The lyric that I always misheard was “take your passion” in Irene Cara’s “What A Feeling”. I genuinely heard it as “take your pants down”. Surely they wouldn’t put that in a song I thought.Now I know others misheard it in the same way.
Another famous one was “excuse me, while I kiss the sky” in Purple Haze by Jimi Hendrix. Like many others, I heard it as “excuse me while I kiss this guy”.
Some lyrics are just difficult to hear, so when you sing along you just mumble something that sounds about right, even if it’s gibberish. I bet not many people know the opening line to “Brown Sugar” – it’s ” Gold coast slave ship bound for cotton fields”, and I bet many people heard the next line as “Saw her in a market down in New Orleans”. Actually it’s “Sold in a market down in New Orleans”. The next two lines make the hair curl a bit, and I never knew them….. “Scarred old slaver knows he’s doing alright, hear him whip the women just around midnight”. Further into the song, I always sang “I bet your mama was a Cheshire queen” instead of “I bet your mama was a tent show queen”.
I must have heard this song thousands of times, it was the song we played at discos (as we used to call them) to get people onto the dance floor. It never failed to do that, but we just thought it was Mick being suggestive about one of his conquests. Who knew it was about slavery ?
Another favourite song of mine is “Baba O’Reilly” by The Who. Just fantastic, heard them play it live many times. No idea at all what the song’s about. Didn’t really matter, just loved it when Keith’s drums came in after the extended intro. Baba O’Reilly never figures in the song, but Sally does. Who the f… is Sally ? Who’s Baba O’Reilly for that matter? Other people love the line about “teenage wasteland”, although it never appealed to me much, but I knew Pete Townshend had a fixation about how teenagers lived their lives.
I later found out the song was part of an abandoned project called “Life House”, that even the other band members couldn’t understand.
Perhaps Sally had a bigger role in that ?
Talking about song titles, and how they came about, is interesting. The best story surely has to be about “For What It’s Worth” by Buffalo Springfield. Firstly it’s another example of the title never appearing anywhere in the song, secondly loads of people know the song but don’t know the title or who who recorded it (me too for many years) and thirdly, apparently Stephen Stills played it to the record company just after he’d written it, saying something like “here’s the new single, for what it’s worth” and it stuck.
Mustn’t leave out The Beatles. “Hey Jude” was written by Paul as avuncular advice to a young Julian Lennon, and was originally “Hey Jules”. Makes sense now, although the line “you’re waiting for someone to perform with” always sounds rather crude and clumsy, or is it just me ? There’s also a peculiar line in it “the movement you need is on your shoulder”, which Paul was going to rewrite but John convinced him to leave it in.
Some lyrics annoy people intensely, whilst others like them. I remember arguing about “I Am The Walrus” with a mate of mine. He thought it was just meaningless nonsense (possibly true) while I tried to convince him, over several glasses of wine, about the abstract quality of the sound of random words (“crabalocker fishwife”). I failed miserably, especially on “semolina pilchard, climbing up the Eiffel Tower” which my mate thought was just risible. However, “Come Together” tries for the same effect and works superbly. Both songs are interesting musically, and many people love the lines “I am the eggman, they are the eggmen, I am the walrus goo goo ga joo” as they’re catchy, even though we have no idea what is meant.
Not many people have had John’s talent for lyrics, with “Strawberrry Fields” being my favourite with “that is you know you can’t tune it,but it’s all right” summing up inarticulacy in a very articulate way.
Perhaps “catchiness” is enough. Certainly some think so, and tell me they’re not concerned by lyrics one way or another, they just don’t bother listening to them. I feel sorry for them, think what they’re missing.