This post contains a major procrastination laughter alert.
After a really tough week (my healing frequency device blew up and I had a dental emergency the day before my dentist went on holiday, all in the midst of a sweltering heatwave, to say nothing of the shitshow going on out there that is hitting undreamt of levels of insanity)… after all this drama I finally logged into my holistic vision therapy class and sat and cried.
Later I clicked on one of those Daily Mix playlists that Spotify makes ‘just for you’.
The bot clearly knew I needed cheering up. The first song it dished up was Bad Moon Rising by Creedence Clearwater Revival. I sang along:
‘Don’t go around tonight,
It’s bound to take your life.
There’s a bathroom on the right.’
And then I remembered the fabulous archive of thousands of misheard song lyrics: KissThisGuy.com, immortalising a mangled line from Jimi Hendrix’s Purple Haze: ‘Excuse me while I kiss the sky.’
There’s a word for these creative mishearings: mondegreens. It was originally coined by author Sylvia Wright who explained in an essay "The Death of Lady Mondegreen" (published in Harper's Magazine in November 1954) how as a child, she heard the lyrics of The Bonnie Earl o' Moray (a Scottish ballad) as:
Ye highlands and ye lowlands
Oh where hae you been?
Thou hae slain the Earl o' Moray
And Lady Mondegreen.
Wright found out many years later that the actual lyrics were: ‘and laid him on the green.’ But Lady Mondegreen was, deservedly, here to stay.
Anyway, KissThisGuy.com is a source of great hilarity and also comfort. It’s a relief to know I’m not the only twit to be bamboozled by Toto’s Africa.
Was it I miss the rains or I bless the rains?
Pretty close. But human creativity knows no limits.
KissThisGuy.com documents:
I missed the train out of Africa
Adjust the reins down in Africa
I left my brains down in Africa
I bless the grains down in Africa
I miss Lorraine down in Africa
I kiss the rains down in Africa
I'll catch a train down to Africa
I got the AIDS down in Africa.
I felt deranged down in Africa
I kiss Marines down in Africa
I bought some slaves down in Africa
I shot the planes down in Africa
If you need a good laugh, click on Funniest. Or go straight to Here we are now in containers where a whole slew of commenters try to decipher Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit
Go ROFL. We need it.
PS – who can guess the original title of this post? Clue: dinosaur rock band. Put your answers in the comments as well as your own favourite mondegreens. The more ludicrous the better. I can’t wait to hear them.
I remember Rage Against the Machine's song 'Killing in the Name' had this chorus 'Now you do what they told you', and it became some sort of dirty anthem all across teen discos in Spain. The Dj would even stop the track for the crowd to yell '¡Que me chupes la polla!' (for those non-Spanish speakers reading this, go look up what this means :) ).
In the same spirit, the Internet is awash with mishearings of songs. Here's just one hilarious sample; I'm sure there must be similar types of things in different languages.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evHQGbYRR5Y
Gladly, the cross-eyed bear …