Excuse Me While I Kiss This Guy: The Science of Misheard Song Lyrics

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...

My favourite example of this has always been "Lock the Taskbar": http://youtu.be/WEWG6kSYqlY

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

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.

Like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-ZnPE3G_YY ? Matches the lip reading too.

You should make a blog post about that.

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

Alternative spotify link http://open.spotify.com/track/5YxfZTUX7sZ5JyYvEsesxB

Was going to say that this was perhaps a bad example. Many song writers make deliberate use of homophones.

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

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

Here's a skit from an old Canadian comedy show about this song (apologies for the quality, but the original aired sometime in the early 90's I believe).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9_3nQFNy-w

Mark McKinney's (from Kids in the Hall) younger brother was part of this group. Every time I hear that song, I remember this skit.

"Wrapped up like a douche. Another boner in the night."

Yeah that one always throws me and I always forget to look up what it's supposed to be and then when I hear it again I forget, repeat.

By the way I will forget this comment too.

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

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.

Oh no :-( Was always wondering what "Starbucks lovers" meant....

I thought that's what she was saying! Like a modern take on "star-crossed lovers". Weird.

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.

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

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

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

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...

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"!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

"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

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"

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.

"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.

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

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQ4c54rCJ_k

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".

cdza has a "History of Misheard Lyrics". 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.

"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

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.

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.

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

Lock the catbox!

I can't get no sadist faction.

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

"I wanna fuck you like Superman"

Metallica, One: Doctors impersonate me.

http://www.kissthisguy.com/doctors-impersonate-me-metallica-...