There is a famous one here in Germany that everyone gets wrong.
The original line being sung: “Es tobt der Hass da vor meinem Fenster”, meaning “Hatred is raging in front of my window”.
What everyone hears: “Es tobt der Hamster vor meinem Fenster”, meaning “The hamster is raging in front of my window”.
Not mine but one day my buddy’s 6 year old asked “what’s parking tips?” My buddy being a veteran dad gives him some generic parking advice, doesn’t think much of it until later when he hears his kid singing along to the shaboozy song but instead of “everyone at the bar getting tipsy” he’s sing about how everyone getting parking tips.
Not originally me but I sure hear it now, in Empire State of mind Alicia keys says “concrete jungle where dreams are made of” which is a pretty shit bar in an otherwise good song. A popular way to mishear it is “concrete jungle wet dream tomato”, which makes only slightly less sense
Get lucky by daft punk, when the robot voices say ‘we’re up all night to get lucky’ I can’t unhear ‘we’ll rub up a mexican monkey’.
I’m sorry for ruining this song for you.
You will not be able to unhear it. I’m so sorry. To make it up to you on the youtube version that is just the audio with the picture of the dudes in front of the sun there is an easter egg for a few seconds when they start saying we’ll rub a mexican.
What prompted the post: I feel silly even saying it, but there was a rap song playing at my gym with female vocals in the chorus singing what sounded like “it’s the batteries of your mom”, which I’m certain are not the correct lyrics.
As much as I hoped for someone to be able to identify the song from my bungled lyrics, nope, that’s not the one. The song I heard was a more serious sounding rap song.
From Rock and Roll All Nite by Kiss:
I want to rock and roll all niiiite, and part of ev-er-y day!
My childhood best friend absolutely loved this song and sang it out loud ALL the time with these incorrect lyrics, I was totally convinced and would sing along with him. My mom thought it was HILARIOUS and so she never told us lol 😆
Oh man, reminds me of kissthisguy.com. Back when the internet was still run by humans.
Tell you one I recently realized: Chattanooga Choo Choo. I don’t know who the “original” artist of that one was, it’s been a country-western staple for awhile. Came back into my attention recently because I was rewatching Hyce & KaN’s Let’s Podcast of Railroads Online, and one of several backing tracks is an instrumental version, so the song got stuck in my head. Singing it while doing dishes, I got to a lyric I never understood, and looked it up.
The lyric I heard:
There’s gonna be a certain party at the station
Satin and lace, a hustacauphanie face
I…didn’t know what “hustacauphanie” meant. My brain did that thing where I assume a word exists I’m not familiar with. Like, you know how sometimes women’s skin is compared to alabaster? Hustacauphanie might have been dead people talk for some luxurious or exotic material or…something. So I looked it up. The actual lyric is:
There’s gonna be a certain party at the station,
Satin and lace, I used to call ‘funny face’
The songwriter managed to pack the entire second act of It’s A Wonderful Life into half a lyric. We don’t have compression algorithms that good anymore.
My mother thought the lyrics to Roberta Flack’s version of Killing Me Softly With His Song was “Strumming my face with his fingers” (not strumming my pain).
Oh I was maybe 22, 23, loudly singing along with Elton John as he belted out “love I feel it in my haaaands, I can tell by the things I would do with another maaaan!” when I realized that probably was not something someone would sing back then. It literally had never occurred to me that he could be singing anything else, and it still sounds like that to me.
Love lies bleeding is the NAME of the song, but I’d never heard it announced or seen it.
Love lies bleeding in my hands
Oh it kills me to think about you with another man
So my best friend heard the line or song, not sure, “Making Whoopie” as a kid. He thought the lyric was “they can whoop me” and thought it was an old slave song. I still shit myself laughing at the entire thing.
In Radiohead’s Sit Down. Stand Up, at the end, Thom repeats “The raindrops”, but I kept hearing “Power Rangers”. I searched for it and found a lot of people in my situation, I was amazed at humans.
Also, I knew I was forgetting the best one. I sang this with my whole heart and soul from the time it came out ~1997 until somebody corrected me ~2020 pandemic:
“I believe in the sand beneath my toes
The beach gives a feelin’, an earthy feelin’
I believe in the faith that grows”
….
