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It's Not Just Southern; Everybody Does it: Misheard Song Lyrics, Malapropisms, and Mondegreens

Recently I decided to do a web search on Elton John's "Tiny Dancer," and  I ran across this book: Was Elton John's Tiny Dance Really Elton's Little John?: Music's Most Enduring Mysteries, Myths, and Rumors Revealed by Gavin Edwards (a contributing editor of Rolling Stone). Edwards also wrote 'Scuze me While I Kiss this Guy: and other Misheard Lyrics.(i.e., Jimi Hendrix's  "Purple Haze"-- "excuse me while I kiss the sky").

From that page, I followed the yellow brick road to the book Hold me Closer, Tony Danza--the misheard Elton John/Bernie Taupin line immortalized by Phoebe on Friends—by Charles Grosvenor who is also the author of Hit Me With Your Pet Shark. At that point, I was struck by the sheer number of song lyrics that we misapprehend. How many lyrics had I mutilated thinking I heard the line correctly? And why do we sing the loudest when we are dead wrong? As a blogger observed "We think no one else knows the words either, but the truth is, even if they do not know the precise words, they know our rendition is wrong."

One infamous example comes from a line in Bruce Springsteen's "Blinded by the  Light"  popularized by Manfred Mann's Earth Band as "revved up like a deuce another runner in the night."  I sang various versions of the line ranging from "wrapped up like a duchess (you have to slur the word duchess) it was the middle of the night" or "wrapped up like a dude" or "wrapped up like she do" (now that's southern for you). In the archive of misheard lyrics on KissThisGuy.com, I found seven other versions of the line plus dozens of other misheard song lyrics .

No doubt the humor of the misspoken word has been around since language first evolved. We get the word malapropism from the mangling of the English language by Mrs. Malaprop, a comic character in Richard Sheridan's play  The Rivals  (1775):  "He is the very pineapple [pinacle] of politeness." (Mrs. Malaprop). A malapropism is not the same as an eggcorn, which is a similar substitution in which the new phrase makes sense on some level—like Old Timer’s disease for Alzheimers—or a spoonerism, an error in speech or deliberate play on words in which corresponding consonants, vowels, or morphemes are switched. A spoonerism is usually the result of a slip of the tongue.

To complicate matters further, there is actually a word for the phenomenon of mishearing or misinterpreting a well known or standardized phrase, as in music lyrics. It's called a mondegreen. A mondegreen is a kind of aural malapropism. Kissthisguy.com, named after the frequently misheard Jimi Hendrix line, is dedicated to the cataloging of mondegreens.

Running neck and neck with “Blinded by the Light” for continual misinterpretation may be the line from "The Joker" (Steve Miller Band) "because I speak of the pompitous of love." Yes, that is indeed the way Miller wrote the line, but most of us hear everything from "properties" to "prophetess. ” However, apparently Steve Miller himself misheard the word. Wikipedia says Miller borrowed the lyric from an old R&B song “The Letter” (1954) performed by a group called The Medallions and written by front-man Vernon Green. Apparently “pompitous” (or pompatus) should really be “puppetutes,” a term Green, who was 14 and living on the streets at the time, invented to describe the secret paper-doll fantasy figure [thus puppet] of his dreams who would be his everything and bear his children. Obviously, we cannot be blamed for this mondegreen.

Regardless,  I have copious examples from my own experience.  When my sister was getting divorced from her children's father, she thought the line from James Taylor's "Her Town Too" ("he gets the boys in the band") was "she gets the house and the garden, he gets the boys and the van." Makes perfect sense, doesn't it?

My daughter, at the age of about 7, would happily sing "I'm a Limestone Cowboy." I didn't have the heart to tell her it was "rhinestone cowboy." That would have meant nothing to her. After all, we lived in Limestone County. My daughter and I always sang with great enthusiasm if not always correctly. As Algernon declares in Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest when he feels his piano playing skills are being questioned: " I don't play accurately--anyone can play accurately--I play with wonderful expression." What LC and I lacked in accuracy, we more than made up for in expression.

My friend Suzanne was at a John Prine concert when someone requested "the whole enchilada." Prine responded, "I don't think I know that one." The song the guy wanted to hear was "That's the Way that the World Goes 'Round." which includes the often misheard line "It’s half an inch of water and you think you're gonna drown." An entire page of the John Prine Shrine web site is devoted to misheard Prine lyrics.

After seeing the Broadway play The Lion King, my longtime friend Carol went around singing "It's a cool avocado." It took me a week to figure out she was singing her misheard version of "Hakuma matada” (Elton John and Tim Rice).

I hesitate to mention the line from Credence Clearwater's "Bad Moon Rising"-- "There's a bathroom on the rise" or "There's a bathroom on the right." I swear I am not making this stuff up.

I used to intone a mangled version of Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here" which included, among other mondegreens such as "blue skies from rain," an unintelligible rendering of "we're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl." I am thankful that version has vanished from my memory. I must also confess that at one time in my life I did not know The Swampers from Adam's House Cat (pun intended) and sang the line from Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama" as "Now Muscle Shoals has got the swamp rat."

I should stop while I'm ahead (or perhaps behind), but I have two final observations. The first is a question. How did Muscle Shoals get misnamed? The founding fathers obviously meant to call it Mussel Shoals because mussels were harvested in that area for many, many years. And then there is the line I always thought was a mondegreen but isn't. Joni Mitchell really does say "I want to shampoo you." I kid you not.

I would love to hear about your favorite misheard song lyric. Comments are welcome. 
 

 ---Penne J. Laubenthal

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