Mar 29 2006
Reverend Blue Jeans
“Just on hold on Lucy…” Shannon sang as .38 Special played on the radio.
“Excuse me?” I asked.
“Is that not right?”
“It’s ‘Hold on loosely.’”
Some of our favorite moments as a couple occur when one of us sings a misheard lyric. This happens mostly during songs written before our shared lives began. What’s funnier than hearing your wife belt out a wrong lyric at the top of her lungs, only to be corrected lovingly (or sometimes not so much) by you? You swear you can see a light bulb above her head as she realizes, “Oh, that makes much more sense.”
Of course, this also applies to husbands who flub the lyrics and get laughed at by their wives, including me. I just hate writing “his or her” all the time, so I try to pick a gender and run with it. Kind of like running with scissors.
Sometimes a person knows lyrics because he read them in the CD booklet, or looked them up on the Internet. Others come into aural focus after experiences in life provide the proper context. Can’t forget when an artist covers a song and enunciates certain things better than the original.
There is at least one web site dedicated to misheard lyrics, but a lot of the submissions seem fabricated to me. I thought I would throw a few of our own in the ring, and open the floor for others.
Mark: A nigga wanna fly away. (Repeated 11 times)
Correct: I think I want to fly away. (Repeated 11 times)
Song: To Serenade a Rainbow
Artist: PM Dawn
Realization: I quickly flipped open the jewel case to check, because the words I heard did not fit the band at all.
Mark: (unintelligible mumbling)
Correct: Punch a higher floor.
Song: Let’s Go Crazy
Artist: Prince
Realization: Shannon laughed and said, “I know a Prince lyric that you don’t know?” and proceeded to tell me what he was saying.
Mark: I’ll be damned to f*ck it…
Correct: I’ll be damed if I get…
Song: Why Can’t This Be Love?
Artist: Van Halen
Realization: I read the lyrics in the CD booklet.
And one more, from a TV show (so, maybe fabricated, maybe not):
Doug on “King of Queens”: Reverend Blue Jeans.
Correct: Forever in Blue Jeans
Song: Forever in Blue Jeans
Artist: Neil Diamond
Realization: Carrie told him he was wrong (and an idiot, probably)
Beck has the distinction of writing lyrics that you are sure you must have misheard, but closer inspection reveals that you nailed it the first time. You can’t tell me truthfully that he doesn’t just make up nonsensical phrases for rhyme’s sake. Still, I can’t get enough of his music and I own six of his CD’s.
My favorite Beck lyrics that actually say something comes in the song “Loser”:
“And my time is a piece of wax fallin’ on a termite
That’s chokin’ on the splinters.” - Loser
My favorite Beck lyrics that don’t say anything (and there are a lot of them):
“Mouthwash jukebox gasoline.” - Devil’s Haircut
And, because quoting song lyrics is allowed in the context of a review or a satire, I’ll finish with a longer passage (and since this is a review, let’s just say I like the song):
“When you are alone you are the cat, you are the phone
You are an animal
The words I’m singing now
Mean nothing more than meow to an animal
Wake up and smell the cat food in your bank account
But don’t try to stop the tail that wags the hound.”
They Might Be Giants — “Don’t Let’s Start”
That is so weird.
I totally wrote that exact same post last September. Except I never referenced your wife, not knowing her, you understand.
Shameless self promotion HERE.
One that’s not mentioned above in your post, nor on mine, is that famous portly fellow we all sing about at Christmas:
Round John Virgin.
That is uncanny. You even wrote “belting out the lyrics,” almost the same wording I used. Glad I didn’t read your blog back then. By the way, my wife and I also sang quite proudly of a “glorified version of a pelican,” although we knew the right lyrics from the start. It was just too fun not to do. Don’t you hate when you mangle a song on purpose, and then never again can have that song in your head in its pure form?
*laughing* I remember some lyrics that I mistook quite some time ago… but I’m not going to tell!
“Later on, we’ll perspire, as we dream by the fire.” A quote from a close family member.