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Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

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  • http://www.spockosbrain.com spocko

    So today I heard The Whispers sing, “Barak Steady, Barak steady all night long.” I wonder why I heard that instead of “rock steady, rock steady all night long.”? 

    BTW, if you actually DID hear the lyrics right but don’t know what they meant there is a great book called, “Blinded by the Lyrics” that looks into the meaning of real lyrics like, “”pompitous of love” and learn what a “fried out Kombi” is or the story behind the meaning of ”Bohemian Rhapsody” 

    http://www.amazon.com/Blinded-Lyrics-Brent-Mann/dp/0806526955

    It’s a fun read and a great “bathroom book” since their are a lot of self contained short fun stories. 

  • GawainLavers

    This series is pretty great: Scuse Me While I Kiss This Guy by Gavin Edwards.

    He has a bit in one of the forwards breaking down the types of mishearings, and a majority include food substitution, something I think might have rattled Freud, had he heard it.

    The current one for me is the “like some cheese sticks” song.  I eventually looked it up using that line, which worked on Google.  The actual lyrics are way more moronic.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=734165980 Rob Duncan

    Manfred Mann totally did say douche. They misheard the Springsteen original. So I guess it still counts as a mondegreen even though it was on the part of the artist not the audience!

  • BurntHombre

    “Shakin’ a baby now, twist and shout!” -my six-year-old son.

  • xzzy

    Disappointed they didn’t use “ham and mustard shake” from STP.

  • carlogesualdodivenosa

    At the age of fifteen or so, I thought “sadden glissando strings” was actually “sucking his sandal strings”, AND I STILL THINK IT’S BETTER.

  • spejic

    This was very useful. I was able to pinpoint the year I became too old to keep up with pop music.

  • avraamov

    ‘Aboriginal man get off my cakes, get off, get off, get off my cakes…’

  • PaulDavisTheFirst

    i was suprised/disappointed not to hear some take on “jeux sans frontieres” by peter gabriel, or as it seems to be known by so many, “she’s so popular”. oh well. 

  • mtdna

    Hey there Rodrigo, days when the rains came… (First lines of Brown Eyed Girl)

  • benattenborough

    Wow these guys and gals are fantastic musicians, really brightened a difficult week for me!

  • commenterguy

    Missed one….Probably not appropriate, but did you ever notice that Bill Withers’ “Ain’t no Sunshine” sounds a lot like “Anal Sunshine”?  Kinda ruined a good song for me.  

    evidence:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIdIqbv7SPo

  • VideoMonkey

    Devil’s Advocate here:  does anyone REALLY hear these lyrics this way?
    “She’s got a chicken to ride?”  Listen to 2 more seconds of the song and that makes no sense.  Or, “Hit Me With a Pet Shop?”  the real lyrics are in the TITLE OF THE SONG.  There are definitely indecipherable songs out there, but 75% of these are made up, IMHO.

    • Boundegar

      Agree.

    • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=781965222 Ken Breadner

      Well, I always head “no Dukes of Hazzard in the classroom” (followed shortly by “all in all you’re just a mother breaking the law”)…it pains me to admit I was in my late twenties before I realized what the actual lyrics were. I *knew*, even at a young age, that ‘no Dukes of Hazzard in the classroom’ made no sense at all, but I was too young to know what dark sarcasm was (and wouldn’t have heard it in any case). To this day, I still hear “a mother breaking the law”.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_OAUXAA362EXWLYVMPJOKLFB5JQ Incipient Madness

    They forgot “the girl with colitis goes by”, presumably very quickly towards the bathroom.

  • Antinous / Moderator

    In related news, when you listen to Handel’s Messiah, they really are singing:
    All we like sheep!
    All we like sheep!

  • pahool

    What about U2′s hit “Shamu, the mysterious whale?”

  • j9c

    Jon Carroll over at the San Francisco Chronicle runs an annual mondegreen round up. Here’s one of my faves:

    http://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/carroll/article/JON-CARROLL-Mystery-Mondegreens-And-So-Much-3330750.php

    He’s got a ton of them because readers send him submissions. They are pretty amusing.

    Eh here’s one of his http://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/carroll/article/Lean-Mean-And-Mondegreen-3317608.php that has the amazing lyric

    he sang the lovely Christmas carol “Atomic bomb, atomic bomb . . .” Who knew what a “tannenbaum” was, anyway?

    Sigh. Mondegreens are like salted nuts… hard to stop. ”Oh, beautiful, for spaceship guys.” … “America, America, God is Chef Boyardee.”
    Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/carroll/article/JON-CARROLL-I-m-Not-Blue-I-m-Mondegreen-3320697.php#ixzz2BVN1zPz5

  • http://www.facebook.com/fidgit David Lawrence

     I’m pretty sure that actually is what Eddie is singing when he sings Even Flow.  Great voice, terrible enunciation.  (I’m still not sure what the lyrics for Yellow Ledbetter are either)

  • ChickieD

    Most of those I never heard that way, but the There’s a Bathroom on the Right one … oh yeah.