Fact checking is good.
Especially when it comes to rock n' roll.
Which is why you should always take the opportunity to read the words on the karaoke screen before you blurt out the lyrics that you've been singing aloud for years in your shower.
This way, during your rendition of "Walk this Way", you won't find yourself crooning about "Marcus Wayne" during the chorus.
"She told me Marcus Wayne. Marcus Wayyyy--ne. Marcus Wayne! Marcus Wayyyy--ne!"
There is no Marcus Wayne.
When you step up to the microphone to sing the line from Elton John's "Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road" ("It'll take you a couple of gin and tonics to set you on your feet again") and instead belt out, "It'll take you a couple of Vicodins to set you on your feet again", you're going to get looks. It's an interesting interpretation, but maybe a little personal for public consumption.
It's not really your fault, as singers are often on their 50th take of a song when it's finally recorded. Sometimes they mumble. Many times, speaking of Vicodin, they aren't always in a clear "head space". And who knows what the heck they were doing when they actually wrote the song.
Thus no one can understand what Bruce Springsteen was thinking when he penned "Blinded by the Light". So it's no surprise by the time Manfred Mann slurred their to way to #1 on the pop charts with it, everyone was lost. Maybe you heard the correct phrase, "Revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night", as "Caught up in the noose, swinging in the night", "Dressed up like a dude, another runner in the night", or even "Held up like a loofah by the foreman of the night".
Whatever you heard, whether or not you want to sing that out loud is your choice.
The sad fact is that many of us learned to sing along to these Top 40 hits when we were kids, a time when the whole world was ripe for misinterpretation. Trying to deduce the garbled words of a half-passed out Kurt Cobain as a teen is on par with archeologists trying to crack the Rosetta Stone.
If you were 15 when John Mellancamp sang his hit "Pink Houses", there was a good chance that instead of hearing the correct lyrics, "And he looks at her and says, 'Darlin', I remember when you could stop a clock'", you may have heard "Darlin', I remember when you cooked sauerkraut."
Especially if you grew up in a German part of the Midwest.
And even though The Police were lamenting that "A year has passed since I wrote my note" in their hit "Message in a Bottle", you may have misinterpreted it as "A year has passed since I broke my nose". Maybe you thought someone threw a bottle at Sting. It wouldn't be the first time.
After a night doing history homework it might make sense that Billy Idol would be nattering about a girl with an "Eisenhower Face" instead of one who had "Eyes Without a Face."
Lyrics, by their metaphorical nature, are extremely hard on realists.
In "You're So Vain", a practical person would never expect to hear Carly Simon sing "I had a dream there were clouds in my coffee" when "grounds in my coffee" makes much more sense. Logic may have it that a band who toured endlessly on a bus like Creedence Clearwater Revival would sing about an upcoming "bathroom on the right", but they were in fact waxing poetic about a "bad moon on the rise". And certainly no one would fault a realist who believes Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson's duet "Ebony and Ivory" sounds better as "Agony and Irony."
But realist or no, everyone is cautioned to stand close enough to the karaoke screen to see that Jimi Hendrix wasn't uttering, "'Scuse me while I kiss this guy" (or "this fly"), nor was Michael Jackson singing, "The chair is not my son" in "Billie Jean".
Unfortunately, realizing that the Bob Dylan song you are about to sing has been translated into Japanese then back into English in some large game of Trans-Pacific Telephone, might not exactly give you the courage you need.
At that point it might be best to sit down, enjoy the sake, and see the next guy sing, "The ants, my friend, are blowin' in the wind."
More Misheard Lyrics, just click here.
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