Elton John, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
…back to the howling old owl in the woods,
humpin’ the horny back toad.
This will hurt you more than it hurts me.
Have you ever discovered you were totally messing up a song’s lyrics?
Welcome!
Thanks for stopping by. Pull up a tuffet and stay a while.
-
Join 18.4K other subscribers
9 times. Here’s the stuff:
My Sister-in-Law Is Ruining the U.S. Economy
Using Technology To Avoid Commitment (The Padded Room Variety)
My Dad Has No Rhythm, Yet Is Master Of The Dance
Last Minute Gift Ideas To Keep You From Becoming Ebenezer Screwed
Homo Sapiens Vacationus At The Watering Hole
Mortal Kombat: Battle For The Monkey Bars!
Facebook Ruined My Life. Now They Must Pay
Why I Would Rather Try To Find The Funny Than The Meaning Of Life
Here’s the kind of junk we do here. You can check it out if you want, but I wouldn’t recommend it.
Follow me on Twitter
My TweetsLike me on Facebook
What's up with THIS?
Peg-o-Leg's Ramblings 
Round John Virgin always confused me. Was he part of Robin Hood’s band of merry men?
LikeLike
The odd thing is I instantly knew what you meant.
LikeLike
Well, he’s very famous at Christmastime.
LikeLike
All the time. Thanks to Google, I now know that the chorus of Cheap Trick’s “I Want You to Want Me” is saying “Didn’t I, didn’t I, didn’t I see you crying?” But for the longest time I thought they were singing, “Jeela, Jeela, Jeela see you crying.” I had no idea who Jeela was.
LikeLike
…or why she was crying, poor thing.
LikeLike
There is family lore about this thing. My husband’s neice when she was younger thought it was Another One Rides the Bus, along with thinking the lyrics to Wind Beneath My Wings were “did you ever know that you’re ameoba?”
LikeLiked by 1 person
The amoeba line made me laugh out-loud.
LikeLike
Actually, Weird Al DID do “Another One Rides the Bus”. It was one of his earliest parodies. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZkouut-9RQ (Don’t you love youtube?)
LikeLike
I love Weird Al. Like a Surgeon, Eat It – loved those videos. Thanks for the link!
LikeLike
Years ago I caught my little sister singing along to Bob Marley: “Pajamas, pajamas, pajamas till the break of dawn!”
LikeLike
Ah, The Slumber Party Anthem.
LikeLike
Yes but I can’t remember what they were now, I know they were bizarre. Not song lyrics but equally as silly, when I was little I thought Alzheimers was “old timers” disease.
I remember my friend’s sister thinking “Laura and I were born in an m&m” from “Ramblin Man”.
LikeLike
I think you’re right about the Alzheimers, anyway.
LikeLike
My radio station once had a “column” with that – Oma fiel ins Klo-songs (Grandma fell into the loo – but the german line rhimes with a line from Midnight lady “Oh my feelings grow”) Most famous of those songs is probably Agate Bauer (I got the power) – other radio stations call those songs Agate Bauer songs therefor.
Even at least two books have been written about this phenomenon.
What is remarkable that you hear lines from a song in a different language and hear a word or a sentence in your own language. Italian songs do that for Germans all the time, the most famous being Laura non ce.
LikeLike
I get a ton of songs wrong, but when I sit down and try to remember them, I draw a blank.
LikeLike
Yeah, me too – that is why I evaded to a more general remark about this phenomenon 😉
LikeLike
I had an early favorite — Sam Cooke’s “Cute Baby” you know,
“Cute baby, draw back your bow-wo
And let your arrow go
Straight to my mother’s heart for me … nobody but me.”
I thought those were the lyrics for nearly 20 years.
LikeLike
I like your version better – great song for Mother’s Day!
LikeLike
My mom loved it!
LikeLike
I confess that I have probably never gotten a song lyric right in my life. If I knew what the right song lyric was I could probably give you a fine example like those above. 😉
LikeLike
Some songs I blithely sing my made-up lyrics, with no clue what the real ones are.
LikeLike
The first one I remember was the Beach Boys’ “Bob Around” – I couldn’t figure why they were saying that. I think it was years before I realized what the true lyrics were. LOL
LikeLike
You mean it’s NOT “bob around”????? who knew?
LikeLike
I’m howling like the owl with laughter at that – and the picture is a scream:0)
LikeLike
That toad is serious.
LikeLike
Howling again….yep, I can feel that Toad’s level of apprehension!
LikeLike
Before I come to one I got wrong, my favourite two that I’ve heard elsewhere are Billy Ocean’s “When the going gets tough”, also known as “Well go and get stuffed”, and secondly Paul Young’s “Every time you go away you take a piece of me with you”, the sound of the cymbal just after the word “me” turns it into “Every time you go away you take a piece of meat with you”. Ha! So the one I got wrong recently was Madcon’s “Beggin beggin you”, for ages I was happily singing along as “Maggie, Maggie Moon” (listen to it, it does sound like it!).
LikeLike
I’ve often sang “well go and get stuffed” to people.
LikeLike
So many songs – so badly confused.
