Chevelle - self destructor

*Go fight yourself" I somehow heard "go bite your tongue" Which is a form of suicide requiring extreme will. It made sense that the person in the song is so dead set they'd rather die than fail/admit they are wrong.

What have I become my Swedish friend?

Blinded by the light, revved up like a "douche" another runner in the night

Had no idea what they meant by that

Ever since I was a kid I thought in Bon Jovi's "Dead or Alive" he sang "on a stale horse I ride". I figured he had been riding his horse out in the desert a long time, it's all tired, no water.. yeah it's a stale horse. My partner will never let me live it down.

Billy Jean is not my lover

She's just a girl that thinks that I am the one

But

The chair is not my size

When I was a kid I heard The Go-Go's Our Lips Are Sealed as "Alex the seal".

Doesn't matter what they say

In the jealous games people play

Alex the seal

I thought it was about a sad bullied seal.

FYi, these are called Mondegreens after a famous song that was mis-heard by pretty much everyone. I think it was Welsch.

Mine is England Dan and John Ford Coley's I'd really love to see you tonight.

Thought he sang, "I'm not talkin bout my linen."

Instead of, "I'm not talkin bout movin in "

Made up a whole story in my mind about how they met in a Laundromat.

I... Didn't listen well to the flip in Valhallalelluja and misheard the whole rest of the song for like 6 years until I saw the videoclip. If you know, you know. I didn't even hear the word IKEA.

Jeff Davis of Who's Line is it Anyway has a story about a friend of his mishearing "reach down, ease the seat back" in Van Halen's Panama as "reach down, ease the seed bag", as in adjusting his nuts. Always cracks me up when I think of that or hear the song

I used to think the KISS song went I wanna rock and roll all night... and part of every day.

It's far less hard core that way.

I thought the velvet underground "run run run" was

Run run run run run take your jacket too

Instead of "take a drag or two"

Good advice when it's cold out!

"Sharp dressed man" always heard it as "Shy best man" this may have had a minor counterproductive impact on my behavior when I was a teenager.

Billy Talent's "Viking Death March" is a song about religious hypocrisy, capitalistic exploitation and doing something about it.

I initially understood the chorus as singing "crosses to bend, axes to fall" and wasn't quite sure what to make of it. The crosses in churches being torn down could fit with the axes, but you wouldn't bend them so much as break them. The only usage for bent crosses I could think of were Swastikas, but that also didn't quite seem to fit the rest of the song, nor the impression I had of the band.

Later, I figured out that it wasn't "bend", but "burn", which still didn't clear things up: Burning crosses also isn't exactly a leftist symbol, and following up "You preach about love and teach about faith, but all your beliefs are still rooted in hate" with a call to burn crosses just doesn't really track.

It's not a call to action. It's "Crosses still burn, axes still fall". It's calling attention to the fact that these hateful evils haven't disappeared.

My roommate used to think Jimi Hendrix sang "excuse me while I kiss this guy" until I explained it was "sky".

Although in his defense years later I heard a live version where I'm pretty sure he changes it for a verse or two to "kiss this guy."

George Thoroughgood's Bad to the Bone. Thought the line was "The head nurse spoke up. She said, leave us alone. " Instead of "Leave this one alone."

I thought, damn, that new born is gonna screw the head nurse. That IS bad to the bone!

When I was about 10, instead of “smoke two joints”, I thought it was “spoke to Joyce”.

I spoke Joyce in the morning
I spoke to Joyce at night
I spoke to Joyce in the afternoon
it makes me feel alright

I spoke to Joyce in time of peace
and too in time of war
I spoke to Joyce 
before I spoke to Joyce 
and then I spoke some more

I spoke to Joyce when I get up
In the car I spoke to Joyce
I spoke to Joyce 
when I play videogames
and at every 10,000 points 
I spoke to Joyce!

My mom laughed for 5 full minutes when I told her.

Dirty deeds and the THUNDER CHIEF

Chop Suey:

Why'd you leave the kids upon the table?

I still sing it like that for the absurdism.

Probs a common one but when ever Blinded By The Light came on I only heard "woke up like a douche" instead of "revved up like a deuce"

I always heard "I see a brand new horizon" instead of "I see a bad moon rising". I feel like my version is waaay more optimistic!

My wife was singing "Hello darkness, smile friend" until she met me. When I heard it I was like, "can you sing that back for me one more time?"

I don't know how long we laughed but it was equally funny the next day when we remembered it again.

For us Dutch it is a mondegreen to hear "fok die kerstman" instead of "rock the casbah".

If you wanna be my lover, you gotta get rid of my friends

Dirty deeds done with sheeps. They're dirty deeds and they're done with sheeps.

My fave when this subject comes up: “last night I dreamt of some bagels” as the opening line to La Isla Bonita by Madonna

In the song Brown Eyed Girl:

Whatever happened
to Tuesday and so slow
Gun down the old man with a
transistor radio

I was picturing someone holding out a radio in front of them, brandishing it at the old man like how you'd wave a cross at a vampire. The old man doesn't like that newfangled rock and roll music, so they're shooting the sound waves at him to scare him off.

(It's "going down the old mine with a transistor radio," but whatever.)

Love, I feel it in my hands, I can tell by the things I could do with another man.

I was embarrassingly old when I figured out nobody would be singing that in the 1970s and looked up the name of the song.

I'm not sure this song ever made it out of Canada, but Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm by Crash Test Dummies has a verse where a girl in school wouldn't change with the other girls, and when they made her, she had, in what I thought the lyric was, "burn marks all over her body". I assumed the song was about child abuse, and they were cigarette burns. The other verses are about a kid with a shock of white hair from "a car crash" and a kid who always has to come home right after school, so it kinda made sense in a consistent enough way...

Anyway, for basically my whole life I thought that's what the song was about. Turns out the lyrics are "birth marks all over her body", and the point of the song is more about kids being othered for things outside their control.

I still think I prefer my version...

HAMSTER

Ella Langley : Choosing Texas

"she's from texas I can tell by the way he's goose-stepping round the room"