response 1 of 61:

May 25 23:33 UTC 2000

Folksongs mutate wildly, and always have. It doesn't seem to matter
very much to a listener, and it is of interest to students of folk
songs. 

response 3 of 61:

May 26 01:05 UTC 2000

  As far as 80's pop music goes, I think top honors for misheard lyrics
  have to go to Mister Mister's "Kyrie"

response 5 of 61:

May 26 12:36 UTC 2000

I remember a comedian's routine (can't remember his name) where he talked
about going to a U2 concert. He sat WAY in the back. When they played War,
and started chanting "No War!" he thought they said, "No More!" and shouted
that. 

response 7 of 61:

May 27 00:56 UTC 2000

Then ofcourse there is REM with their album murmur.  The cool thing about
REM is you can make up your own lyrics to the songs.

response 9 of 61:

May 28 04:04 UTC 2000

Well, until my wife heard me singing along with the radio one day, I
thought the line went 

        Sittin' downtown in a railway station, one toe over the line.

She said that the word was "toke."

Inagodavida doesn't count, in my view.

response 11 of 61:

May 28 17:12 UTC 2000

"Even then I knew I'd find a much better time, even with the likes of you."
(Human LEague, Don't You want Me?... real lyrics being "... either with or
without you")

response 13 of 61:

May 29 17:32 UTC 2000

there's a Kid Rock lyric that goes EITHER "Iran couldn't stand me, soshe
banned me" or "Ayn Rand couldn't stand me, so she banned me." the ones the
Kid Rock lyrics sites favored was the first one (3-to-1, based on the sites
I looked at), but the latter makes more sense. that is to say, the latter
makes a shade of sense in context (maybe he's trying to say that he's such
an obnoxious egotist that evn Ayn Rand would hate him if she could?), but the
former doesn't make a sou of sense at all.

Another either-or lyric from Kid Rock, though it's clearer this time: "So get
in the pit and try to love someone" (correct); "So get in the bed and try to
love someone" (incorrect, but better =} ).

Along this thread, but on a different level, are deliberate puns. Tool's
"Aenima" has a track "Aenema," and the album and song both deal withcleansing
of the psyche (giving the anima an enema, in other words), while Rammstein's
single "Du Hast" has a pun that's obvious in German and doesn't translate at
all into english: "Du hasst mich" means "You hate me," while "Du hast mich
gefragt" means "You (have) asked me." (The English lyrics are "You hate me
to say", a poor translation used for the rhyme -- somehow, the German "Du hast
mich gefragt / Und ich hab' nichts gesagt" (you asked me, and I said nothing)
got translated to "You hate me to say / but I will not obey") The hasst/hast
pun is obliged by stepping up the main line: "Du... du hasst... du hasst
mich... du... du hasst... du hasst mich... du hast mich gefragt, und ich hab'
nichts gesagt."

response 15 of 61:

May 30 20:17 UTC 2000

Jon Carroll of the San Francisco Chronicle collects mondegreens - 
misheard words of every kind, from song lyrics or elsewhere - and 
publishes annually a column's worth.  Worth looking up on the 
www.sfgate.com web site, which has archives.

I read somewhere that Stipe mumbles deliberately, believing that 
listeners should hear whatever lyrics they want.  That strikes me as 
silly, because you don't hear what you want, you hear what you think you 
can make out.  One might make the aural equivalent of a Rorschach test 
out of this, but it's hardly listener participation in the creative 
process.

response 17 of 61:

May 30 21:17 UTC 2000

If a painter paints a picture in which the vague outline of a skull is visible
in a happy pastoral scene, we don't argue that the skull isn't "really" there,
or that the scene is clearly just a landscape.  There's some pretty obvious
symbolism there in making one thing look vaguely like another, and some of
the power of a painting like that would come from that vague outline.

In my opinion, recorded music is (or can be, at least) the same way.  The
chorus of Eleanor Rigby added to, not detracted from, by the fact that you
can't really tell whether they're singing "all the lonely people" or "lowly
people" or "lovely people."  

That's not to say that all the singers who mumble are doing it for artistic
effect, or that mumbling is the key to greatness.  But the choice to pronounce
a word a certain way is one of the decisions that goes into a performance,
and if an artist claims to be making that choice for a reason, I don't see
why it's any less valid than it would be if a painter claims to have
intentionally painted in a skull for a reason.

response 19 of 61:

May 31 22:01 UTC 2000

here's one from just this morning... CCR's "Down on the Corner," I've heard
"You don't need a pinhead, just to hang around," but hearing this morning,
I realize it's a penny you don't need. =}

response 21 of 61:

Jun 2 18:45 UTC 2000

the metaphor of painting isn't as apropos as the metaphor of deliberately
blurring a photograph... SOMETIMES, deliberately blurring a photo creates
wonderful effects. Most of the time, it's just a stupid artistic choice.

response 23 of 61:

Jun 2 22:04 UTC 2000

        ....that was left out in the rain.