pledge of allegiance, my brain replaces “under god” with “fvck your god”
TaMara (BHF)
Little cousins, singing Reminiscing by Little River Band:
We’ll go dancing in the dark
Walking through the park and GRANDMA’S MISSING
at the top of their lungs.
Dave Trowbridge
Two come to mind:
Many years ago my father exploded in disgust while listening to some singers on a variety show. “Why the hell are they singing about Michael Rose buying a store?”
I used to go to an aerobics class, and for the longest time kept hearing a song as “You’re my fetus, you’re my desire.”
Neil
Morning of feeling by Boston
or
“crooked spin can’t calm tourettes” (Elliott Smith from the song Say Yes)
..and of course the already mentioned bathroom on the right.
smintheus
“Let me remember things I don’t know” (Green River)
So much truth in that nonsense version.
NotMax
Michael Jackson
Billie Jean
“the chair is not my son”
halteclere
“She had a fax machine, she kept her modem clean, she was the best damn woman that I ever seen..”
From a friend’s 8 year-old son.
chrome agnomen
@Constance:
you were singing the right wing version.
TOP123
My favourite has always been from Bob Marley and the Wailers, appropriately enough: as a very little kid, in the carseat in the back of my mom’s car, I used to love singing along to ‘Pajamas’… believe it’s on ‘Exodus’.
YellowJournalism
“I got fashion on my pants, and I ain’t afraid to sew it.”
handsmile
The lyrics to the entire Yes catalogue are improved-or perhaps at least rendered more comprehensible-by one’s own mondegreens.
Xjmueller
Every time you go away, you take a piece of meat with you. (Paul Young / Hall and Oates)
While sad that she’s leaving, he knows she won’t be hungry.
boss bitch
Sade’s “Sweetest Taboo” where she says “If I tell you, If I tell you..”
I used to think she was saying “hip Italian, hip Italian”
Anna Granfors
The Rascals’ “Groovin'”: correct lyric–”you and me endlessly”; mondegreen version–”you and me and Leslie”.
Which introduced me to the concept of a triad at the tender age of nine.
cckids
From the Broadway musical “Oklahoma”, my sister & I would sing along; “Farmers dance with the cowboy’s daughters, cowboys dance with the farmer’s cows”. Seemed like a good reason for the animosity & fighting to us.
Constance
@WereBear: LOL
@c u n d gulag: Now that you mention it.
@chrome agnomen: I grew up in Orange County, California.
skippy
my wife used to think that hollies were singing “all i need is some lsd and to love you….”
and i always thought aretha franklin, in her bridge on ‘respect,’ was saying
r – e – s – p – e -c – t
tell me what it means to me
r – e – s – p – e -c – t
take some… pcp!
tells you more about my wife and my penchant for recreation drug use than the songs.
Ruviana
You ever wonder who actually had that 19th nervous breakdown?
“Billy Tom, Billy Tom, here comes your 19th nervous breakdown”
courtesy of my younger brother at around age 10.
c u n d gulag
@WyldPirate:
No worries!
FridayNext
@Schlemizel:
But sometimes, admittedly rare, you want the next song to be the same every time. We Are The Champions must follow We Will Rock You. Eclipse must follow Brain Damage. This is what the rarely used “Consolidate Files…” iTunes command is for.
opie jeanne
@Dave Trowbridge: I’m sorry, I can’t figure out which song your dad reacted to when he said this:
Tonal Crow
And then there are the impenetrable lyrics that nearly every person hears differently, as in those to “My Back Pages” as sung by The Byrds. One person hears:
While another hears:
That song is like aural LSD.
Betty Cracker
I read this one elsewhere, from “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds:”
Instead of: “The girl with kaleidoscope eyes…”
This: The girl with colitis goes by…”
loretta
Funniest one was the George Harrison song “I got my mind set on you” which my daughters thought said, “Get up I might sit on you”.
Death Panel Truck
On “Stairway to Heaven,” the lyric “The tune will come to you at last” sounds suspiciously like “The Jew will bother you a lot.”
Who knew Robert Plant was an anti-Semite? ;)
Juju
I know it’s late to this game,but I thought I’d post anyway. I thought that Donavan song was “wear your love like headphones”. The actual lyrics make about as much sense.
Patricia Kayden
A little boy that my mom used to look after in her daycare thought Van Halen was singing “Chomp”, instead of “Jump”. Thought that was really cute.
Vlad
The mother and child reunion
Is only an ocean away!
Quaker in a Basement
My Sal, she is a spunky cow…
Polly wolly doodle all day.
HobbesAI
“You thought that you were divine
Yeah well so did I.” — Tori Amos, ‘Spark’
And, for those of you who don’t remember Woodstock.
The Crafty Trilobite
Agreed! And no matter how many times I listen, I CANNOT make out the ‘official’ lyric, “the tune will come to you at last.” I think he totally blew the line and hollered gibberish, and they decided to leave it in b/c the rest of the take was good.
brantl
I’ve got two chickens to paralyze – Eddie Money.He was Dj’ing on a local station as a lark. One of the funniest things I’d ever heard.