“And the four eyed goats can make me cry” right?
Wrong! It turns out it’s “And the four right chords can make me cry”
When listening to a Michael Patrick Kelly song outside of a running car for the first time, it turned out it wasn’t a nerdy song about “Beautiful maths”, but just another boring love song called “Beautiful madness":-)
For some reason when I was a kid, I thought the song “Jessie’s Girl” by Rick Springfield said "You know I wish that I had Tootsie Rolls" instead of "You know I wish that I had Jessie’s Girl".
I still don’t know why i thought he was singing about tootsie rolls, but that’s how I used to sing along to it
A friend thought “Pretty Vacant” by the Sex Pistols was “Streaky Bacon”. Another thought “Battery” by Metallica was “Bakery” (pronounced BAK-A-RAY).
In keeping with the food theme I thought the lyric “fingernails, cigarettes; a lousy dinner” in the Replacements ‘I Will Dare’ was “bacon and cigarettes” for longer than I care to admit.
Oh, adjacent: when I was a child I saw Grease and thought ‘Greased Lightning’ was the rippingest song around. I had a little comic book that was stills from the film and word bubbles overlaid with the dialogue and song lyrics. My mother caught 4yo me singing the word shit and tuned me up. I had no idea what I had done wrong.
Unable to sing my favourite song because of one pesky word i decided to make up a placefiller word that would solve my problem. The nonsense word I invented ? CLIT.
BingPowClunk
Whatever they’re saying in that justice song. Contagious beat but it sounds like they’re singing about… peepee dance? youre always flapping your ??????? at me? I have NO IDEA what theyre saying
Those letters are in d.a.n.c.e. are so random. I’ve never invested any time into figuring any of it out. I guess the lyrics to dvno never jumped out at me. I just gave it a listen and yep. Hard to understand. I usually just hear justice in whatever electronic music feed. I should check out an album
In the song “Better Dig Two” by The Band Perry, the chorus has the line “I’m gonna tell the gravedigger that he better dig two”. There was a good like year or so where I heard it replacing the d in gravedigger with an n…..
Also in the song “High Horse” by Kacey Musgraves I thought it was just a really long way of saying “whores” I stead of “high horse”.
In Lambada by Kaoma there is a part where every dutch person hears “what is that little zebra dog for?” And everyone sings along for that sentence when the music is playing.
In dutch it goes: lalalalala waar is toch dat zebrahondje voor.
so there is this tull song where I thought it was “the smart guys aren’t running the whole damn tribe” and I actually saw someone online hear it with the exact same wording. The actual line is. “the smart guys aren’t running their warm and dry”
Not exactly misheard but what I came up with and which became canon to my household despite not really sounding alike:
Tape Five’s ‘Taxi to Bombay’ became ‘Text me Your Butthole.’ (And please do not.)
Edit: Just remembered an actual misheard one. I am a bit hard of hearing, and the They Might Be Giants song Subliminal I heard as Submersible. Considering that the lyric is ‘Subliminal… in an unnoticeable way,’ my interpretation was pretty damned funny.
PieFed.World
There is a famous one here in Germany that everyone gets wrong.
The original line being sung: “Es tobt der Hass da vor meinem Fenster”, meaning “Hatred is raging in front of my window”.
What everyone hears: “Es tobt der Hamster vor meinem Fenster”, meaning “The hamster is raging in front of my window”.
Wrapped up like a douche
Actual lyrics
I mean the actual lyric makes me think about someone straining on the toilet.
Bruce Springsteen is probably the hardest english language singer to understand in history. At least in his more energetic songs.
I always heard it as “ran off like a douche” which made way more sense
12 year old me is at the dentist in the middle of getting a cavity filled when Benny and the Jets comes on.
I’m trying not to laugh while the radio keeps saying “She’s got electric boobs!”
This was mine too, lol
There’s a bathroom on the right. - why would they sing this?
There’s a bad moon out tonight - oh, that makes sense -
Hold me closer, Tony Danza.
