'Still reeling that the lyric is actually I BLESS THE RAINS
More please.
I swear these are the actual lyrics to âRatsâ by Pearl Jam. Especially given that they were originally Mookie Blaylock.
They donât eat, donât sleep
They donât feed, they donât seethe
Bare their gums when they moan and squeak
Lick the dirt off Olajuwonâs feet a larger oneâs feet
Misheard lyrics - otherwise known as mondegreens. If you donât know the derivation of the term âmondegreenâ, look it up on Wikipedia, better than my repeating it here. Itâs a hoot.
One of my favourites is this one from the band Australian Crawl:
The first two lines are
Bbeautiful people
Got a Robert Palmer T-shirt in their travel bag
but I always hear the second line as âgot a rubber politicianâ.
Desmond Dekker - Israelites
After a storm there must be a calm
You touch me on the bum, you sound your alarm
Oooh, me ears are alight!
This one for them hood girls, them good girls
Straight masturbators!
Always thought that was an unusual intro âŚ
Two people, just meeting
Barely touching each other
Two spirits greeting
Drunk in Carrickfergus
One of my favourite misheard lyrics that I am not convinced is a misheard lyric at all comes in âThe Jet Songâ from West Side Story. It sounds for all the world like they are singing âevery last fucking gang on the whole fucking streetâ. If you consult the lyric sheets, the word is given as âbuggingâ, not âfuckingâ. Are they actually singing âbuggingâ? Sometimes I wonder. In any case, if thatâs a misheard lyric, Iâd say the writer, Stephen Sondheim, intended for it to be misheard.
Diana Ross âChain Reactionâ -
âTell Eddie Waring there ainât no salvationâ
Thereâs a line at the end of a song from Adorableâs first album which goes something like âAnd you cut, you cut, you cut, you cutâ which I misheard for many years and Iâm sure was meant to be misheard. Sometimes I can hear the extra ânâ in all those cuts, and sometimes I canât (actually with his accent, it also sounds just as much like âyou canât, you canât, you canâtâ).
âYouâre all I have in this teenage twilight
Your God damn hair and your pebbles for eyesâ
The vocal sample in Since I Left You by The Avalanches is actually singing âsince I met youâ: