Monday, August 01, 2005

If it wasn't true, why did he sing "'Scuse me while I kiss this guy"?

Jimi Hendrix might have stayed in the Army. He might have been sent to Vietnam. Instead, he pretended he was gay. And with that, he was discharged from the 101st Airborne in 1962, launching a musical career that would redefine the guitar, leave other rock heroes of the day speechless and culminate with his headlining performance of "The Star-Spangled Banner" at Woodstock in 1969. --The Associated Press


I guess that's just a long intro to this link to KissThisGuy.com: The Archive of Misheard Lyrics. It's a fun site--readers submit lyrics to pop songs that they've misheard--but I've got to believe a large portion of submissions are completely bogus.

Including:

Song: Born in the USA
Artist: Bruce Springsteen

The real lyrics were:
Sent me off to a foreign land to go and kill the yellow man.

But I misheard them as:
Send me off to a foreign land to go and kill Piano Man.

I'm not crazy about Billy Joel either, but would the Boss really sing that?

Song: Ain't No Woman (Like The One I Got)
Artist: Four Tops

The real lyrics were:
Ain't no woman like the one I got

But I misheard them as:
Ain't no woman like a one-eyed goat

Yeah, well, that's believable.

Song: Brown-Eyed Girl
Artist: Van Morrison

The real lyrics were:
You're my brown eyed girl

But I misheard them as:
You're my one eyed girl

Better than a one-eyed goat, I guess.

The real lyrics were:
Brown-eyed girl

But I misheard them as:
Four-eyed squirrel

At this point, I'll just take the damned goat.

The real lyrics were:
Hey where did we go...

But I misheard them as:
Hey there amigo...

Um. That's not the lyric???

6 comments:

John said...

I never knew what the hell John Mellencamp was saying in the "Authority song." The real lyrics are I fight authority/authority always wins, but at first I thought it was I live on the fourteenth floor and I always will. I figured it was a song about someone who was accepting their lot in life.

When I eventually heard the word "Authority" and found out the name of the song, that line morphed into I find authorities boring and I always will. Which also made perfect sense to me.

Jim Donahue said...

There's a Prefab Sprout song that contains a line I always assumed I was mishearing: "Absence makes the heart lose weight, yeah"--becaue A) It doesn't really make sense in context and B) Paddy McAloon is an amazing songwriter, and that doesn't sound like a line he'd write.

Many years later, I found out I was hearing it correctly, and was really disappointed.

Peter said...

When Stevie Winwood came out with "Bring Me a Higher Love", a friend of mine heard it as "Bring Me an Iron Lung".

C'mon, sing along: It's that I-Ron Lung, I keep thin-king oooof. . .

Anonymous said...

Whatever happened to David Brenner?

unclewilly said...

I actually thought the Beatles' "Ticket to Ride" was "Chicken to Ride." "She's got a chicken to ride, and she don't care . . ." This is the absolute truth. I still can't believe I misheard it after all these years.

Anonymous said...

My all-time favorite send-up of incoherent singing is the Mystery Science Theatre 3000 episode in which Mike and the bots parody the awful rock band from the featured movie. Every time I watch this, I laugh til I hurt.