
Excuse Me While I Kiss This Guy: The Science of Misheard Song Lyrics - benbreen
http://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/science-misheard-lyrics-mondegreens
======
brianstorms
Jon Carroll at SF Chronicle has written a lot about mondegreens both in the
pages of the Chronicle and in topics on The WELL for years.

Here are some of his classic pieces on mondegreens:

[http://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/carroll/article/JON-
CARR...](http://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/carroll/article/JON-CARROLL-
Mondegreen-And-Loving-It-3319390.php)

[http://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/carroll/article/JON-
CARR...](http://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/carroll/article/JON-CARROLL-Zen-
and-the-Art-Of-Mondegreens-3330389.php)

[http://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/carroll/article/JON-
CARR...](http://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/carroll/article/JON-CARROLL-I-m-
Not-Blue-I-m-Mondegreen-3320697.php)

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

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LeoPanthera
My favourite example of this has always been "Lock the Taskbar":
[http://youtu.be/WEWG6kSYqlY](http://youtu.be/WEWG6kSYqlY)

~~~
soylentcola
I still sing this when I've got to click that on a Windows PC at work.

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caseysoftware
At Clarify.io we're working in the automatic speech recognition space and the
stuff the systems come up with are _hilarious_. There are so many sets of
syllables that make sense different ways. It's amazing that it doesn't happen
to humans even more.

~~~
smartscience
Like
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-ZnPE3G_YY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-ZnPE3G_YY)
? Matches the lip reading too.

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stevenspasbo
Jimi actually replaced the actual lyrics with that a few times, one of which
can be heard on the Jimi Hendrix Experience Box Set. Spotify link:
spotify:track:5YxfZTUX7sZ5JyYvEsesxB

~~~
lalos
Alternative spotify link
[http://open.spotify.com/track/5YxfZTUX7sZ5JyYvEsesxB](http://open.spotify.com/track/5YxfZTUX7sZ5JyYvEsesxB)

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mpthrapp
I've always liked "Wrapped up like a douche" (Revved up like a deuce) in
Blinded by the Light.

~~~
tokenadult
I always heard it as "ripped off like a douche," which sounded very indecent,
even though it makes no sense at all. Yes, "Blinded by the Light" as performed
by Manfred Mann's Earth Band is my all-time longest-misheard song. I finally
looked up the lyrics. "Revved up like a deuce" doesn't mean anything to me,
which is why I never heard the song that way, but now at least I know what the
songwriter (Bruce Springsteen) intended.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blinded_by_the_Light](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blinded_by_the_Light)

~~~
saretired
A "deuce" was a two-seater hot rod (cf. "Little Deuce Coupe" by the Beach
Boys). I suppose it's now archaic slang. But I'm still puzzled, because
Springsteen's original lyric is "cut loose like a deuce" and I have no idea
what that means.

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michaelchisari
I still can't hear "Blank Space" by Taylor Swift without hearing "Starbucks
lovers" instead of "list of ex-lovers".

~~~
sreyaNotfilc
I just listened to this song on Youtube. Never heard it before, so I tried
listening very carefully. I still cannot make out "list of ex-lovers". So
strange that I cannot make out the correct phrase even after listening to that
part over and over again.

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TallGuyShort
I always misheard Fallout Boy's "Going Down". They say "a loaded God complex,
cock it and pull it", but I always heard "loaded gun complex", due to the
context of cocking a firearm and then pulling the trigger.

~~~
KeytarHero
You're certainly not the only one to mishear the lyrics of that song
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvx0ncTxxL0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvx0ncTxxL0)

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TrainedMonkey
Best misheard lyrics I've heard is Wishmaster by Nightwish -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gg5_mlQOsUQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gg5_mlQOsUQ)

~~~
breakingcups
Or, the world-famous Llama song
([http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/llama](http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/llama))

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dredmorbius
My personal favorite isn't quite a mondegreen, but a lyrics shift. I've long
swapped "Waking Up is Hard to Do" for the original "Breaking Up is Hard to Do"
in Neil Sedaka's song. Years later on NPR's "Wait Wait", he said that he'd
rewritten the song with the same words for his grandchildren.