I always heard… Hold me closer, I’m tired of dancin’.
I kissed a girl and I liked it
The taste of her merry chopsticks.
Excuse me, while I kiss this guy! 😘
wicked guitar fill
Not mine but one day my buddy’s 6 year old asked “what’s parking tips?” My buddy being a veteran dad gives him some generic parking advice, doesn’t think much of it until later when he hears his kid singing along to the shaboozy song but instead of “everyone at the bar getting tipsy” he’s sing about how everyone getting parking tips.
“Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree”
It always sounds like the lady wants some “fuckin’ pie.”
Been singing that for years. My wife can’t unhear it.
In Jingle Bell Rock, I always hear “giddy up, jingle whores, pick up your feet!”
Not originally me but I sure hear it now, in Empire State of mind Alicia keys says “concrete jungle where dreams are made of” which is a pretty shit bar in an otherwise good song. A popular way to mishear it is “concrete jungle wet dream tomato”, which makes only slightly less sense
I thought it was “I’ve become a wet dream tomato, there’s nothing you can do.”
Get lucky by daft punk, when the robot voices say ‘we’re up all night to get lucky’ I can’t unhear ‘we’ll rub up a mexican monkey’.
I’m sorry for ruining this song for you.
*Like the Legend of The Penis*
I had to go and listen to this song because of how outrageous I thought this interpretation was… But it’s real!!!!!
You will not be able to unhear it. I’m so sorry. To make it up to you on the youtube version that is just the audio with the picture of the dudes in front of the sun there is an easter egg for a few seconds when they start saying we’ll rub a mexican.
I 100% genuinely thought “Lose yourself to dance” was “You just suck the dicks” when I first heard it on the radio.
I was wondering who it was by and why it wasn’t censored being played at lunchtime.
HAMSTER
What prompted the post: I feel silly even saying it, but there was a rap song playing at my gym with female vocals in the chorus singing what sounded like “it’s the batteries of your mom”, which I’m certain are not the correct lyrics.
better off alone?
As much as I hoped for someone to be able to identify the song from my bungled lyrics, nope, that’s not the one. The song I heard was a more serious sounding rap song.
In Belle and Sebastian’s “Me and the Major’ my brain will simply not hear anything except
“Me and the midget don’t see eye to eye”
Which I find funny on a couple of different levels.
ha!
From Rock and Roll All Nite by Kiss: I want to rock and roll all niiiite, and part of ev-er-y day!
My childhood best friend absolutely loved this song and sang it out loud ALL the time with these incorrect lyrics, I was totally convinced and would sing along with him. My mom thought it was HILARIOUS and so she never told us lol 😆
(The correct lyrics are and party ev-er-y day)
Oh man, reminds me of kissthisguy.com. Back when the internet was still run by humans.
Tell you one I recently realized: Chattanooga Choo Choo. I don’t know who the “original” artist of that one was, it’s been a country-western staple for awhile. Came back into my attention recently because I was rewatching Hyce & KaN’s Let’s Podcast of Railroads Online, and one of several backing tracks is an instrumental version, so the song got stuck in my head. Singing it while doing dishes, I got to a lyric I never understood, and looked it up.
The lyric I heard:
I…didn’t know what “hustacauphanie” meant. My brain did that thing where I assume a word exists I’m not familiar with. Like, you know how sometimes women’s skin is compared to alabaster? Hustacauphanie might have been dead people talk for some luxurious or exotic material or…something. So I looked it up. The actual lyric is:
The songwriter managed to pack the entire second act of It’s A Wonderful Life into half a lyric. We don’t have compression algorithms that good anymore.
Deleted by moderator
Have you seen the meme video of this song?)
Ozzy Osborne is famously known for mishearing the lyrics to Jimmy Hendrix’ Purple Haze as “excuse me while I kiss this guy”.
A song by Fear factory called Linchpin the intro the singer goes “can’t take me apart!” Sounds like “cat, give me your paw!!”
No toucan, take! No toucan, take!
Great, now the song is gonna sound even funnier in my head. Gotta read this to my 5 yr old. He loves the misheard version.
