In which I get the song all wrongJuly 21st, 2008 @ 7:01 am
Like most of you I use the interweb for many numbers of things. My list looks something like this (in no particular order):
- Blogging
- E-mail (oh how I love thee!)
- Stalking old boyfriends
- Shopping
- News
- And by “news” I mean “reading gossip”
- Song lyrics
That’s right, I’m constantly googling the lyrics for all my favorite songs.
Remember back when we had to buy CD’s (or better yet, cassette tapes)? I used to get extra excited when the CD included lyrics in the liner notes. I totally remember that Bon Jovi’s “New Jersey” had the lyrics included, but that very few of my Beatles albums did. (I chalked this up to The Beatles being all deep and wanting you to figure out the lyrics for yourself.)
I don’t know what it is about being me, but I have to know what a singer is singing about. The times when teenage Isabel didn’t have access to the liner notes (and long before the interweb was invented), I used to keep notebooks of the lyrics to my favorite songs. I would sit in my bedroom, starting and stopping my tape deck while I frantically wrote out the lyrics to my current fave song.
Some songs were easy to figure out the lyrics to. Some were harder. Especially the long ones. Dude, have you ever listened to Don McLean’s “American Pie”? It’s like a 6 minute song with all sorts of confusing lines like “And while Lennon read a book of Marx”, which totally didn’t make sense to my 14 year old self.
And let’s not even get started on Arlo Gunthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant”. That song is like 20 minutes long. (And yes, I totally have it all written down in some long lost notebook in my mom’s basement.)
(And we wonder why I didn’t date much in high school. I was busy sitting in my bedroom keeping notebooks of song lyrics.)
(Yeah, I guess we don’t wonder, do we?)
Sometimes it wasn’t until I’d hear one of my friends singing along that I’d realize I’d misheard the lyrics and had it written down all wrong. I’d have to listen and relisten to the song to try to figure out how I’d managed to hear it all wrong. Most of the time I couldn’t decipher the correct lyric and wasn’t sure how my friend, brother, or aunt could hear it differently then I did.
It’s been as I’ve gotten older and listened to some of my old music that I realize not only did I have the lyrics wrong, but I had the whole meaning of the song wrong.
While visiting my family in Utah a few weeks ago my dad commented on the song that’s my current ring tone. “Question” by the Old 97’s is, clearly, a song about a a guy proposing marriage to a lady. Clearly. But my dad was all, “I hate that song. It’s all about this guy trying to trick this girl isn’t having sex with him!” My mom and I both started to laugh and I began to assure my dad that wasn’t the case at all. Of course he wouldn’t listen to me.
The best one was when my friend said he realized the Bullet Boys song wasn’t really about a girl named Maginia, and was in fact a song called “Smooth Up In Ya”. As an 11 year old boy he just assumed the song was called “Smooth Maginia”, because really, “smooth up in ya” meant nothing to him (yet).
So tell me, what song lyric or song meaning did you totally have wrong and how did you finally figure it out?
(And also, who in the crap is the Bullet Boys? I had no idea who sang the song “Smooth Up In Ya”. Thank goodness for google.)
Back in the Day · I Rock
Amber
said,
July 21, 2008 at 3:33 pm
You know Aerosmith’s song, Dude Looks Like A Lady?
I totally thought they were singing, Treat Her Like A Lady. Until my boyfriend says, “wait, what are you singing?”
Ohhh dude looks like a lady.
Hmmm..
May
said,
July 21, 2008 at 3:40 pm
The song by George Michael, “I Want Your Socks”? ?? What is he even talking about? I know!
Christar
said,
July 21, 2008 at 5:28 pm
Yea, I completely did the same thing when I was younger. I hated (and still do) when artists don’t provide the lyrics in the cover book. It’s so aggravating. I’m always googling lyrics. And I hate when I get them completely wrong.
And there’s some artists that aren’t signed to a huge label and so their lyrics won’t be found with Google. You just have to figure them out best you can. There’s so many times I cannot figure out for the life of me a lyric, so I just sing what it sounds like, even if I know it’s not right. It sounds right when I sing along. (I do this a lot with Shaun’s band, Corner Pocket. You’d think I could just ask Dan [the basist who writes most of their lyrics] “Hey, what is this part of the song?”, but I don’t. I jut make up lyrics.)
Keri
said,
July 21, 2008 at 5:37 pm
I could fill up your entire comments section with my misheard lyrics.The list is endless.
Just 2 examples:
Bruce Springsteen “Brilliant Disguise” to keri’s its “Bridge in the sky”
Bette Davis eyes (no idea who even sings it)to keri its Bette Davis Decides
seriously, the list is endless.
motherofbun
said,
July 21, 2008 at 6:49 pm
YOU ROCK. And yes, used to have notebooks with song lyrics in i t too.
Do you still have your notebooks?
Kim
said,
July 21, 2008 at 7:57 pm
I think it’s “Lenin read a book of Marx”
My girlfriend, who was IN A BAND, used to sing Pearl Jam’s Can’t Find a Better Man as “Can’t find the buttermilk.” Which, you know, it is Eddie Vedder, so it could make sense. Her other great mistake was Adam Sandler’s Piece of Sh*t Car as “Piece of Chiffon.”
Maria
said,
July 21, 2008 at 7:58 pm
In La Bamba, the song says “soy capitan”, but I always heard “so I copied on” and thought that it had something to do with cheating or plagiarism. I am strange.
Britt
said,
July 21, 2008 at 8:04 pm
I’m obsessed with song lyrics, too. To properly jam to one’s tunes, one must make sure one knows the right words or one will be very embarrassed when corrected. Case in point: when Scotty got home from his mission he would sing, “Elder to Elder” instead of “Everything, everything,” whilst jamming to Jimmy Eat World. One day I finally turned to him and said, “What the hell are you saying?”
