Tuesday, May 04, 2010

Doctors, monkeys, and werewolves.

I could probably do a full month's worth of these, but for now, just three short ones. (because that's all I can remember/think of right now)

When it comes to songs, I'm full of ...idiosyncrasies (or maybe audiosyncrasies. Heh.).
What I mean by that is that I will continue to sing things as I originally heard them, even if the lyrics are incorrect. Or, as is the case with the last two examples I'll give in a moment, I know the correct words, but have changed them to be more jokey/weird, and even though I don't *hear* them that way, I always change it.

Hopefully when I get to the examples, it'll make more sense.

The first is (most likely) a mondegreen, and I really have no idea what's truly being said. I could google up the lyrics, of course, but I almost prefer not to really know.
It's from Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust", and the lyric is at the 2:04 mark. I swear that Freddie Mercury is saying either, "I'm a doctor!" or "I'm adopted!" Neither really makes a lot of sense, but that's how I've sung it for years.

The next is from the Beatles, and it's from "Get Back". (I may have mentioned this one in my blog before. But since I can't freaking search...[/irritated])
The beginning line is, "Jojo was a man who thought he was a loner", but I ALWAYS sing it as, "Jojo was a man who thought he was a monkey."
Yeah, I know. "loner" sounds NOTHING like "monkey", but, dude. All songs are better when you add monkeys.

And lastly, is "Head Over Feet" by Alanis Morissette. At the end, when she sings, "I am aware now. I am aware now." [2:58 - 3:04] I simply can not resist changing it to the hysterical, "I am a were-wolf. I am a were-wolf."

Good times. If I remember any others (and there are plenty of them), I'll make sure I update ya'll. And if you have any of your own you want to share, the comment box is open.

9 comments:

Amy said...

The only one coming to mind right now is the Johnny Cash cover of "Hurt". "My sweetest friend" becomes "my Swedish friend" and a terribly depressing song becomes inappropriately laugh-a-minute.

Anonymous said...

I think we have lots of those. One that comes to mind is, the Ramones' "Beat on the Brat" which, when it comes on the radio, I change in order to annoy Mary-Jane to, "Beat on the cat/Beat on the cat/Beat on the cat with a baseball bat/Oh yeah, oh yeah!"

Never gets old.

Then there's lyrics, like your Queen example, that you never do figure out. Like near the end of Pavement's "Cut Your Hair", is he singing "Career/career" or "Korea/Korea". Neither one makes much sense. I've decided that he starts out singing "career" and switches to "Korea". This is almost certainly wrong, but it amuses me.

Then there are some that remain a mystery for years, and suddenly one day you get it. After many years of hearing the song, one day I finally realized (w/o looking up the lyric, which we can all agree is cheating) that in "Walking in Memphis" he's singing "Walking with my feet ten feet off of Beale". That last word stumped me for years.

-Kirk

allison said...

This will date me as ancient, but I always heard the chorus of the song "Precious and Few" as "Precious and few are the moments sweet Sue can share". I could never understand why my friend Leanna considered it hers and her boyfriend's "song" I mean, her name wasn't Sue!


*actual lyric: sweet Sue = we two

Amy said...

"Walking with my feet ten feet off of Beale"

Life: just altered.

P@ said...

You guys are killing me.

A few more:

Stevie Nicks', "Edge of Seventeen" gives us "just like the white wiener" (real lyric = "just like the white winged dove")

Nine Inch Nails', "Perfect Drug" - I KNOW he's saying "drug", but I swear, half the instances I hear "bug". And even "my blood wants to say hello to you" becomes "my bug wants to say hello to you". That's just a very insect-infected tune, I guess.

Annika said...

I hear so many mondegreens that it's a miracle I ever hear the correct lyrics.

Anonymous said...

Here's one more. When Aerosmith's "Walk This Way" was a new song (and not the RunDMC reboot; remember that I'm very old) I swear it sounded like Steve Tyler was wailing "Hog Display! Hog Display!"

Even at age 12, I knew that had to be wrong.

-Kirk

P@ said...

LMAO. That's awesome, Kirk.

Since I'm here, one more that I remembered: Korn's "Freak on a Leash" ...I don't know the real lyrics (and again, too lazy to google them) but the chorus is "something takes a part of me, you and I were meant to be, Archie Bunker meadalay, something takes a part of me"
I don't know what "meadalay" is, exactly, or why Archie Bunker is doing it, but then, Korn isn't known for making sense.

Amy said...

So, you know in Green Day's "Basket Case" there are the lines:

I went to a whore
He said my life's a bore
So quit my whining 'cause it's bringing her down


I've always loved the implication that he's visiting a drag queen prostitute for life advice. Recently though, it occurred to me that he could be singing "Who said my life's a bore." It's sort of ambiguous and, I guess, would make more sense grammatically. I was traumatized by this thought!

But apparently the whole internet thinks I was right all along. Either that, or the whole internet also prefers the drag queen prostitute idea.