When listening to Bad Moon Rising, instead of “there’s a bad moon on the rise” I hear “there’s the bathroom on the right”
Apparently when I was two or three years old, I insisted the lyric was “If you’re gonna play in Texas, you gotta have a parallelogram.”
My mother thought the lyrics to Roberta Flack’s version of Killing Me Softly With His Song was “Strumming my face with his fingers” (not strumming my pain).
Sex Pistols:
“God save the Queen, The fascist regime, Who made you a moron, And touched your wife’s bum!”
Oh I was maybe 22, 23, loudly singing along with Elton John as he belted out “love I feel it in my haaaands, I can tell by the things I would do with another maaaan!” when I realized that probably was not something someone would sing back then. It literally had never occurred to me that he could be singing anything else, and it still sounds like that to me.
Love lies bleeding is the NAME of the song, but I’d never heard it announced or seen it.
Love lies bleeding in my hands
Oh it kills me to think about you with another man
Easily the best Elton John track
Also, same album
Brian Adams - Summer of ’69
Actual lyrics to start the song: I got my first real six-string, bought it at the five and dime
What I always hear, sung so proudly and nostalgically: I got my first real sex dream down at the five and dime
Doja Cat - Woman
“Roomba, let me be your Roomba. Roomba Roomba Roomba.”
It’s supposedly woman, but even listening very closely it’s only very loosely “Wom man” and sounds like “Rumah” or “Wumah.”
https://youtu.be/g7X9X6TlrUo?t=18
This is called a “Mondegreen,” and there are some examples here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondegreen
I’m actually freaked out that every single example listed there was cited by a comment here but I’ve never expereicned any of those mondegreens
Oh my fucking god.
So my best friend heard the line or song, not sure, “Making Whoopie” as a kid. He thought the lyric was “they can whoop me” and thought it was an old slave song. I still shit myself laughing at the entire thing.
The hymn Lead on Oh King Eternal sounded like Lead on oh kinky turtle to a very young me.
In Radiohead’s Sit Down. Stand Up, at the end, Thom repeats “The raindrops”, but I kept hearing “Power Rangers”. I searched for it and found a lot of people in my situation, I was amazed at humans.
“I just called, to ask, I looove youuuu”
It made no sense to me for so long and idk why I always heard that
Linkin Park’s When They Come for Me:
Also, I knew I was forgetting the best one. I sang this with my whole heart and soul from the time it came out ~1997 until somebody corrected me ~2020 pandemic:
“I believe in the sand beneath my toes The beach gives a feelin’, an earthy feelin’ I believe in the faith that grows” ….
“And the four eyed goats can make me cry” right?
Wrong! It turns out it’s “And the four right chords can make me cry”
The only song about crystal meth to make it into a Disney film.
Esa son Reebok o son Nike
I used to hear “Honest, Lucille” instead of “Our lips are sealed” from The Go Gos.
When listening to a Michael Patrick Kelly song outside of a running car for the first time, it turned out it wasn’t a nerdy song about “Beautiful maths”, but just another boring love song called “Beautiful madness":-)
“Bald-Headed Woman” instead of “More than a Woman.”
When I was a kid listening to the oldies station, I heard “Little blue scoop” instead of deuce coupe.
Later my mom actually called in and requested it that way. I think they played the request on air.
For some reason when I was a kid, I thought the song “Jessie’s Girl” by Rick Springfield said "You know I wish that I had Tootsie Rolls" instead of "You know I wish that I had Jessie’s Girl".
I still don’t know why i thought he was singing about tootsie rolls, but that’s how I used to sing along to it
Michael wants to party all the time - with Eddie Murphy. Thought it was his ode to trans dating.
Sex and buy lunch! Sex and buy lunch. Sex and buy lunch! Sex. And. Buy lunch.
Also,
We’re the redneck kings of funk!
It’s not fair to remind meh. Of the cross-eyed bear that you gave to meh! You. You. You. Oughtta know!
I can only hear “sex in Berlint”. Looks like they’re really into spy x family.
I always heard, “We’re the renegades who fuck! Fuck!”