[http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1270438...](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127043815)

~~~
ScottBurson
The interesting thing to me about this one is a line from the chorus that I
always heard as "Comma comma down dooby-do down down", which of course makes
no sense whatsoever. Somewhere along the way I saw an alternative
transcription, "Come-a come-a down...", which I thought was much more
plausible, as "comedown" is a word that would make sense here. But I just
checked a couple of the lyrics sites, and they say "Comma comma"!

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lotsofmangos
Rathergood mined this ground well. I particularly like Destiny's Child meat
dependency - [http://www.rathergood.com/alf](http://www.rathergood.com/alf)
and Pavarotti's deep love of elephants -
[http://www.rathergood.com/elephants](http://www.rathergood.com/elephants)

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Rusky
Similarly, lyrics in a language you don't know. Someone did this to the entire
Duck Tales theme song in Finish:
[http://youtu.be/Xm8WmiKj5go](http://youtu.be/Xm8WmiKj5go)

"your school's stupid, your school's bwaha"

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cottonseed
My favorite is Alanis Morissette: "Of the cross eyed bear that you gave me".

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RobertKerans
This horrible song, 'A Donkey', by Cheryl Cole:
[http://youtu.be/HJ7LsLEERkE](http://youtu.be/HJ7LsLEERkE) She seems to be
really excited about that donkey for some reason.

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jsnk
This is basically where half the traffic for ytmnd used to come from back in
the day ([http://dew.ytmnd.com/](http://dew.ytmnd.com/)).

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te_platt
I lived a couple of years in Brazil and a couple of years in Chile and counted
myself fluent in the language when I could comfortably understand the songs on
the radio. This article makes me think the difference between fluent and
native speaker is being able to make good sense out of misheard lyrics.

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thret
I think this is the best youtube compilation of misheard lyrics (there are a
lot to choose from).

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nVvRwrgsGU](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nVvRwrgsGU)

Personal favourite: I got string on my face, the smell of fat chicks just put
my spine out of place.

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mrlyc
My sister always sang "But I'm only a cross-eyed octopus" instead of cockeyed
optimist.

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smoyer
My sister produced my all-time favorite - "I flew the bat-plane" by The
Eagles.

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RoboTeddy
"how to wreck a nice beach you sing calm incense"

puzzle: the above is the title of an academic paper. figure out what the
thesis of the paper is!

solution: [http://goo.gl/4Gx7da](http://goo.gl/4Gx7da)

~~~
girvo
I got the first part, but the latter half didn't fit for me, that's just an
artifact of my accent however, "calm" and "com-" are very different for me :)

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johnmaguire2013
I knew someone who, years ago, while singing along to "Boulevard of Broken
Dreams" proclaimed "I wish someone would pillow fight me" instead of "I wish
someone up there would find me"

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dev360
Theres an interesting story about Bob Dylan offering the song Lay Lady Lay to
the band Everly Brothers, but they misheard the part where he sings 'lay
across my big brass bed' and rejected the song.

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hluska
"You say that ironing was the shackles of youth ah ha."

Deciphering Michael Stipe's voice was a huge part of my first forays online. I
can't imagine what I would have done with a site like Genius.

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Groxx
Personal favorite is "Oh Canada, we stand on cars and freeze!"

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ioseph
Personal favourite: (some language factors at play) Is it Reebok or Nike?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQ4c54rCJ_k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQ4c54rCJ_k)

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antisuji
My most recent one was Maroon 5's "you got to lose that jacket / you got to
lose that jacket / you got to lo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-ose that jacket".

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jws
cdza has a "History of Misheard Lyrics".
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6jRICTGmnM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6jRICTGmnM)

For those unfamiliar with cdza, they film musical experiments, frequently
humorous in a distinctive "in studio" style, generally as a single shot.

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thatswrong0
"Like a rhin like a rhino! I'm not easily offended." Actually "Like a riot,
like a riot, oh!"

I don't really understand half of the things in Phoenix songs.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BJDNw7o6so](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BJDNw7o6so)

I also somehow thought "Baby you're a firework!" was "Baby you're a ferris
wheel!" for a while. No idea how my brain did that.

------
pwenzel
I see the bad moon rising

I see trouble on the way

I see earthquakes and lightnin'

I see bad times today

Don't go around tonight

Well, it's bound to take your life

There's the bathroom on right.

~~~
NDizzle
My wife, word for word. At the top of her lungs.

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otikik
On the same alley, but in a different level, is bad lip reading. My favorite
is Russian Unicorn.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjaZNYSt7o0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjaZNYSt7o0)

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Rolpa
Lock the catbox!

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davidw
I can't get no sadist faction.

~~~
tokenadult
Do you pronounce "sadist" with a first vowel as in the word "saddest"? I
usually hear the word "sadist" pronounced with the first vowel of the word
"latest," but I've actually never looked it up.

[http://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/us/definition/engl...](http://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/us/definition/english/sadist)

[http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/american-
engli...](http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/american-
english/sadist)

[https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20120201061147A...](https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20120201061147AAa9X9E)

~~~
davidw
Well, they're British - maybe that's the way they say it?

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calhoun137
"A dead head sticking off a cadillac" -from boys of summer

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o0-0o
"I wanna fuck you like Superman"

------
mswift42
Metallica, One: Doctors impersonate me.

[http://www.kissthisguy.com/doctors-impersonate-me-
metallica-...](http://www.kissthisguy.com/doctors-impersonate-me-metallica-
misheard-3974.htm)

