music: misheard lyrics

When I was little, I used to sing along to the Paul Simon song, 50 Ways To Leave Your Lover :
"Slip out the back Jack
Make a new bandstand
Don't need to be cordroy
Just just listen to me"
How was I to know that he said,
"Make a new plan Stan
Don't need to be coy Roy",
and that the whole song was about splitting up... although the title should have given it away. I just liked the idea of building a bandstand and not having to wear cordoy

The song: Conway Twitty's "Hello, Darlin'." The line: "You're just as lovely as you used to be." What I heard: "You're just as ugly as you used to be." I always wondered why he would think "ugly" was a compliment.

When I was younger we used to sing the Canadian National Anthem at every school assembly. I proudly sang "with glowing hearts we see thee rise, the True North strong and free", congratulating myself on getting all the words right. However, it wasn't until I was a little older that I realized I had at least one line a little bit wrong. The line was, in fact, "We stand on GUARD for thee", and not "We stand on GOD for thee" as I had been singing my whole life. I just figured we must be a pretty great nation if we came above God in the grand scheme of things.

Also, my little sister LOVED the movie Grease, she was the movie's biggest fan... her favorite song was..."you're the thinga-ma-bob!" (instead of you're the one that I want")

I used to sing along to the James Blunt song "You're Beautiful" thinking that the lyrics, "My life is brilliant" were "My life is bread" and "She could see from my face that I was
flying high" were really "she could see in my face I was fucking high." Whoops!

When I was younger I thought the lyrics to Billy Joel's Only the Good die young were "I'd rather laugh with the Singers than cry with the saints". My maiden name was Singer.

When I was young I thought the chorus of Paul Young's 'Everytime You Go Away' went:

Everytime you go away,
You take a piece of meat with you
(actual lyric 'You take a piece of me with you')

I used to think that while it was very odd that his girlfriend would take meat with her whenever she went away I still couldn't understand why it upset him so much. I figured when I was older I would understand

From the Beatles song "Lucy in the Sky with diamonds", I used to think "The girl with kaleidoscope eyes" came out sounding like:

"The girl with colitis goes by"

I used to think that the London Bridge song went "London's britches falling down" I always felt really bad for people named London who happened to be shopping or something whenever people sang that song.

When i was in all region choir in 8th grade, the boys did a peice that said " i travel the muddy muddy banks of the low road" and i thought they were saying "the bunny bunny bangs" I started busting up during our concert and i got in touble.

When she was young, my aunt used to think that the Beatles song 'The girl with kaleidoscope eyes' went 'The girl with kaleidos goes by'. She must've thought that 'kaleidos' was some sort of ailment.

I was working in an overnight child care center while majoring in music, and was preparing to conduct the Vivaldi Gloria and Kyrie, and I'd been listening to the recording while the children (I thought) slept, and practicing conducting One section of the Gloria is "Et in Terra Pax Hominibus" (And on Earth, Peace to All Men),.

One of my 4 yr olds asked me if we could sing the "Bus song"-when I asked him what he meant, he sang "It's a terrible piece, oh Minibus!"





One of my 4 yr

As children, my brother and I loved the song, "Our House" by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. The line, "with two cats in the yard" was misinterpreted by us...we loudly sang, "with two cats in the ARMY!" every time the song was played. It never made sense to me why two cats would enlist in the army, or why the family the belonged to would ship them off to war.

The song, "When the moon hits the sky like a big pizza pie, it's amore", I used to think was
"When the moon hits the sky like a big piece of pie, it's a meringue"

I used to believe that the lyrics to "Linger" by the Cranberries were not, "Do you have to let it linger?" but "Do you have to, Lennon Linger?"

You know the song, "Groovin'" by the Rascals?

I was convinced that a specific part of the lyric was/is..."that would be ecstasy..you and me and Leslie"..

I kept thinking, "Who in the hell is Leslie?"