Have you ever heard song lyrics as words other than the correct ones, perhaps those in the liner notes? Has a singer's dialect or speech patterns caused you to believe the lyrics were something they weren't? Does it matter? I remember big discussions about the meaning of music in my aesthetics of music class, especially when the music is instrumental, but what if has a text? Is it still meaningful if the words were misheard, or is it ruined? Seal printed a letter in his 1994 album that seemed to suggest the listener's enjoyment and experience was what mattered most. But what about composers that would care? (philosophical drift, but please, comment if this has merit)61 responses total.
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.
My sister-in-law, listening to a 80's song with the chorus "Please don't go... don't gooooo.. please don't go!" thought they were saying "Feed the pope"
As far as 80's pop music goes, I think top honors for misheard lyrics have to go to Mister Mister's "Kyrie"
Yeah, Valerie thought they were singing "Carry a laser", and it does make sense if you listen to the song. =)
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.
I heard "If I had a photograph of you, or something to remind me" as "... or something to my name." Heh. Maybe the song sound pathetically strange =}
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.
like he does himself sometimes
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.
...pulling muscles for michelle (the Squeeze)
"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")
While looking for the lyrics to 'Don't rain on my parade' from Funny Girl on the web the other day I found one site that had them all messed up.. probably the funniest one was the very first line, which they had as 'don't tell me not to live, just sit in butter' instead of 'just sit and putter' if you want to see the whole thing it's at http://expage.com/page/rainonmy
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."
where did "obliged" come from? I meant "obtained." =}
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.
there are various schools of music that involve "made up" words for aesthetic appeal... skat and hiphop come to mind. if you're going to go to the bother of coming up with meaningful word sequences, though, don't aggravate that by then mumbling so "the listener hears what they expect." If you want the listener to make up their own meaning, just skat.
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.
Kate Bush has some confusing lyrics in her earlier records. I won't even try to guess. She refused to publish her lyrics for years, so other people had to listen to the albums and guess when they wrote them on the liner notes.
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. =}
"If an artist claims to be making a choice for a reason, I don't see why it's any less valid ..." When Dave Barry named "MacArthur Park" as one of the top Bad Songs of all time, partly because the people who voted for it couldn't figure out what it was about, those who liked the song wrote in to explain that the cake was a metaphor. Dave's response was, "OK, it's a metaphor. But it's a really stupid metaphor." Similarly, mumbling may be a valid artistic choice. But it's a really stupid artistic choice.
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.
but it's really cool if it's blurry cuz someone smeared wet cake on it...
....that was left out in the rain.
I think Paul did a better job of explaining my opinion than I did. If you're mumbling intentionally, it's a valid artistic choice, and every once in a while it just might not be stupid.
DADAism or something.
so what IS the cake a metaphor for?
it's a metaphor for cake. that's what makes the song so profound.
no, seriously, tell me.
I have no idea.. I guess it probably represents a relationship of some kind.. But I don't think I can take it, 'cause it took so long to bake it, and I'll never have that recipe again..
actually a surf of websites indicates that the general opinion is the one I already held, that Jimmy Webb was mourning some lost love and was wandering through MacArthur Park in SF, saw this cake oozing in the mist, and saw it as a metaphor for his relationship
lumpy carbohydrates!
BTW, MacArthur Park is in Los Angeles.
and that is nise.
Weddings were often held in MacArthur Park at that time, and maybe they still are. So it was a wedding cake he saw, maybe. I think that makes the metaphor a little more explicable, though no less stupid.
RE#5 -- In the Under A Blood Red Sky concert video it *is* "No More!" as in no more war....
then there's the Beatles' "When I'm Six Feet-Four"
ahahahahaha
Jimi Hendrix - " 'Scuse me while I kiss the sky" or " 'Scuse me while I kiss this guy" In Mrs. Robinson, the line is "Jesus loves you more than you will know" but I know someone who swears that its "She's a sluzzy moron you will know"
Oh please help: "Blinded by the light....wrapped like a ????" someone I know swears it's "grab a duche and get a bone in the night" another swears it's "like a duce another runner in the night" *I* can't tell what it says...
"revved up like a deuce", or sometimes "cut loose like a deuce"
Where "deuce" sounds like "douche".
Bear in mind that Manfred Mann's version is *not* the original...
is deuce in this case the same as in "little deuce coupe"?
Perhaps the same as "deuce and a quarter"..
The song in question was "Blinded By The Light," a hit for Manfred Mann's Earth Band, composed by one Bruce Springsteen, alias "The Boss."
For the record, he *wrote* it and another song for MMEB. And it's "wracked up like a duece" - as in a 2 in a card deck
I remember hearing Robin Quivers on the Howard Stern Show once trying to figure out what 'samoli.. samoli..samoli..' meant in a song.. turns out it was The Police's 'So Lonely'
Okay, meg, since you know that, what the the NEXT part. That's the line in question. what comes AFTER duece?
Shoot, and I just heard this song last night, too. I've forgotten, now, what followed "deuce." However, I did notice "Chopsticks" in the middle of the instrumental section.
Here's an explanation that, if nothing else, makes sense for the data:
"Blinded by the Light" was written by a New Jersey musician named Bruce
Springsteen. Maybe you've heard of him. It was on his Greetings From Asbury
Park, N.J. album.
Bruce's lyrics were no paragon of clarity, but at least you could understand
the words: "Cut loose like a deuce another runner in the night." Some claim
the "deuce" being referred to is the 1932 Ford Coupe beloved of hotrodders
(cf. the Beach Boys' "Little Deuce Coupe"). Maybe, but when you're talking
about a song whose opening line goes on about madman drummers, bummers, and
Indians in the summer, I'm not making any definite claims.
The Manfred Mann's Earth Band ("Quinn the Eskimo") did a cover version of the
tune in 1976. It became a hit, no doubt because the band made the lyrics even
more opaque than they already were. They changed the line in question to
"wrapped up like a deuce."
What's it mean? I'm barely on speaking terms with my own subconscious. Don't
ask me to explain someone else's.
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a5_148.html
Springsteen was a lot more interesting to listen to when he wasn't all worried about every song having deep social meaning.
You know, I never did like the Springsteen version of that song....
I do. :)
i hate springsteen.
Oh, _that's_ what "little deuce coupe" means. Well, two mysteries with one stone, I guess.
I suspect that Springsteen wrote "deuce" because it rhymed with "loose".
little loose poops
Nah, not mysterious enough. But thanks for trying <g>
(I keep trying to figure out why the chorus of that one Madonna song keeps saying over and over, "do the white dude.")
Which song?
("Music.")
You have several choices: