Blinded by the Right...words

One of the many perks of parenthood is the entertainment value my children provide.  Granted, they may only be funny to me, but in the end, that's the audience that matters, right?  My three-year-old is at a great age right now: old enough to do some cool tricks, and young enough to know no shame.  It makes for some good times.  He's quite into Spiderman right now.  He's never seen the cartoon.  I'm not entirely sure how he was introduced to the webbed crusader.  Yet, with minor prompting, he can and will sing the theme song almost word for word.  Almost.

Spiderman, Spiderman, does whatever a spider can.
Spins a web, any size, catches leaves, just like flies.
Look out!  Here comes the spider MAAAAAN!

Catches leaves!  I'm still chuckling at that.  Damn leaves keep breaking the law.  Aw, he comes by it honestly.  His mother is the Master of Misheard Lyrics.

I consider myself a pretty sharp cookie.  I'm also really good at remembering the lyrics to a song once I've heard them.  Trouble is, I don't always hear them correctly.  Or understand what I do hear.

Grade School.  Musical Youth came out with their album The Youth of Today and their song Pass the Dutchie topped the charts.  Me, an innocent young lass from Hamilton, heard the song and loved it.  It broke my heart, really.  Why did these people have to pass the Dutchie around?  Couldn't they afford to buy a whole dozen doughnuts?  Times are rough when you can't scrounge up $2.50 for a bunch of doughnuts.

Then there was Michael Jackson's Beat It.  The line was "Show 'em how funky, strong is your fight."  What I heard was:  "Show 'em how f*#king strong is your fight."  I thought at the time that, wow, Michael Jackson really IS Bad.  And he knows it.  And then I meekly went back to learning the Thriller dance.

Middle School.  Older and wiser, I had my first serious crush on a Rock Singer, Corey Hart.  Swoon.  I may have had a shrine to him in my room, but I would never admit it.  Unfortunately, there were several times when I had absolutely no idea what he was saying.  Take Never Surrender, for example, and the line "Don't masquerade with the guy in shades, oh no."  What I heard was "Don't shishah play shishah side in shades shaplah."  Very deep, Corey, very deep.  You complete me.

High School.  I got in with the artsy crowd, and my tastes turned to classic rock and retro.  I was sooo cool.  Although the songs had been around for some time, I still couldn't get the words right.  Bohemian Rhapsody's "Bismillah, no, we will not let you go."  to me was "Miss Miller, no, we will not let you go."  To be fair, my best friend's last name was Miller, and not many wasp-y english-speaking high school students were well versed in the Koran in those days.  Manfred Mann's Blinded by the Light took on a risqué air when I thought the line was "Wrapped up like a d*#che, another owner in the night." instead of "Revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night." It took me years before I found out that I had that one wrong.

Since then, I've wisely learned to keep my creative lyrics to myself in order to avoid embarrassment.  I don't even attempt to muddle through rap - those crazy young'uns.  I just leave the musical interpretations to my son.  He's much cuter than I am.  And has a better singing voice.  And, he already knows more of the lyrics to We Will Rock You than I do.  Erg.

What about you?  What lyrics have you creatively re-interpreted??  Don't leave me high and dry folks.  Throw a girl a bone.

Comments

[motherbumper]

I'm so with you on that douche and OMG I never understood why they had to pass the doughnut around either - to a Canadian kid that seemed like a crime - hell it rains doughnuts here!

[kgirl]

your ode to corey hart is going to have me giggling like a loon for weeks, i promise. but, isn't the line from sunglasses at night? dude, if you can't even get that straight, he's never gonna leave mitsou for you.

[mamadrama]

I'll never get it! Never! Never! Never! (That was my Don Music impression - thank you!).

Kgirl has it absolutely correct - that line is from Sunglasses at Night. And she has also pinpointed the reason why I didn't get many dates till university...Sigh.

[Bon]

well there. see, all these years i thought "don't masquerade with the guy in shades" was "don't mess around with the guy in shades"...admittedly a substandard rhyme, but probably all my mother's subliminal warnings shining through.

my favourite misheard lyric, which i should post about next holiday season, came from my university roommate...we were all drunk on eggnog, singing loudly to Boney M Christmas, when the room went silent. we all stared at her, and somebody said "what did you just say?" we'd been singing a rousing chorus of "Feliz Navidad." she thought the words were, "at least no one died." :)

[bren j.]

Too many misunderstood lyrics to even bother listing any. I blame it on bad hearing and my respectful childhood behaviour of keeping the volume turned down low. ;)

[woman in a window]

OK, I left you my mix-up over at your home but the Spiderman song made me remember what we used to sing to get my son's goat:
"Chicken man, chicken man, does whatever a chicken can. Lays an egg, any size. Fries it up with steak and fries. Look out! Here comes the chicken man!"

[Kyla]

Josh is SO this way. Cracks me up. I poke fun at him quite often. He thought that this line "I like big butts and I can not lie." was, "I like big butts in a can, ch-ch!" I was like, "In a can? Really? Big butts, IN A CAN?"

[Painted Maypole]

i thought that huey lewis wanted a new TRUCK (instead of drug)

I recently had a conversation with someone who didn't know that "let's get physical" was about sex. that was fun. ;)

[thedionysian]

for 'sunglasses at night', i always (until today!) thought it was, "Don't twist the blade on the guy in shades, oh no!" *hehe* i guess you really DO learn something new every day...

but i think my best misunderstood line is from the steve miller band's "jet airliner", though i never knew the name of the song until i was much older. i thought the chorus was, "Big Old Jed had a light on." i grew up in the hills of north georgia, so it just made sense that Jed would leave a light on so you could see his cabin.

[Rayanne Langdon]

This post and the comments left by everyone are hilarious! I have so many misinterpreted lyric stories. And, I definitely learned of some mistakes I've been making from your commenters!