Apparently he left his mind at the mission home in South Carolina. Elder to Elder? That doesn’t even make sense!!!
Scotty has continued to get song lyrics wrong throughout the years. That is why I thrive on knowing the correct words - so I can win all arguments on the topic.
marci
said,
July 21, 2008 at 8:19 pm
I had forgotten about your lyrics notebooks!!!
My sister about died when I started singing “don’t be fooled by the rocks that I got, I’m just JIGGY FROM THE POP”. I never questioned why I had no idea what that meant, I just thought it was some cool gang thing that J-lo knew about and that I being a white girl from Utah wouldn’t understand. Oh J-lo with her deep lyrics.
And really, I don’t listen to J-lo. I promise!
Audrey
said,
July 21, 2008 at 10:18 pm
I always got excited about lyrics being printed in the liner notes too! That was one of the first things I looked for when opening a new cd. And you can bet I read along while the song played and got all bent out of shape if there was a discrepancy between the printed lyrics and the recording. I guess I’ve always been a proofreader at heart!
You know that song that goes “Can you take me higher / to a place with golden streets”? Yeah, I always thought it was “Can you take me higher / to a place where poets dream.” And I secretly like my version way better.
liz
said,
July 21, 2008 at 11:32 pm
my sister-in-law confessed to me that she always thought “forever in blue jeans” by neil diamond was actually “reverend in blue jeans” which i think is hilarious, because wouldn’t we all want a reverend who wears blue jeans? especially if they have sequins on them, as i know neil diamond’s reverend’s totally wouid.
Jenn Bo
said,
July 22, 2008 at 12:19 am
Duran Duran “Wild Boys” - I remember singing along to this radio version (and making up a dance routine) using the words “one voice”. In defense of my dance routine, I was 12.
Great White “Once Bitten, Twice Shy” - a college roommate told me this sounded like “want a spit & dry shine, babe” Now, that’s what I hear - I have to consciously think once-bitten-twice-shy-babe or I’ll start singing “want-a-spit-and…”
Dugi.
said,
July 22, 2008 at 1:08 pm
At 12yrs of age I sang Marvin Gaye’s ’sexual healing’ out loud as ’sexual feeling’….much to the embarrassment of everyone around me. Seriously it sounded like ‘feeling’…
meritt
said,
July 22, 2008 at 1:46 pm
While most normal teens were copying down the lyrics to their favorite songs in English I was always a little weird I guess. I was painstakingly listening to records (albums!?) of MENUDO (*be still my little 13 and 14 year old heart) and moving the needle back again and again and again to copy the lyrics down that they were saying in Spanish! LOL.
I had no idea what I was singing, but dude, I wrote down the lyrics to their songs and still know them to this day. Si Tu No Esta!
(I did this with Connie Francis’s Funiculi Funicula lyrics too… )
ie
said,
July 22, 2008 at 3:39 pm
My favorite story about mis-heard lyrics:
My employee at the time had a four year old daughter, and one day, while driving her to daycare, looks in the rearview mirror to see her daughter singing to “Dude Looks Like a Lady”. The daughter’s version: “Do the F***ing Lady”.
That was the day my employee changed her car radio to the Disney channel…
liz
said,
July 22, 2008 at 10:45 pm
since i rarely buy cds any more, i feel a deep chasm left where the liner notes used to be. back in the day, i’d often spend hours pouring over the liner notes before i even listened to the record (yes, i still call them records. i’m old skool, yo).
when i was a tormented, hormonal middle-school girl, i used to play the tape, press pause, and write down all the lyrics to REO Speedwagon and Air Supply songs. i’ll even cop to calling a certain boy in my 6th grade class and blasting “can’t fight this feeling” through the telephone when he picked up. THANK GOD THERE WAS NO CALLER ID BACK THEN!
as for missing the lyrics, i change them on purpose now… beck’s “two turn tables and microwave” is, for me, “a two ton hamster in a microwave.” the pixies “this monkey’s gone to heaven” is, again for me, “this monkey’s wearing headphones.”
Lindsay
said,
July 23, 2008 at 2:13 am
In high school, some people I knew performed Beck’s song “Loser” at the talent show. The guy proceeded to sing “sooooo, open the door” complete with a big door prop that they opened every time they got to the chorus. It was even more amusing because half the people in the group were in my Spanish class and SO should have known that Beck was saying, “soy un perdedor”. I mean, seriously! Too funny.
Lindsay
said,
July 23, 2008 at 2:17 am
Ack! And I just read what Liz wrote about blasting songs through the phone at boys you liked. I DID THAT TOO (although I did it in 7th or maybe even 8th grade, I wasn’t advanced enough to come up with the “brilliant” plan yet in 6th grade - hehe)!! And I completely have no idea why. Can’t you just picture picking up the phone, hearing a song instead of a voice, and thinking, “man, I really like Lindsay (or whomever)”. Heh!
gorillabuns
said,
July 23, 2008 at 2:57 pm
Sadly, I have a Bullet Boys cassette tape shoved in my closet somewhere.
Fraulein N
said,
July 24, 2008 at 7:05 pm
Hee, I used to stop and start my tapes to figure out the lyrics too! Thank goodness for the Internet, ’cause you know otherwise I’d still be holed up somewhere with my iPod and a notebook (and a 4-color pen, for old times’ sake)!
michelle de seattle
said,
August 26, 2008 at 7:21 pm
I just figured out that that one song is not called “Don’t fear the reefer”.