songs

For the longest time (at age 10 in 1972) and for many years after, I swore that the song "Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress," actually performed by the Hollies, had been performed by the Rolling Stones! I could've SWORN this!! (Still, wouldn't it be cool to have the Stones cover this song?! Phish did, in their earliest years and just before they broke up!)

Mark Kahler

I remember walking to school singing The Doors song "Light my Fire." I thought it was about a guy who went camping, forgot matches, and was singing to a female camper who was walking by....you know, "Come on baby light my fire..."

I could see him on his knees next to his camp fire, pleading for matches "Try to set the night on fire...!"

mojo

When I first heard "she bangs, she bangs" from William Hung, I didn't understand what it meant until I sang it to the princepal of my middle school in 7th grade, I learned in detention.

nathanrawksihearthim

I used to believe that conductors batons had a slit cut down them and if you waved them about hard enough music would come out. Yes, I did try. No, it didn't work.

norma

I believed that all songs just existed. I never imagined anyone could write one even though I knew about writing poetry. "New" songs (hits) were just songs someone had found and decided to sing and make popular.

Theresa

As a child, I was for a long time perplexed by the reference to "the land of the free and the home of the brave" in the last line of the U.S. national anthem (The Srar Spangled Banner). I thought it referred to two separate parts of the U.S. I tried for awhile drawing maps, coloring states two separate colors, trying to figure out correctly which states made up the land of the free and which ones made up the home of the brave.

Tonya

The song "America The Beautiful" with its last line "From sea to shining sea" had me perplexed for quite some time. I puzzled arduously over which, of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, was shining and which was not.

Marilyn

As a school kid growing up in the U.S. I was always quite disturbed when we sang "My country 'tis of thee". The line "Land where my fathers died" really perplexed me because I and my classmates mostly had fathers who were still alive.

Marilyn

When I was little, my mom and I would always sing "The Paw Paw Song." It was a little song about picking up the paw paw fruit and putting it in a basket. Trouble was, I called my grandpa "Paw Paw." So for years, I always thought they were picking up grandpas and putting them in baskets.

stephanie

I heard the song "Camp Grenada" by Allan Sherman (the one that goes "Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah, here I am at Camp Grenada"..) long before I ever heard the classic music it's based on: "Dance of the Hours". When I finally saw "Fantasia" I wondered what Hippos and Crocodiles had to do with camping!

Kindly disregard this letter

I didn't know that song 'Skip to the Loo' was about skipping to the restroom. I thought it was about skipping to the beat of a song. For years I called music beats, loo.

Tina

i used 2 believe the "air guitar" was a real instrument

Anon

When I used to ride in the car, i turned the radio up really loud and mouthed out the words, thinking that the surrounding cars would think i was an awesome singer!

Suset

I used to think that a conductor while conducting told the players what to play as opposed to their music.

Daryl