A friend thought “Pretty Vacant” by the Sex Pistols was “Streaky Bacon”. Another thought “Battery” by Metallica was “Bakery” (pronounced BAK-A-RAY). In keeping with the food theme I thought the lyric “fingernails, cigarettes; a lousy dinner” in the Replacements ‘I Will Dare’ was “bacon and cigarettes” for longer than I care to admit.
Oh, adjacent: when I was a child I saw Grease and thought ‘Greased Lightning’ was the rippingest song around. I had a little comic book that was stills from the film and word bubbles overlaid with the dialogue and song lyrics. My mother caught 4yo me singing the word shit and tuned me up. I had no idea what I had done wrong. Unable to sing my favourite song because of one pesky word i decided to make up a placefiller word that would solve my problem. The nonsense word I invented ? CLIT. BingPowClunk
My SIL thought Battery was backdoor-raid. I still can’t unhear it
I forever thought the chorus of Billy Squire’s song The Stoke was “Slow dance jug band.”
That’s how I sang it when I was a kid and I simply never reevaluated it as I grew up.
“What’s up with this jet pussy”
the song is Jealousy by Slum Village
Whatever they’re saying in that justice song. Contagious beat but it sounds like they’re singing about… peepee dance? youre always flapping your ??????? at me? I have NO IDEA what theyre saying
Do you know which album it’s off of? Now I really want to know what song you’re on about haha
I think it’s called d.a.n.c.e. Basically the big hit Edit. I just listened to it. I am hearing “poo poo dance doo doo dance” so confusing
Oh, interesting. I find that to be one of their more intelligible ones. Though I still don’t know what a p-y-t or b-y-t is
Took me ages to work out what’s being said in DVNO
Pretty Young Thing, at least as Michael Jackson told us.
Those letters are in d.a.n.c.e. are so random. I’ve never invested any time into figuring any of it out. I guess the lyrics to dvno never jumped out at me. I just gave it a listen and yep. Hard to understand. I usually just hear justice in whatever electronic music feed. I should check out an album
“Once We’re Dead” by Mariah Carrey
(One Sweet Day)
😛
In the song “Better Dig Two” by The Band Perry, the chorus has the line “I’m gonna tell the gravedigger that he better dig two”. There was a good like year or so where I heard it replacing the d in gravedigger with an n…..
Also in the song “High Horse” by Kacey Musgraves I thought it was just a really long way of saying “whores” I stead of “high horse”.
AFI, Summer Shudder.
The actual lyrics are “Under the summer rain” and somehow I kept hearing “Priest on a lake” the first several times I heard it.
In Lambada by Kaoma there is a part where every dutch person hears “what is that little zebra dog for?” And everyone sings along for that sentence when the music is playing.
In dutch it goes: lalalalala waar is toch dat zebrahondje voor.
Haha, cute.
Now that you mentioned Dutch, it reminded me of when I first heard doooonkey showww before it clicked that this was a Dutch song.
APT APT
(I got the upper tits, I got the upper tits)
From Pour Some Sugar On Me
From I’ll Be There For You by Bon Jovi
(I pray to God you’ll give me one more chance, girl)
Call me maybe: Before you came into my life, I’m mister sofa.
The translation is: The safe shrimp no one can be.
so there is this tull song where I thought it was “the smart guys aren’t running the whole damn tribe” and I actually saw someone online hear it with the exact same wording. The actual line is. “the smart guys aren’t running their warm and dry”
Not exactly misheard but what I came up with and which became canon to my household despite not really sounding alike:
Tape Five’s ‘Taxi to Bombay’ became ‘Text me Your Butthole.’ (And please do not.)
Edit: Just remembered an actual misheard one. I am a bit hard of hearing, and the They Might Be Giants song Subliminal I heard as Submersible. Considering that the lyric is ‘Subliminal… in an unnoticeable way,’ my interpretation was pretty damned funny.
Smokey River Walters, the fire engine guy is the best one I’ve ever heard someone say.
Correct lyric is Smoke on the water, fire in the sky.
Not exactly “misheard”, but the lyrics to the Minecraft parody of “Dynamite” stuck more strongly in my head than the original.