(Really miss horned toads – they used to be everywhere. I think the fire ants got them here)
LikeLike
I think Elton John hunted them to extinction.
LikeLike
I blogged about this phenomenon. I always thought the Beach Boys were such a charitable band when they sang, “Help Rwanda, Help, Help Rwanda!”
LikeLike
Ha! What great humanitarians.
LikeLike
To many to mention, don’t remember them all.
LikeLike
My husband used to blow a gasket when I perpetually messed up “Ferry Cross the Mercy.” “It’s MERSEY, MERSEY!”
LikeLike
Have I ever messed up a song’s lyrics? I don’t think there’s a song out there I haven’t.
My favorite is The Who’s “Won’t Get Food Again!”. I remember as a kid wondering, why? Why must Roger Daltrey be so hungry?? WHY????
LikeLike
Hahahaha!!!!!
LikeLike
What a kind-hearted little thing you were, to be worrying about Roger Daltrey starving on his meager income.
LikeLike
There’s bad news out tonight.
There’s a bathroom on the right – John Fogerty
I was like, are you kidding me????
LikeLike
No, no, Susie. It’s “there ON the bathroom on the right.”
LikeLike
SEE?????? I still don’t get it!!!!
LikeLike
Actually, neither do I. Are they NOT talking about the bathroom on the right? Really?
LikeLike
A long, long time ago, there was a country song with the lyrics “from Birmingham to Ohio…” in the refrain, but I thought it said “from *burning hell* to Ohio”. (What can I say– I’m Canadian and had never heard of such a place as Birmingham!) Sweet little me never wanted to utter the word “hell” out loud, so every time I crooned along to the song, I would mysteriously have to yawn during the word “Birmingham”. I was six or seven at the time. My parents must have thought I was nuts…
I also saw something on Jimmy Fallon recently where the Rolling Stones’ “Start Me Up” was misheard as “In Yugoslavia/You’ll Never Starve”. LOVE THAT.
LikeLike
How cute!
I’ve been signing that song in my head for a couple of minutes, trying to find the Yugoslavia part???
LikeLike
Right at the beginning! “If you start me up/If you start me up I’ll never stop” (just sub “In Yugoslavia/In Yugoslavia you’ll never starve…”)
LikeLike
and I never HAVE starved in Yugoslavia, so that just goes to show….something.
LikeLike
For years I thought the song “The Sign” by Swedish pop band Ace of Base was “I saw the sun, and it opened up my eyes I saw the sun.” In my 6 year old mind, I also thought it was a black woman singing (maybe because the song had a lot of reggae influences and I vaguely knew the genre had originated in Jamaica). All these years later, I realized I had a hard time understanding the song in the first place because it was a Swedish woman singing who was not properly enunciating. Just watched the video for the first time on Youtube and WOW it is so early 90s.
LikeLike
And she was blinded by the light, wrapped up like a douche, another runner in the night…
LikeLike
It IS “douche” though, right?
LikeLike
I have always hated that song because I can’t understand it!
LikeLike
Nope, it’s supposed to be “Deuce” as in the slang for the Buick Electra 225 car “A Deuce and a Quarter”
LikeLike
My daughter: “Like a mergin, touched for the very first time” belted out at the top of her voice while dressed in a pink tutu and roller blades.
Madonna would have been so proud.
LikeLike
I like her version better.
LikeLike
I was so disappointed to learn that the Beach Boys were not singing “Little Two Scoops.”
LikeLike
It’s better to have big scoops, anyway.
LikeLike
Of course you heard about the Mexican (here legally, I’m sure) who went to a baseball game and after it was over, called home and said “they were so nice to me, before the game started, everyone got up and said Jose, can you see?”
LikeLike
Why, no, I’ve never heard that totally original joke.
LikeLike
I should tell it to you sometime….
LikeLike
My oldest is “Carry on Milking, Al Capone” Which is of course “Got me on milk and Alcohol” by Dr Feelgood. I had a picture in my head of John Wayne every time I sang it. Of course there’s the misplaced comma as well. Do you know the Wombles? “The Wombles from Wimbledon Common are we” suggests inverted snobbery when – ” The wobbles of Wimbledon, common are we”! Which is how I always heard it. I’ve got more but it’s getting late!
LikeLike
“Carry on Milking, Al Capone.” Of course – what else could it be?
Good point about the misplaced comma – totally changes the vibe!
LikeLike
One memory of a song lyric I got wrong dates back to early adolescence for me. I loved the movie “Footloose” starring Kevin Bacon and listened to the soundtrack over and over with my cassette tape player. My absolute favorite song off the soundtrack was “Dancing in the Streets.” Little did I know that the line was really “Dancing in the SHEETS.”
My innocent little mind was blown when my religious father explained the true meaning of the song and then banned me from listening to it. I was perfectly happy singing “dancing in the streets” and I wish he would have left me to my delusion at the time. Of course, he didn’t know I had misunderstood the song lyrics and meaning. No matter, though. I still listened to the song on the sneak when dad was at work.
LikeLike
Ha! So true. Our innocence was its own protection when we were kids.
LikeLike